The Road to Water Justice — From Local to Global

Submission Deadline: All manuscripts should be submitted for consideration by December 31, 2022.

Environmental Justice invites authors to contribute articles that help to address and illuminate barriers and solutions to achieving water justice, particularly as they relate to low-income and communities of color as well as other marginalized populations. Communities worldwide are plagued with environmental injustice in the context of water quality, quantity and access, affordability, sanitation, and hygiene. According to the World Health Organization (2019), by 2025, half of the world’s population will be living in water-distressed areas. Globally, seven hundred eighty-five million people lack a basic drinking water source, including 144 million people who are dependent on surface water. Furthermore, more than 2 billion people use a drinking water source that is contaminated with feces.

Water injustice in the United States takes on many forms including water contamination in drinking water; water unaffordability and water shutoffs; lack of democratic water governance; issues around water privatization and control; inadequate stormwater management systems and practice; urban flooding and disproportionate water-related impacts of climate change; water infrastructure-induced gentrification and displacement; aged and polluting water and wastewater infrastructure in cities; and inadequate, failing, or often non-existent sanitation or municipal sewer service access in small towns and rural areas.

We are interested in research that characterizes and analyzes the factors that shape, produce, and reproduce forms of water justice and injustice in the United States and internationally, as well as research that advances solutions to these urgent and longstanding problems. In recent years, case studies from Flint, Benton Harbor and Detroit, Michigan; Washington, DC; Lowndes County, Alabama; Standing Rock, North and South Dakota; Mebane, North Carolina, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania among other locales have brought attention to both historical and contemporary forms of water injustice as well as community resistance and solutions-focused action through community owned and managed research, participatory approaches, direct action, community-led watershed restoration, rights advocacy, and the fight for access to basic amenities. To help better codify water justice issues and the related research and practice of academic and community scholars in environmental justice literature, we are especially interested in elevating community voices and the needs of environmentally overburdened communities that have historically been excluded from water governance, water management, and the development of water policy.

Submissions being solicited:
All manuscripts should be submitted online by December 31, 2022. All submissions will be subject to a rigorous peer review.  We encourage submissions of original research articles, reviews, policy briefs, practice briefs, case studies (national and international), and perspectives. Manuscripts written by academics, community representatives, joint community and academic collaborators and those that center action research, community science, and other participatory research approaches are particularly desired. Student perspectives as well as international perspectives are also welcomed and encouraged.

Suggested topic areas include, among others:

• Environmental justice and water as a human right
• Water insecurity as environmental injustice  
• Environmental justice and drinking water, wastewater, or stormwater infrastructure
• Specific types of water contamination (such as lead, PFAS, Chromium VI, sewage, multiple contaminants and cumulative risks, etc.) in environmentally overburdened communities
• Green stormwater infrastructure as a driver of green gentrification
• Environmental justice as a tenant of water governance
• Indigenous water rights  
• Informality and water   
• Environmental justice through water affordability, accessibility, and reliability
• The intersection of water justice and health equity
• Community-driven solutions to advance water justice
• Advancing water justice through federal policy
• Community-led watershed restoration
• Water infrastructure planning and authentic community engagement
• Water management, health, and environmental justice
• Water quality and health equity
• Water, climate change, and health disparities
• Water and climate justice
• Community science and community-driven citizen science approaches to improving water quality  
• The environmental injustice of fracking
• Water, environmental justice, and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals

Visit the Journal's website to learn more, read past issues, and view author submission guidelines.

Queries to the editor to propose a topic prior to submission are encouraged. Please contact Journals Manager Jamie Devereaux to initiate your query or for any further details.
 

References
Heaney, C., Wilson, S., Wilson, O., Cooper, J., Bumpass, N., & Snipes, M. (2011). Use of Community-Owned and -Managed Research to Assess the Vulnerability of Water and Sewer Services in Marginalized and Underserved Environmental Justice Communities. Journal of Environmental Health, 74(1), 8–17. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26329247

The United Nations. (2015). Transforming our world: The 2030 agenda for sustainable development. Retrieved from: https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda  

Vanderwarker, A. (2012). Water and environmental justice. In A twenty-first century U.S. water policy.  Christian-Smith, J., Gleick, P. H., Cooley, H., Allen, L. Vanderwarker, A. & Berry, K.A. (2016). A twenty-first century US water policy (pp. 52-89).
World Health Organization. (2019). Drinking-water. Retrieved from: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/drinking-water#:~:text=Globally%2C%20at%20least%202%20billion,000%20diarrhoeal%20deaths%20each%20year

World Health Organization & UNICEF (2017). Progress on drinking-water, sanitation, and hygiene. Retrieved from: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241512893