On this episode of Free Range, Mike Livermore speaks with Kimberly Fields, who is an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia’s Woodson Institute of African-American and African Studies. Her recent work has focused on environmental justice, race, and inequality at the state level.

The podcast begins with Professor Fields explaining why examining environmental policy at the state level is so important, emphasizing that many of the decisions that are made to implement federal policies are made by state legislatures. This results in a significant amount of variation between states not only in how aggressively they implement those policies, but also in the extent to which they are able to do so. Expanding on the variation between states, Fields finds that a number of factors can dictate how robustly a state will enforce environmental policies, from the prevalence of grass-roots activist groups in the state and the history of the state’s approach to environmental and social justice issues to the level of autonomy that a state regulatory agency has to implement federal policies. Fields also points out how disparities in equality and social justice often reflect disparities in environmental risk. (:44 – 16:30) This leads to a conversation about how environmental advocacy compares with other forms of advocacy, and the challenges that smaller environmental advocacy groups have faced in their efforts to ensure that their concerns remain at the forefront of the legislative agenda. Important to this is the interaction between a state’s advocacy environment – how much support advocacy groups receive – and a state’s political attitude towards that advocacy – the extent to which the state legislature is open to working with advocacy groups. Professor Fields explains that partisanship has not, in her research, been a good indicator of how robust a state’s advocacy environment is. In fact, the more accurate indicator is the presence of significant minority populations in a state’s demographic make-up. Fields points to the Delta South as a region that has a strong culture of environmental justice advocacy, despite partisan politics that would suggest otherwise. This is the case for a number of reasons, from prominent politicians who are actively involved in advocating for environmental justice to a historical legacy of environmental advocacy in the South. (16:33 – 39:02) Fields describes the state policy making process as one that is influenced heavily by local industries and the environmental concerns surrounding those industries. States also take differing approaches to race and environmental justice, with some states taking a very proactive approach to eliminating racial dimensions of environmental inequality and others adopting more neutral language. (39:08 – 46:59) The conversation then expands into a broader discussion of the use race-focused language in environmental justice goals, why states might choose to utilize race-neutral language, and whether a race-neutral approach can adequately address the concerns of affected groups. (47:02 – 59:37) The conversation concludes with a discussion of whether environmental justice issues at the state level reflect the same partisan polarization as is seen on so many issues at the national level. (59:41 – 1:05:29)

Professor Michael Livermore is the Edward F. Howrey Professor of Law at the University of Virginia School of Law. He is also the Director of the Program in Law, Communities and the Environment (PLACE), an interdisciplinary program based at UVA Law that examines the intersection of legal, environmental, and social concerns.