NEP – New Environmental Paradigm – “sets out an environmental stewardship and sustainability agenda that currently influences the work of most environmental and sustainability organizations but has little to say about equity or justice.”
EJP – Environmental Justice Paradigm – “framework for integrating class, race, gender, environment, and social justice concerns.”
JSP – Just Sustainability Paradigm – “ ‘the need to ensure a better quality of life for all, now and into the future, in a just and equitable manner, whilst living within the limits of supporting ecosystems.’” “Prioritizes justice and equity but does not downplay the environment, our life support system.”
In Chapter 3 of "Sustainable Communities and the Challenge of Environmental Justice," Julian Agyeman emphasizes that he is not offering the JSP as a cure-all solution to the problems of environmental destruction and humanitarian injustices in the world, but instead as a bridge between the NEP and EJP. He proposes that “we simply have to bridge the gap with frank and open discussion, if we are to move toward a just and sustainable communities together.” The JSP is put forth as a framework with a foundation in overlapping discourses among movements.
Agyeman explores the reasoning for the gap between the NEP and the EJP, and to sum up (including what seems to be his bias), he suspects that the NEP efforts give primacy to “natural resources, wilderness, endangered species,” etc, instead of “toxics, public health and unjust distribution of environmental risk” because the NEP group is not comprised of people who are not affected by the latter problems. The following table lists some of the corresponding polarizing issues and characteristics Agyeman mentions between the groups.
Although at first glance above table may make it seem that the joining of forces of the two groups would be a solution to the problem of the EJP needing the NEP to mobilize Aggyman’s JSP, in actuality; the two groups need each other equally. “Fundamentally, at global, national, regional, and local scales, the JSP means ‘acknowledging the interdependence of social justice, economic well-being and environmental stewardship. The social dimension is critical since the unjust society is unlikely to be sustainable in environmental or economic terms in the long run (Haughton 1999).”
Agyman describes the GPI, Gross Progress Indicator, which (as opposed to the GDP) uses more than 20 aspects of human life to evaluate the economy that most people actually experience.Agyeman discusses Community Based Social marketing, and mentions the Ecological Footprint tool, which is popular in the U.S. because it tells us that we are living unsustainable lifestyles by showing us the land area required to sustain our lifestyles. But he explains that the Environmental Space (calculator) is a much better, more powerful policy tool, because it shows specifically how much less we should consume of any given source.
synthesis/application
Ken Reardon’s Participatory Neighborhood Planning Outline appears to be the framework of an example of DIPS (Deliberative and Inclusionary Processes and Procedures) that Agyeman mentioned.
In Reardon’s list of “Steps in the Process,” number 7, “Monitoring, Evaluating, and Modifying Neighborhood Plans” is expressed as monitoring and evaluation of project implementation, impact, and effectiveness, and the alteration of projects as necessary. I am again reminded of the work I did with the Cornell Division of Nutritional Sciences Community Nutrition Program over this past summer, where at one point our research team worked on evaluation of a Cooperative Extension program; “Cooking Up Fun.” (“Cooking Up Fun” is an integrated nutrition, youth development program designed to help youth aged 9 to 14 acquire independent food skills.) The CNP is very committed to an assets-based participatory approach, and when we had to use a Logic Model to evaluate “Cooking Up Fun,” we realized that it was not an appropriate evaluation tool. Towards the end of my work with DNS, we realized that we would have to develop a new evaluation tool, that would participatory itself, just like the planning. I was not involved long enough to see the new tool come to fruition, but I was there for a meeting where we discussed that we needed to get the community on board to create it; because the idea of success and/or failure of the program should come from the community, not Cornell.
critique/inquiry
There is really no mention in either of the readings of the process of selection/recruitment/identification for the citizens who are brought on board in the description of the initial stages in the participatory planning process. In many communities, there may be a problem of self-selection when it comes to community participation. Meaning; that the type of citizens who are acting in a way that is seen as counterproductive to progress in a community are not likely to be the same people who volunteer or are selected to participate in community planning. However; perhaps they are the very people whose opinion and perspective needs to be expressed and heard in order to establish a more equitable, sustainable change in a community. Their seemingly destructive behavior may in fact be the best method they know to show their discontent with their community and frustration at their inability to know what changes need to be made, so instead they just choose to be destructive to see things change in some way. I’m reminding myself of a quote from the movie “Donnie Darko,” where Donnie explains his take on Gram Green’s “The Destructors”: “They say right when they flood the house and they tear it to shreds that... ‘destruction is a form of creation,’ so the fact that they burn the money is ironic. They just want to see what happens when they tear the world apart. They want to change things.”
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