Right to Pollute Policies and their Epistemological Roots

17 Feb

This project brought together people with knowledges across a variety of policy, organisig in healthcare and the criminal justice system, as well as environmental and climate justice.

Language, is one of the cornerstones to cognition, providing us with the ability to form meaning and theories about the phenomena we experience. Language also allows us to form theories about knowledge itself, specifically how knowledge is defined, created and acquired. This in essence is the realm of epistemology, which is formally defined as "the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion". It is here that the seeds of knowledge supremacy begin, as epistemologies is concerned with discerning what is and isn't knowledge. Intrinsically for supremacy, what is identified and regarded as "knowledge" conveniently helps uphold white european social structures. All other knowledges are discarded as myth, folklore, or untruths.

METHODOLOGY

They participated in a 90 minute Imagination Lab, which was set up as a "call and response", meaning that they would listen to a specific academic excerpt and then relay back their comments. This created a structured but collaborative discussion.

The learnings from the Imagination Lab have now been used to shape and structure a self-learning tool about epistemologies.

UTILITY

This project is for those advocating for environmental and health justice both at a professional and community level.

You can follow the instructions and use it as a self learning tool or do it with a group.

RELATED WORK

Research Library

Systems of Power Working Board

The purpose of this Systems of Power board is to build confidence for community and grassroots led advocacy in health justice issues as they navigate political and governmental systems and their layers of entrenched power.

Environmental Data for Health Justice Working Board

The purpose of the Environmental Data for Health Justice board is to build confidence in how those seeking structural health justice outcomes through research, campaigns, and other forms of advocacy use data as a language to directly address health injustices and develop strategies for health justice.

Right to Pollute Policies and their Epistemological Roots

This project brought together people with knowledges across a variety of policy, organising in healthcare and the criminal justice system, as well as environmental and climate justice.

Principles for Engaging with Traditional Ecological Knowledges in Urban Systems

These are working principles set forth by a group of Indigenous Peoples and Land-Kinned Peoples who gathered in the UK. We see this both as a starting point and an evolving process. These principles are the first iteration, as they interact with more Peoples they will change and evolve.

Envisioning a Healthier Urban Way of Living: Indigenous Sovereignty in Los Angeles and Beyond

Tribal law scholar, Grace Carson writes in the first person about restoring the Indigenous identities and cultures to Los Angeles, where it has been systemically erased.

Two Essays on Non-Western Approaches to Healing

These two essays reflect on non-western healing epistemologies, both as an opportunity for healing and as a response to the harms of the western medical industrial complex.

Planetary Dysregulation, Capitalism, & Healthcare

The intention of this audio project is to discuss the links between systems and imaginations rooted in supremacy, the dysregulation of planetary systems, and the poor health outcomes being experienced by peoples who are racialised and minoritised.

The Mental Distress of Environmental Injustice

What is often missing from the conversation is how environmental hazards, due to being an experience of stress and trauma can lead to mental distress.

The Need to Move from Care to Healing

This report looks at how an ecological healing system can mean that we create pathways for everyday healing rather than waiting for the onset of disease.

Gender, Care, and Equity

The key takeaway is that sex and gender are one way of conceptualising a complex ecosystem made up of multiple cells and microbes which digests, reproduces, thinks, and loves, rather than a universal truth.

Gasworks, Regeneration and Communities

Regeneration is a word used to promote positive benefit from construction and urbanisation. However, construction on old gas works sites without biologically adequate provisions are putting various communities across the UK at high risk for poor health outcomes.

Planetary Dysregulation & Disabled Communities

Disability justice is inextricably linked to environmental justice, and we cannot truly have either one without the other. Disabled people were some of the first to sound the alarm about the damage that seemingly mundane products cause and whose voices need to be heard in the climate space.

Planetary Dysregulation & Indigenous Communities

This project was created to showcase the lived experience of how colonisation has affected Indigenous Peoples in varied and unique ways, ripping some of us from Ancestral Lands, Peoples, and culture whilst others are currently fighting to keep their territories as colonisation continues to evolve.

Planetary Dysregulation & Transgender Communities

Nature can be a site of freedom, and an opportunity to extend our ideas of Transness outside of just humans: what if the ocean is non-binary? What could it mean to relate our genders to elements in nature rather than social norms?

Planetary Dysregulation & the Multi-Ethnic Working Class

This project was created to showcase the lived experience and expertise of the various marginalised, working-class communities being affected by the dysregulation of our planetary systems (climate change).

The Planetary Dysregulation

This report will focus on the pathways that are contributing to planetary dysregulation and their impacts on human health. With the purpose of updating policies that will support the work of environmental and health justice practitioners.

Depression as a Brain-Body Disease and its Links to Air Pollution

Depression is recognised as ‘a major contributor to the overall global burden of disease’ and has both a complex aetiology and symptomatology. It is often framed as a mental health problem, however, the more we understand the more we uncover its physical symptomology.

Health as Ecological

There is a need to understand the history behind framing health as individual choices or behaviours to better appreciate why an ecological health approach looks like and its significance in eradicating health inequities.

Dear ‘Stop the Stink’ Campaign

This open-letter is a list of our thoughts and concerns based from attending a public meeting held between Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council, Public Health England, Staffordshire County Council, the Environment Agency, and the community where Walleys Quarry Landfill site is located.

Covid-19 & its Relationship to Air Pollution

In the context of Covid-19, air pollution presents a particularly insidious hazard given that the disease affects respiratory and cardio-vascular systems.

Obesity, Classism and Racism

There are various problems with targeting a community based on their race, specifically in the context of health. To say “Black community” or “Indigenous Community” is a misnomer as it doesn’t see the person to place relationship, which is essential to understanding health.

Air Pollution, Susceptibility, and COVID-19 Learnings

In any given area, there will be people who are suffering greatly from the consequences of air pollution whilst others may not see any consequences. This phenomenon is worth understanding, rather than dismissing it as not statistically significant.

COVID-19 & Biological Inequality; a London Data Study

This paper looks to approach the inequitable prevalence of COVID-19 from a biological perspective, drawing a clear throughline between human health and urban environments. Specifically, its relation to COVID-19 in BAME communities of London.

Air Pollution & Health in Southall, London

This report is the result of a co-designed and produced community-led scientific study highlighting the susceptibility of the Southall community and the need for stricter air pollution guidelines.

Cities & Systems

Josh Artus

Right to Pollute Policies and their Epistemological Roots

METHODOLOGY

UTILITY

RELATED WORK

Environmental Data for Health Justice Working Board

The Living Indigenous Encyclopaedias For Health Justice