Abstract
Abstract
The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) was formed after the U.S. presidential elections in November 2016 to respond to the threat posed by the Trump administration to environmental data and policy, and to federal environmental agencies. During his campaign, Trump was openly hostile to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and to the science of climate change. Since taking office, Trump's administration has taken steps to radically de-fund federal environmental agencies and roll-back environmental regulations, threatening the public accessibility of federal environmental datasets and continued monitoring of environmental harms. The Trump administration has also taken down information from federal environmental websites, such as the EPA's web pages explaining climate change to kids. This situation poses specific challenges for environmental justice (EJ) activism, as many EJ organizations rely on federal datasets and information on environmental risks, industrial emissions, and climate issues. Since November 2016, EDGI has focused on preserving existing federal environmental data, monitoring changes to federal websites, documenting the political transition through interviews with staff at EPA and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and offering timely academic analysis of current events. Though EDGI's focus so far has been largely reactive to current political events, in this article we suggest a positive vision of “environmental data justice,” which we define as the public accessibility and continuity of environmental data and research, supported by networked open-source data infrastructure that can be modified, adapted, and supported by local communities. Environmental data justice also includes maintaining attention to long-standing EJ concerns about the politics of evidence, such as what counts as data, what data are collected, and whose interests they serve.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.