Third Thursday Thing: A Success Story for Reaching Underserved Clients

Kentucky State University has been conducting a monthly field day known as the Third Thursday Thing for many years. This program has been successful in reaching limited-resource, minority, and underserved clients. The success of the program has indicated that a nontraditional approach can be successful when working with nontraditional clients. The program also strives to offer topics that focus on interests of those operating small farms and to have specific months dedicated to specific topics. Departing from some of the traditional meeting scheduling protocols has proved to be successful and continues to attract new clients to the program

Public vulnerability to the police: a quantitative inquiry

The recent protests regarding the state of policing in the United States clearly demonstrate that how the police do their job creates a salient potential for harm to the public. This study applies a multidimensional paradigm of risk perception to quantify evaluations of police-caused harm. Using data from a national (U.S.) convenience sample (n = 1,890) that oversampled individuals who self-identified as black or Muslim, we tested whether these evaluations vary systematically (using confidence intervals), whether they covary with police legitimacy (using structural equation modeling), and the extent to which that covariance differs by demographic status (using multiple groups structural equation modeling). Our results suggest that black and Muslim individuals evaluate police-caused harm differently than do majority group members (white and Christian) on most, but not all, of the measured dimensions. We also find that those evaluations are predictive of trust and provide evidence of some level of consistency across communities

Democratization of ecosystem services—a radical approach for assessing nature’s benefits in the face of urbanization

OBJECTIVES : (1) To evaluate how ecosystem services may be utilized to either reinforce or fracture the planning and development practices that emerged from segregation and economic exclusion; (2) To survey the current state of ecosystem service assessments and synthesize a growing number of recommendations from the literature for renovating ecosystem service analyses. METHODS : Utilizing current maps of ecosystem service distribution in Bushbuckridge Local Municipality, South Africa, we considered how a democratized process of assessing ecosystem services will produce a more nuanced representation of diverse values in society and capture heterogeneity in ecosystem structure and function. RESULTS : We propose interventions for assessing ecosystem services that are inclusive of a broad range of stakeholders’ values and result in actual quantification of social and ecological processes. We demonstrate how to operationalize a pluralistic framework for ecosystem service assessments. CONCLUSION : A democratized approach to ecosystem service assessments is a reimagined path to rescuing a poorly implemented concept and designing and managing future socialecological systems that benefit people and support ecosystem integrity. It is the responsibility of scientists who do ecosystem services research to embrace more complex, pluralistic frameworks so that sound and inclusive scientific information is utilized in decision-making.The National Science Foundation under Grant No. RCN 1140070.https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tehs20am2019Educational Psycholog

Environmental justice in disaster recovery: Recognition of the Latinx community by nonprofit leaders

Nonprofit organizations are important sources of aid and assistance in the aftermath of disasters, directly contributing to disaster recovery efforts in communities and in some cases broader environmental justice objectives. However, there is a need to better align nonprofit organization processes and programs to address the needs of disadvantaged communities. This study examines how leaders of nonprofit organizations navigate and address the needs and experiences of Latinx persons in their community. We draw from 18 semi-structured interviews with leaders of nonprofit organizations involved in disaster recovery in Wilmington, North Carolina after Hurricane Florence in 2018. Interviews focused on the degree that nonprofit leaders involved in disaster recovery recognize the Latinx community, how the process of recognition manifests among these leaders, and how recognition by these leaders is related to procedural and distributional justice. Findings suggest that leaders adopt more sophisticated recognition of disaster recovery needs of the Latinx community when they have direct experience working with Latinx persons, collaborate with individuals who understand the Latinx community, partner with other organizations, or leverage geospatial or other data on disaster impacts and demographics. Data generated in this study underscores the role that recognition can play in promoting progress towards procedural and distributional justice in the disaster recovery context. These findings suggest that assigned leaders of nonprofits can and do function to exacerbate inequities through their disaster recovery services. However, the findings also showcase nonprofit leaders are interested in promoting just outcomes, and one possible route is through greater emphasis on the role of recognition. This work can inform approaches to resilience planning and help leaders of nonprofit organizations understand the needs and experiences of disadvantaged communities, so they can restructure organization policies and programs to address the needs of those who are most vulnerable to environmental hazards

Natural Gas Gathering and Transmission Pipelines and Social Vulnerability in the United States

Midstream oil and gas infrastructure comprises vast networks of gathering and transmission pipelines that connect upstream extraction to downstream consumption. In the United States (US), public policies and corporate decisions have prompted a wave of proposals for new gathering and transmission pipelines in recent years, raising the question: Who bears the burdens associated with the existing pipeline infrastructure in the US? With this in mind, we examined the density of natural gas gathering and transmission pipelines in the US, together with county‐level data on social vulnerability. For the 2,261 US counties containing natural gas pipelines, we found a positive correlation between county‐level pipeline density and an index of social vulnerability. In general, counties with more socially vulnerable populations have significantly higher pipeline densities than counties with less socially vulnerable populations. In particular, counties in the top quartile of social vulnerability tend to have pipeline densities that are much higher than pipeline densities for counties in the bottom quartile of social vulnerability. The difference grows larger for counties at the upper extremes of pipeline density within each group. We discuss some of the implications for the indigenous communities and others affected by recent expansions of oil and gas infrastructure. We offer recommendations aimed at improving ways in which decision‐makers identify and address the societal impacts and environmental justice implications of midstream pipeline infrastructure

Community-Scale Climate Adaptation: Evidence from Ebonyi State, Nigeria

Key Findings -Communities in Nigeria are already organizing for climate adaptation -Most adaptation efforts are either structural or social -Though adaptation is occurring, more transformative interventions may be needed in future

A Resilience Approach to Community-Scale Climate Adaptation

Climate risk is expected to impact rural communities in West Africa in multiple ways. However, most current research addresses resilience and climate adaptation at either the national or the household scale; very little is known about community-scale interventions. We interviewed 934 community members in six communities in southeastern Nigeria about sources of climate risk and community-based actions for climate change adaptation. We found these communities contained multiple active and engaged groups that have implemented a wide range of interventions to reduce climate risk, most of which are seen as effective by community members. Flooding was the most common form of risk in this region, but drought, windstorms, and irregular rainy seasons are also frequent, implying that effective climate adaptation will have to be sensitive to multiple types of risk. Structural interventions (constructing roads, bridges, etc.) were the most common type of intervention, suggesting that communities are capable of marshalling considerable organizational and human power for adaptation efforts, even in the absence of external assistance. Efforts to boost community resilience and adaptation to climate change would benefit from first understanding what community actions are currently underway, and working with the groups implementing these actions to support and extend them