Grove reviews how environmental justice and urban ecology interact
Baltimore Harbor by Ricky Beron / Unsplash
The review, lead authored by Morgan Grove, asks how environmental justice and urban ecology have influenced one another over the past 25 years in the context of the US Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program and Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES) project.
BES began after environmental justice emerged through activism and scholarship in the 1980s but spans a period of increasing awareness among ecologists and environmental practitioners. The work in Baltimore provides a detailed example of how ecological research has been affected by a growing understanding of environmental justice. The shift shows how unjust environmental outcomes emerge and are reinforced over time by systemic discrimination and exclusion.
The paper does not comprehensively review the literature on environmental justice in urban ecology but does present four brief cases from the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia, to illustrate the global relevance of the topic. The example cases demonstrate the necessity for continuous engagement with communities in addressing environmental problem solving.
Read the open-access article here.
Citation:
Grove, M., Pickett, S., Boone, C.G. et al. Forging just ecologies: 25 years of urban long-term ecological research collaboration. Ambio 53, 826–844 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-023-01938-w
