S2E California Coast Environmental Justice Conflicts Database

Name: S2E California Coast Environmental Justice Conflicts Database
Published: 2024-03-27
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Jessica Rudnick, U.S. Forest Service; Linda Mendez-Barrientos, University of Denver; Hanna Payne, University of California-Berkeley; Jack DePuy, Kelpful Cooperative; Monica Cisneros, California State University San Marcos; James Chhor, San Diego Water Quality Control Board; Jenn Fields, Morro Bay National Estuary Program; Angie Ye, University of California San Francisco, Hastings College of the Law

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
BibliographyWebReferencesforConflicts.docx	application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document	59.1 KB	03/27/2024 06:15:PM
CA EJ Conflicts Database Codebook.xlsx	application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet	18.3 KB	03/27/2024 05:53:PM
CA EJ Conflicts Database_Descriptive Results .pdf	application/pdf	1.4 MB	03/27/2024 06:14:PM
CA EJ Conflicts Database_Nov2022.csv	text/csv	254 KB	03/27/2024 05:59:PM
CA EJ Interactive Map Data Layers Dictionary.pdf	application/pdf	114.9 KB	03/27/2024 06:15:PM

Project Citation:

Rudnick, Jessica , Mendez-Barrientos, Linda, Payne, Hanna , DePuy, Jack , Cisneros, Monica, Chhor, James, … Ye, Angie. S2E California Coast Environmental Justice Conflicts Database. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2024-03-27. https://doi.org/10.3886/E199302V1

Project Description

Summary: The California Coast Environmental Justice Conflicts Database comprehensively catalogues environmental justice (EJ) conflicts occurring within California's 19 coastal and San Francisco Bay Area counties. This database documents where EJ conflicts occur, what natural resources are involved, what communities are impacted, which EJ organizations/ advocates engage in these conflicts, what industry and government actors are involved, what strategies both EJ advocates and industry actors employ in the conflicts, and how conflicts are portrayed in media. The database was built following a participatory and mixed-methods approach involving key informant interviews to inform database design, followed by systematic web-scraping and content analysis of media coverage and key policy documents on EJ conflicts.

The database is available as an interactive spatial database on an ArcGIS Online website as well. This spatial database also incorporates 3rd-party socio-spatial data from the U.S. EPA EJSCREEN, California EPA CalEnviroScreen4.0, and U.S. Census to provide the social and spatial context in which conflicts occur. Explore the spatial database at: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/25fcb324e8694b28a0e90c03bbe4ce12/page/Home/#data_s=id%3Adat...

This effort builds off of on-going work by the Science-to-Empower (S2E) collaborative research team, which focuses on EJ research that empowers communities experiencing environmental injustices by building access and capacity to leverage scientific resources, including researchers and datasets. For more information on S2E, see: https://www.science2empower.org/

Funding Sources: University of California Davis, The Green Initiative Fund; California Sea Grant

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: Environmental justice; comparative ; social networks; social movements; mobilization strategies

Geographic Coverage: California

Time Period(s): 1960 – 2023

Collection Date(s): 2020 – 2023

Universe:

The unit of analysis for our database is an “EJ conflict”. We sought to identify and document as many EJ conflicts occurring in California coastal counties as we could. We define EJ conflict following a set of criteria modified from Temper et al. (2015):

Conflict emerges from an activity (e.g. development, resource extraction, regulation, accident) that has the potential to or has already caused negative social or environmental impacts to a specific community or population; and
EJ organizations or community members claim negative impacts from the activity and are actively involved in the conflict in various forms of mobilization; and
The conflict involves at least two identifiable opposing actors or parties involved; and
A specific location and timeframe can be associated with the conflict; and
The conflict is documented or reported in publicly available online sources.

For more information, see: Temper, Leah, Daniela Del Bene, and Joan Martinez-Alier. “Mapping the frontiers and front lines of global environmental justice: the EJAtlas.” Journal of Political Ecology 22 (2015): 255-278.

Data Type(s): event/transaction data; geographic information system (GIS) data; text

Methodology

Sampling: EJ conflicts were identified following a mixed-methods approach, including reviewing published and grey literature, archival review, key informant interviews with EJ activists and EJ program staff at state government agencies and systematic web-scraping.

To systematically web-scrape, each coastal and Bay Area county in California was searched alongside 17 key conflict type search terms, for a total of 323 individual searches using Google Search engine between 2020-2022 (search terms listed below). The research team then researched each conflict identified in greater depth, reviewing available secondary data sources (i.e. media coverage, project permits, hearings, decisions, policy briefs, scientific research, legal documents, EJ organizations’ websites) and coded each conflict according to a developed codebook to document:

Case name
Basic information

Location*
Description of conflict
Start and end date

Resource driving conflict

Specific commodities or resources involved in or driving conflict

Actors involved

EJ groups
Government agencies
Private industry

Strategies

EJ mobilization/ resistance strategies
Extraction strategies

Impacts and outcomes

Environmental, socio-economic & health impacts on community
Status of conflict (closed or ongoing)
Conflict outcome(s)
EJ “success” or not

Information resources on conflict

Technical or legal briefs
Policy documents/ public comments
Scientific resources
Media coverage

*Note: a few cases occur across multiple discrete locations; in the database, these cases with multiple discrete locations will be repeated in multiple rows (identifiable by the same case ID); this allows for easier mapping and spatial analysis of the data.

Web search terms:
CA counties:
Del Norte, Humboldt, Mendocino, Marin, Napa, Sonoma, Solano, Alameda, Contra Costa, Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego

Conflict terms:
Environmental Justice, Fossil fuel, Oil, Fisheries, Fracking, Sea level rise, Air quality, Refineries, Coastal recreation access, Land dispossession, Land conflicts, Tribal/ indigenous, Water quality, Water supply/ availability, Water affordability, Ports (e.g. pollution, infrastructure, traffic, noise), Harmful algal blooms

Timeframe of sampling and data collection:
Conflicts actively unfolding during the research process (2020-2022) were checked for latest updates or any changes in decisions or outcomes as of summer 2022. After the initial dataset was compiled, coded, and organized, EJ organizations were approached and invited to provide expert review.

Data Source: Conflict entries in database are based on a variety of online secondary sources:

newspaper articles and op-eds
legal briefs and case summaries
state agency policy documents and permit decisions
EJ organizations' websites and online resources
academic literature

Collection Mode(s): other; web scraping

Unit(s) of Observation: EJ conflict

Geographic Unit: Latitude/ longitude of conflict location; Census tracts where conflicts occur

Related Publications

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Published Versions

V1 [2024-03-27]

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