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What is Environmental Equity?

Achieving environmental equity for everyone means that no single group or community unfairly shoulders the burden of environmental risk (such as flooding, pollution and the adverse impacts of climate change) or is unfairly denied access to environmental benefits (such as access to nature).  

This survey refers to environmental ‘equity’ and ‘inequity. When referring to inequity we consider this as one of the main drivers of distributional inequalities. Inequality simply refers to the unequal distribution of environmental risks and benefits whereas inequity refers to unfair and avoidable differences between community groups and populations and is often the result of distributional processes including many decades of economic and planning policies. These differences can have far reaching impacts on people’s lives and on their health and wellbeing.

“The route to achieving equity will not be accomplished through treating everyone equally. It will be achieved by treating everyone justly according to their circumstances.”[1]

Why are we conducting this survey?                       

Context

Clean air, water and land, and access to high quality green and blue spaces is important for personal health and wellbeing. However, these necessities are unequally distributed with the result that some people can thrive whilst others are underserved and exposed to poor environmental quality and greater environmental risk. Those least well served are often communities in more deprived areas and/or those with above average rates of people of minority ethnic background. For example, analysis by the Environment Agency and others shows that more socially deprived communities are exposed to higher flood risk, and are more likely to have a waste sites located in their area.

Opportunity

The Government’s national 25 Year Environment Plan recognises such inequity noting that “pollution affects us all but it is the most disadvantaged in society who suffer more. The poorer you are, the more likely it is that your house, and your children’s school and playground are close to highly-polluted roads, and the less likely you are to enjoy ready access to green spaces”. Managing environmental equity is important in delivering on the Plan’s commitment to “ensure an equal distribution of environmental benefits, resources and opportunities”. In a recent speech on environmental equity and climate justice, Environment Agency Chief Executive Sir James Bevan said that the Agency needs to play its part so that “the Environment Agency is for everyone in this country, not just for some.” We will do this by working in, for and with communities and by making all decisions in the context of the relevant social, environmental and economic factors. Our internal Action plan EA2025 and our sustainability strategy, eMission2030, further set out our commitment to contribute to a just and fair society.

Understanding Equity

To help tackle environmental inequalities the Environment Agency wants to embed practices that ensure the work we do in the environment is fair and benefits those who need it most. In order to do this we want to understand how our work impacts on environmental inequity whether we adequately address inequity in our strategies, planning advice, regulation, building and maintenance of assets and in our partnership working; and what actions we need to take as a result. We anticipate that some action could be taken in the near term whilst other actions may take longer or require further resources, or may be beyond our ability to influence altogether. Actions we take must be consistent with our remit as defined by parliament, but we know issues around environmental equity and environmental justice are complex and far reaching, so we are keen to work with others who share our ambitions on social justice and the environment.

The Survey

This consultation is part of an Environment Agency research project intended to help us develop our response to environmental inequity. We wish to hear from you about how you think we are doing on environmental equity, and what more we need to consider. We are seeking views from a wide range of stakeholders in our work, including those in civil society, such as NGOs, campaigning organisations and local community action groups. We particularly wish to hear from people who do not identify as under-represented groups, given their under-representation in the environment sector.  The survey asks about your views on environmental equity and any experience of the Environment Agency, and your views on how we could best address environmental inequity in future. By completing the survey, you will contribute to the shaping of the Environment Agency’s work and our contribution to a more environmentally equal society.

Survey Structure The survey comprises questions that ask you to choose between or rate options, plus some questions that present opportunities to provide fuller written responses. The survey will take about 15 minutes to complete. All information will be treated confidentially, and individuals will not be identified.

This voluntary survey will help the Environment Agency develop a better understanding of how its work impacts on environmental equity. All data is anonymous and any data use will be non-identifiable (we are not collecting any personal data). To disseminate the survey we may use your individual email address. These have been sourced, and will be used, in compliance with GDPR – they will not be shared.

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This project has been granted ethics approval by Staffordshire University Ethics procedures. All data is anonymous.

If you have any questions about this project please contact one of the following:

Prof Jon Fairburn, Staffordshire University

Dr Gordon Mitchell, University of Leeds

Dr Joe Swift, Environment Agency

[1] The Race Matters Institute | Racial Equity Transforms Organizations (viablefuturescenter.org)

A new paper from Prof Jon Fairburn with collegaues in Germany. This is largely a technical paper looking at aspects of a German Index of Mutliple Deprivation. However it also considers general aspects of Deprivation indices and some of the approaches that are possible with the weighting of different components.

The article is open access so available to everyone and has a creative commons licence and has been published in BMJ Open Vol 9 Issue 8.

Link

DOI –
dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-028553

Powerpoint of the presentation. Includes:

1. Contact details for the key people who were introduced on the night.
2. Some key travel and tourism websites including good use of VR
3. Useful apps for staff and students
4. Links to our relevant courses.

Digital or bust

Today, I delivered a Research Conversation (organised by Dr Katy Vigurs) . The theme was pre-research activity and then getting started. I have previously blogged about Boice Advice for New Faculty Members so I adapted some of that and some ideas of my own to develop and issue a challenge to the audience at the end

£10 for 10 days writing challenge rules

• 10 days of writing
• 20 to a maximum of 30 minutes writing per day
• Monday to Friday only
• 8am to 6 pm
• No references needed but you can include them if you want
• ONLY Writing – not find references, etc.
• Email partners to say done each day (optional but you will find it useful)
• Email me the writing when finished to claim the £10

When I have used this approach I have found that I can write 200-250 words per day, so if everything goes to plan they should have roughly a 2000-2500 word draft at the end. Let’s get writing a little and often.

The idea is to change existing behaviour!

I accompanied the challenge with some tips:

• Choose the same time everyday.
• I chose to make it the first thing I did every day, so sitting on the desktop as I logged in was the word document.
• Put a sign on the door DO NOT DISTURB !

Anyway the following signed up to the challenge:

Law – Hannah Jones, Rhona Hammond-Sharlot, Jo Beswick,

Business – Zedias Mutema, Hazel Squire, Ahmad Mlouk, Mark Wordley, Andy Hanks, Carol Southall, Stephen Kelly, Andras Kenez, Carl Cattell, Ganess Dirpal.

Education – Katy Vigurs, Sarah Misra,

I can’t recommend Boice highly enough and we have copies in our library. Quite frankly this book should just be issued to all academics when they start working at any University. Anyone who accepted the challenge will find it useful.

Good luck to all those that accepted the challenge.

£10 for 10 days writing challenge

This is just a flavour of the events that are happening in the region over the next year. Many of these events provide volunteer opportunities for our students, credited work experience and some organisations become partners in our research. The Peak District is the most popular national park in Europe and provides a great laboratory for our  field visits as well. So see the link if you want to know more about our courses in Events Management and Tourism Management or visit us on an Open Day.

• AED Charity Ball at the Moat House Stoke on Trent 16^th April   TEL 01785 472224 being organised by some of our Level 6 Events Management students
• Sandon Hall Spring Fair 23 and 24^th April some more of our students involved here
• Bakewell Food Festival 30^th April and 1^st May
• Tideswell Food Festival 30^th April
• Staffordshire Day is 1^st May – first ever Staffordshire Day, you can download a kit for your own event
• Newcastle under Lyme Jazz and Blues Festival 28-30th May includes Courtney Pine students usually volunteer here
• Hot Air 2016 Stoke Literary Festival 9-11^th June 
• Dovedale Arts Festival 10^th to 12^th June (occurs every two years)
• Iron Man Staffordshire June 12th 
• Eroica Britannia (my favourite festival) is back in Bakewell 17-19^th June
• Ride Staffs Cycling Festival 2^nd and 3^rd July students involved here this year
• James Bay is playing Cannock Chase 8^th July 
• Buxton Fringe festival 6 to 24 July 
• Rewind Festival 5-7th August Capesthorne Hall Cheshire
  80s stars including Marc Almond, Adam Ant, Rick Astley, Go West and many more
• Stone Food and Drink Festival 30 Sept, 1 and 2^nd October lots of our students will be working on this again
• Global Entrepreneurship Week at Staffordshire University 14^th to 20^th November – organisers Prof Jon Fairburn and Clair Hameed

Remember to follow us on twitter @tourismsu 

If you are reading this from abroad here is a guide for how to get to Stoke on Trent and Staffordshire

Curiously, Texas was one of the States that DID NOT permit guns on university campuses. No doubt, after reading my blog post, Texans felt deep shame at their backwardness, and are thus changing the law. This response seems both reasonable and proportionate.

A new Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) 2015 is launched for the first time in 5 years.

The IMD is one of the most important datasets in the UK because:

• Government departments and agencies have used it to allocate billions of pounds of spending.
• Lottery funders, charities and local government all use it to help allocate and evaluate funds.
• Health researchers in particular have found it very useful to look at determinants of health and to link socio-economic data with health outcomes.

So what are the key features of the Index?

• The data is available at a very small spatial scale (the technical term is super output area, usually a population between 1,000 to 1,500 people).
• The entire country is covered (not a sample).
• The index includes a relative ranking (as well as some absolute figures) so we can tell how much better off one area is compared to another. For example we can find the bottom 10% of areas in the country.

Key results show that deprivation moves very slowly. Stoke on Trent as a whole is ranked 13 most deprived local authority out of 326. More detailed analysis show that 30% of the neighbourhoods rank in the 10% most deprived in the country. Furthermore despite billions of pounds going into city regeneration there are still large concentrations of deprivation in Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool.

Data has also been produced for the Local Enterprise Partnerships and a series of summary reports and maps can be found on the link.  

Most of the work on the new IMD has been done by Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion (OCSI) but yours truly as in previous editions was responsible for creating the air quality domain in the IMD.

The IMD in England, Scotland and Wales formed the basis for a lot of the environmental justice work that was done at Staffordshire University over the last decade. This initial work for various UK government agencies lead us on to work in Europe and collaboration with the World Health Organisation. See my staff page for links and more.

In addition, the UK Statistics Authority have now confirmed the Indices have National Statistics status.

If you want to keep updated on any future announcements from DCLG on the Indices, please email Indices.Deprivation@communities.gsi.gov.uk.

General coverage of the IMD on twitter https://twitter.com/indices2015