Cool Ideas for a Long Hot Summer: Environmental Justice
This has been a record-breaking summer all over the world. Many cities have recorded their hottest days ever, and June 2024 was Earth’s hottest month on record. Mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate change, including extreme heat and long summers, will require a lot of bold new ideas.
This summer, we’re highlighting some of those ideas in a mini podcast series, Cool Ideas for a Long, Hot Summer. Over four mini-episodes, we’ll explore how faculty members at Arizona State University’s Global Futures Lab are working with communities to develop cool techniques and technologies for dealing with climate change.
In the first mini-episode, host Kimberly Quach is joined by ASU assistant professor Danae Hernandez-Cortes. She shares how economics can be used to advance environmental justice and evaluate the impacts of policies on communities who are most harmed by climate change.
Resources
- Visit Danae Hernandez-Cortes’s website to learn more about environmental economics and environmental justice.
Transcript
Kimberly Quach: Welcome to The Ongoing Transformation, a podcast from Issues in Science and Technology. Issues is a quarterly journal published by the National Academy of Sciences and by Arizona State University.
It’s been a long, really hot summer. June was the hottest month on record worldwide, and all signs point to things getting even hotter. As one of the defining challenges of our time, climate change requires a lot of new ideas.
This summer, we’re highlighting some of those ideas in a miniseries called Cool Ideas For a Long Hot Summer. Over four mini-episodes, we’ll explore how faculty members at ASU’s Global Futures Lab are working on climate change with cool techniques, technologies, and communities.
I’m Kimberly Quach, Digital Engagement Editor at Issues. In our first mini-episode, I’m joined by ASU assistant professor Danae Hernandez-Cortes. Danae talks to us about how economics can be used to advance environmental justice and create policies to protect communities who are most harmed by climate change. Danae, welcome.
Danae Hernandez-Cortes: Thank you so much for having me.
Quach: I think the first thing I want to talk about is that you’re an economist, and when most people think of economists, they think of things like interest rates, or markets, supply and demand. Why are economists, and you specifically, concerned with climate change and the problems with our long, hot summers?
Hernandez-Cortes: Well, this is a great question. Economics, the way that I have always been interested in it, is to think about trade-offs. Economics teaches us how to think about trade-offs and how to understand what trade-offs come from every decision that people make. So, it can be very specific, like what is the trade-off between me going to college or taking a job. Or it can be as large as what is the trade-off between having a policy that can reduce greenhouse gases and economic growth.
Economics teaches us how to think about trade-offs and how to understand what trade-offs come from every decision that people make.
So these trade-offs allows us to understand how different policies can have different impacts on different people. So, economists not only study some of these macroeconomic concepts, as you mentioned, like interest rates or GDP or something like that, but rather what are some of these policy trade-offs that policymakers have and how they can affect people. What economists, and specifically environmental economists, try to study is understanding what are some of the trade-offs that we have when taking care of the environment or when developing policies that could affect the environment.
So, I consider myself an environmental economist. Most of my work is trying to understand what are some of the potential consequences of different environmental policies.
Quach: I think another area that you work on is environmental justice. Could you tell me what that means?
Hernandez-Cortes: Yes, yes. Environmental justice is a situation where no group is more or less affected by environmental phenomenon or environmental policies. The way that the EPA considers environmental justice is by looking at two different aspects. One of them is the distributional impacts of different policies or different environmental phenomenon. Who is more or less affected by some environmental policy or other environmental phenomenon and the procedural justice aspect. And this procedural justice has to do with understanding who has access to policymaking and decisionmaking for environmental programs and environmental policies. Issues of participation and equal access to decisionmaking is related to procedural justice.
So, environmental justice, usually the way that I study it, is trying to understand how different policies can affect different people or different socioeconomic groups, and who is more or less affected by these policies, and try to understand how can we close existing gaps in environmental disparities that have existed for so long.
And by these environmental disparities, we mean the fact that low-income individuals, people experiencing poverty, underserved minorities who are experiencing higher levels of pollution and have experienced that for many, many years. Trying to understand how we close these disparities and what policies are more effective at closing them.
Quach: Could you talk about an example of how you’ve used environmental justice and economics to help highlight the disparities in these communities? I know something you’ve worked on recently is the Salton Sea.
Hernandez-Cortes: In this project that you mentioned about the Salton Sea, we examined one situation that happened in this area of Southern California. For those of you who don’t know where the Salton Sea is, it’s a very big lake. The Salton Sea is located in Southern California, very close to Arizona.
The Salton Sea is a very interesting phenomenon to study because this area was basically a mistake.
The Salton Sea is a very interesting phenomenon to study because this area was basically a mistake. It was flooded early in the 1900s. And ever since, it has been a thriving ecosystem by itself. This ecosystem has generated some opportunities for local communities in the way of tourism, but it has also provided other ecosystem services for some species. We have lots of birds coming to that area. We have different species living in that area. It’s a very interesting ecosystem.
And what we studied is what is the impact of the drying of the Salton Sea on disadvantaged communities. The water levels in the Salton Sea have decreased over time. And this, of course, leaves exposed areas of the Salton Sea that can release pollution into the atmosphere, affecting communities living nearby. And what we find is that, when there’s more drying of these areas, we see higher pollution concentrations in nearby monitors. And we’re able to tell is that, when these areas are more exposed, we see more pollution concentrations in monitors that are located near these areas.
And after that, what we try to understand is what happens to pollution concentrations in communities that are considered disadvantaged. And how do we define disadvantaged communities? Well, disadvantaged communities are defined by different indicators of socioeconomic vulnerabilities. The term disadvantaged communities is a term that California uses in order to categorize communities that have the highest levels of vulnerability to several indicators.
What we find is that, after some changes in how the Salton Sea is managed, we find increases in exposed lake bed that is associated with increases in pollution concentrations near disadvantaged communities. Meaning that, after these changes in the Salton Sea, we see that communities that are disadvantaged are experiencing more pollution concentrations.
Quach: That’s really interesting. So, it seems like your work really gives these disadvantaged communities a voice by allowing them to advance these things that would otherwise be overlooked because they probably are ignored compared to more advantaged communities. Because I know the situation with the Salton Sea existed or happened because water from the Salton Sea was diverted to San Diego, right?
It’s important to understand what are the causes of these pollution concentrations in these areas, so that we can actually design or change policies that could prevent more pollution from happening in these places.
Hernandez-Cortes: Exactly. And that is exactly what we are studying. What happens when this water is being diverted from the Salton Sea to San Diego Water District? And it’s something very interesting because, if you look at the communities living nearby the Salton Sea, we see high levels of poverty, linguistic isolation, and socioeconomic disadvantage. Which means that it’s important to understand what are the causes of these pollution concentrations in these areas, so that we can actually design or change policies that could prevent more pollution from happening in these places.
Quach: I think we often talk about how novel technologies can help solve our problems. But this is actually just applying different ways of thinking, and bringing researchers into communities, and working with them to solve problems rather than creating some new technologies.
Hernandez-Cortes: Yeah, exactly, and trying to understand how we can leverage some of the methods that we have developed for so long, but including more voices into the process.
Quach: Something that you said that really resonated with me in another interview that you did was that you said that, “There’s no single policy we know that will work nationally in every single context. We have to create policies and communities that are relevant for their context.” Could you talk to me about other things you’ve done with other communities?
Danae Hernandez-Cortes: Yeah, of course. For example, in the case of Phoenix, which it’s where we live, it’s where Arizona State is located, we are actually working with a community organization called Unlimited Potential and Chispa Arizona. We are working together to try to understand how different policies that could decrease pollution from the transit system in Phoenix, how can that affect different communities that are underserved in the Phoenix area?
How can we have these transportation systems so that communities can have improvements in air quality?
So, in this case, we’re working together with communities to understand communities’ mobility needs and also air quality concerns. So, what are the sources that they believe are impacting their health? And then, trying to understand how can we design policies that can help them satisfy this mobility needs, because people need to move from one place to another. But how can we have these transportation systems so that communities can have improvements in air quality?
So, in this case, this project is being funded by the EPA. And what we are looking at is different scenarios of transit decarbonization plans in Phoenix and trying to understand how these different scenarios could affect or benefit communities.
Quach: So, earlier you talked about how economics is the study of trade-offs. What challenges have you faced doing this work? Because I assume, advocating for these disadvantaged communities, there are other voices that have other opinions on how these policies should work.
Hernandez-Cortes: Yeah, that is a great question. I think that some of the concerns that you often hear is the cost of policies, how costly it is to serve certain communities or to change different policies. And the way that I try to think about these cost questions is by thinking… Well, it all depends on how you estimate the cost and the benefits, and how much do you care about some of these environmental disparities, so that you can consider them in the benefits that you are estimating.
I think that that’s some of the trade-offs that I have experienced. And it’s really interesting because you can have very interesting discussions in terms of how to consider these past disparities and how policies can closing them, how can that affect how we estimate benefits more broadly.
Kimberly Quach: This conversation was really inspiring about how many things you’ve brought to light with your research. If I was a member of a disadvantaged community, and wanted to apply these techniques to my own community, what should I do? Or if I’ve not and just found this really inspiring, how could I get more involved in this type of work?
Danae Hernandez-Cortes: I love receiving emails from community members. I have met with several community organizations that have emailed me just to talk about some of the concerns. I think that that’s one way we can get involved.
If there are students who are interested in this type of research, I think that one way is either by emailing me, or taking some of my classes, or by looking at my website. My website has a lot of different data sets. It also has different articles that I have written, talking about some of these questions. If they have any questions about that, I will be super happy to talk more.
Kimberly Quach: If you would like to learn more about economics and environmental justice, check out our show notes to find Danae Hernandez-Cortes’s email and website. She would love to hear from you.
Please subscribe to The Ongoing Transformation wherever you get your podcasts. And thanks to our audio engineer, Shannon Lynch. I’m Kimberly Quach, Digital Engagement Editor at Issues in Science and Technology. Tune in next week to learn about how canoes can be used to prevent deforestation!