Division of Life Sciences, Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute, Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation, 604 Allison Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8082, USA.
Risk Anal. 2010 Jun;30(6):893-905. doi: 10.1111/j.1539-6924.2010.01403.x. Epub 2010 Apr 8.
The concept that all peoples should have their voices heard on matters that affect their well-being is at the core of environmental justice (EJ). The inability of some people of small towns, rural areas, minority, and low-income communities, to become involved in environmental decisions is sometimes due to a lack of information. We provide a template for the ecological information that is essential to examine environmental risks to EJ populations within average communities, using case studies from South Carolina (Savannah River, a DOE site with minority impacts), Washington (Hanford, a DOE site with Native American impacts), and New Jersey (nonpoint, urbanized community pollution). While the basic ecological and public health information needs for risk evaluations and assessments are well described, less attention has been focused on standardizing information about EJ communities or EJ populations within larger communities. We suggest that information needed about EJ communities and populations includes demographics, consumptive and nonconsumptive uses of their regional environment (for example, maintenance and cosmetic, medicinal/religious/cultural uses), eco-dependency webs, and eco-cultural attributes. A purely demographics approach might not even identify EJ populations or neighborhoods, much less their spatial relation to the impact source or to each other. Using information from three case studies, we illustrate that some information is readily available (e.g., consumption rates for standard items such as fish), but there is less information about medicinal, cultural, religious, eco-cultural dependency webs, and eco-cultural attributes, all of which depend in some way on intact, functioning, and healthy ecosystems.
所有人都应该有机会对影响其福祉的事务发表意见，这是环境正义（EJ）的核心概念。一些来自小镇、农村地区、少数民族和低收入社区的人们无法参与环境决策，这有时是因为他们缺乏信息。我们提供了一个模板，用于审查普通社区中 EJ 人群面临的环境风险所需的生态信息，使用了来自南卡罗来纳州（萨凡纳河，一个有少数族裔影响的 DOE 站点）、华盛顿州（汉福德，一个有美国原住民影响的 DOE 站点）和新泽西州（非点源，城市化社区污染）的案例研究。虽然风险评估和评估所需的基本生态和公共卫生信息已经得到很好的描述，但对于标准化 EJ 社区或更大社区内的 EJ 人群的信息关注较少。我们建议，需要了解 EJ 社区和人群的信息包括人口统计学、区域环境的消费性和非消费性用途（例如，维护和美容、药用/宗教/文化用途）、生态依存网络和生态文化属性。仅仅采用人口统计学方法可能无法识别 EJ 人群或社区，更不用说他们与影响源的空间关系或彼此之间的关系了。使用来自三个案例研究的信息，我们说明一些信息是现成的（例如，对鱼类等标准物品的消费率），但关于药用、文化、宗教、生态文化依存网络和生态文化属性的信息较少，所有这些都在某种程度上取决于完整、功能正常和健康的生态系统。
