Environmental justice, sustainability, and quality of life

While well-known to the academic community in the developed world, the issues of environmental justice and its connection to sustainability have not been widely studied in other parts of the world, including the post-socialist European countries. One important contribution to this area of research is a book I co-edited with Julian Agyeman “Environmental Justice and Sustainability in the Former Soviet Union” (MIT Press, 2009). For this volume we selected papers written by prominent academic researchers and activists from a diverse array of disciplines and specializations. Their individual accounts demonstrate how fragile the transition economies of post-Soviet states are, and how their varying degrees of democratization may be impacting ecological, environmental, and public health in the region.  I also co-wrote the Introduction and Conclusion for the book, which provide the framework for the case studies.

Within the environmental justice paradigm I am particularly interested in how GIS tools can be used to analyze the level of exposure to pollution or harmful substances like tobacco. For example, in a recent study I analyzed noise pollution from Logan airport in Boston. My GIS analysis showed that people who are affected the most by elevated noise are from socially and economically disadvantaged groups, the first application of hot spot analysis and spatial statistics to the analysis of noise pollution (Ogneva-Himmelberger and Cooperman, 2008).

The health effects of tobacco and alcohol are well known. However, in spite of similar health threats and greater mortality associated  with  tobacco,  there  tends  to  be  far  greater oversight  and  control  over  alcohol  licensing  than  tobacco permitting in the US. In community-based research collaboration with my colleague Laurie Ross and a local youth group, we used GIS and statistical analysis (Poisson, negative binomial, and logistic regressions) to compare the density of stores selling tobacco and alcohol in relationship to socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the neighborhoods and schools in Worcester, MA. This work laid the foundation for the groundbreaking regulation to limit the number of tobacco permits issued each year in Worcester. In addition, Worcester became the first community in our state to ban tobacco from pharmacies and supermarkets.  A paper highlighting our results was published in Tobacco Control, the top research journal in the field (Ogneva-Himmelberger, Ross, Burdick, and Simpson, 2010).

Since arriving to Clark in 2006, I have been involved in a number of use-inspired research projects focused on local sustainability in Worcester. I strongly believe in the “learning by inquiry” approach and involving students in my research. In one project we mapped and analyzed food-related resources available to disadvantaged population groups in Worcester (soup kitchens, senior lunch programs, summer children feeding programs, food pantries, farmers markets, food stamps application sites, community gardens). This analysis helped Worcester Food and Active Living Policy Council to identify a location for a pilot project for hunger alleviation. My map was on display at the Worcester Historical Museum in the exhibit “Got Food? Creating a Hunger Free Community” in 2007–2008. To help Regional Environmental Council in its community garden program, students and I have mapped the existing community gardens, analyzed their spatial accessibility, and identified potential sites for future gardens.  More recently, at the request of the City of Worcester, students and I analyzed solar power potential for all city owned properties. We created maps showing solar energy potential and generated the list of properties ranked by their suitability for solar panels.

Another current research area is quantifying quality of life. The concept of the quality of life is very broad, and researchers from various fields – economics, geography, regional science, planning – have all made contributions to this area. Little attention, however, has been paid to studying spatial variation in the relationship between the quality of life and various underlying factors. In a recent study two students and I used geographically weighted regression to look at spatial variation in the relationship between the greenness and the wealth of an area in the state of Massachusetts (Ogneva-Himmelberger, Pearsall and Rakshit, 2009).  In a follow-up study we compared two approaches (principal components analysis and data envelopment analysis) to create two socio-economic indices related to the quality of life. The paper explores spatial relationships among these indices and environmental factors related to the quality of life (Ogneva-Himmelberger, Rakshit, and Pearsall, 2011).