Special Issue: Cumulative Impacts and Government Decision-Making

Cumulative impacts – the total burden of multiple stressors and their effects on health, well-being, quality of life, and equity outcomes – is the “holy grail” of environmental justice. For decades, environmental justice leaders have organized and advocated to challenge the inequitable concentration of these environmental, health and social burdens in people of color, low-income and indigenous communities, often as the result of structural racism. Historically, however, environmental policy in the United States has not accounted for disproportionate and cumulative impacts, focusing instead on more limited risk assessments. 

This is beginning to change. Despite the many systemic challenges associated with addressing cumulative impacts, the contours of how this issue will influence government decision-making – and the relationship between public agencies and communities with environmental justice concerns – are beginning to emerge. Tremendous activity is taking place in this cutting-edge area of environmental law, policy, science, and practice. Notably, President Biden’s Executive Order 14096 on environmental justice sets out a framework for action that is centered on relationship between the legacy of racism, cumulative impacts, and climate change.  More than a quarter of all the states in the nation have passed cumulative impacts legislation. We are beginning to understand what may work in this truly challenging and transformative area and why so – from methods to evaluate the distribution of stressors, to policies and whole-of-government approaches that better protect communities from harm, to new models of working toward collaborative solutions with the communities and people in them who are most affected. 

This issue will cover key developments in legal authorities, assessment, and decision-making approaches that operationalize and integrate cumulative impacts. It seeks to lift up the lived reality of overburdened communities and highlight ways to enhance community voice and power to prevent or minimize burdens while maximizing community benefits. The issue will provide insight into strategies that are driving institutional and community-level changes in response to the urgent need for action on cumulative impacts – to protect the environment, promote health, and advance environmental justice. 

Suggested topic areas include, among others:
Legal authorities

• Importance of equity mandate for achieving actionable cumulative impacts analysis 
• Considering cumulative impacts in existing federal statutory authorities (NEPA, CAA, CWA, SWDA, TSCA, RCRA, CERCLA, etc.)
• Considering cumulative impacts in existing authorities at the state and local levels
• Analysis of state and local legislative developments regarding cumulative impacts

Decision-Making 

• Role of cumulative impacts assessment in prioritizing resources and program attention
• Analysis of key developments in permitting
• How cumulative impacts assessment can be incorporated into EPA’s rulemaking process
• Considering cumulative impacts in land use planning, zoning and transportation 
• Examples of operationalizing whole-of-government approaches to address cumulative impacts  

Community Co-Governance

• Incorporating community reality and experience into government decision-making
• Co-governance with EJ communities in process design and implementation
• Best practices for community outreach, education and meaningful engagement on cumulative impacts issues

Cumulative Impacts Methodologies

• Emerging methodologies for cumulative impacts analysis and assessment
• Use of mixed methods, particularly in a regulatory context
• Evolution of health impacts assessment to incorporate cumulative impacts 
• Cumulative impacts assessment methods that go beyond single scores
• Expanding the toolkit beyond traditional risk assessment: the emergence of cumulative impacts assessment as an alternative

Emerging Areas of Research

• Understanding the relationship between cumulative and disproportionate impacts
• The relationship between the legacy of racism and other structural inequities to cumulative impacts and disproportionality
• Leveraging the science of differential burden, health disparities, and social determinants of health
• Cumulative impacts and intergenerational/epigenetic change
• Considering social vulnerability in risk assessment
• Co-generation of knowledge and expertise
• Climate justice and cumulative impacts

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Submission Process
Each submission will initially be screened through an Abstract review through which author teams will provide a working Abstract of the proposed article and indicate in which of the above categories or themes their article best fits.  Abstracts should be 250-500 words in length.  All abstracts must be accompanied by a positionality statement (title and affiliation) for each author.  Abstracts will be evaluated based on how well they advance the law, science, policy, and practice regarding the areas delineated above and how well they reflect the need for action.  Following evaluation of the Abstract, the guest editors will invite selected authorship teams to submit their manuscripts for peer review and full consideration for inclusion in the Special Issue.  

Submit Abstracts for review by: July 30, 2024

Abstracts must be submitted via email by July 30, 2024 to: ej.journal.cumulative.impacts@gmail.com

Submissions being solicited
The editors encourage submissions of original research articles, practice briefs, case studies, community perspectives, storytelling, etc. Manuscripts written by researchers, government practitioners, academics, community representatives, collaborative multi-group perspectives, as well as those that center government policy and decision-making, action research, community science, and other participatory research and action approaches are prioritized. Each submission must be accompanied by a positionality statement for all authors. 

Upon Abstract review, upload your paper using the manuscript category:

Special Issue: Cumulative Impacts
 
Manuscript Submission Deadline: December 13, 2024

Visit the journal website to view more information for authors including manuscript guidelines, information on available author services, and publication costs.