A Collaborative Model for Environmental Research and Education: Linking Analysis with Community Issues and Perspectives

Further reinforcing this dominant framing of environmental research as technical subject matter and its divorce from everyday life experiences, is the fact that industry and government, but not communities or workers, tend to be the clients for this research. The absence of community or workplace perspectives with respect to specific research questions and potential outcomes of such research establishes crucial distances between those who impact, those who analyze, and those who experience environmental problems. This distancing effect can also be found in the social sciences where much of the focus of research is on the environmental policy process itself rather than policy stakeholders and actors and the issues they raise. A new model of collaborative research based on a new type of university-community relationship is needed to overcome that type of environmental research divide.

Efforts to construct such a collaborative model for research have been located in a number of different forums, although most such programs to date are found at the margins or outside the university, even in relation to the growing number of environmental studies programs. The Washington D.C.-based Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC), a non-profit center seeking to link researchers with race and poverty activists, has represented one such effort. PRRAC, by providing seed grants for collaborative research and by stimulating debate through conferences and in the pages of its newsletter regarding the content of such collaboration, provides important linkages in such areas as housing policy, education, and social welfare (Hartman 1992). One conference organized by PRRAC board member Gary Delgado's Oakland, California Applied Research Center, demonstrated both the cultural distance between researcher and community activist over both what questions to explore and who gets to define such questions, as well as the exciting potential in establishing a new kind of research agenda (Delgado 1993; Nyden 1993a). Among university-related participants at this conference were researchers from the Chicago-based Policy Research Action Group (PRAG), which has developed perhaps the most extensive program in university-community collaborative research. Funded in part through the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, PRAG projects have included the development of a collaborative research network consisting of researchers from Loyola University, DePaul University and the University of Illinois at Chicago and activists from as many as 15 community-based organizations, ranging from the Oak Park Regional Housing Center to the Calumet project for Industrial Jobs; an internship program providing stipends for students to work with community organizations; an apprenticeship program for community activists learning new research skills; and a research grants program for specific collaborative research projects on such subjects as community business development in inner city neighborhoods to a study of employment trends and opportunities for black and Hispanic workers in the suburban service sector (Nyden 1993b; PRAG 1993).

Despite the interest in environmental research questions in all three of the programs described above, collaboration in this area has been more limited. PRRAC funded projects for the period ending October 1992, for example, included as many as 28 separate projects identified under the category of housing, but only three that could be characterized as "environmental" but which were listed under a broader "health" category (PPRAC 1992). Similarly, Gary Delgado of the Applied Research Center has argued that most environmental research has tended to be divorced from any community focus, with environmental questions framed more abstractly, separate from their daily life context where community interest could be elaborated (Delgado 1993). (Such a concern, of course, is magnified once the significant costs involved in such research, defined as technical or science-based, are taken into account, in contrast to the far lower budgets associated with the community collaborative research model. Those differences, in turn, suggest very different funding strategies and funding sponsors.) Even the PRAG program, which has actively sought to incorporate environmental concerns as part of its collaborative efforts, has tended to develop its environmental research as an extension of other social research; for example, community economic development issues are related to liability factors associated with contaminated sites (PRAG 1993).

The difficulties in establishing a collaborative research model in the environmental area can be traced in part to how environmental questions -- and associated social movements and public policies -- have been framed and defined, both historically and in contemporary settings. In my recent study of the evolution of the environmental movement and environmental policy systems, I argue that, historically, such movements and policies have been narrowly associated with efforts to effectively manage and/or protect the natural environment as divorced from its urban and industrial settings and influences. In contrast to this approach, I have sought to situate a vital and powerful tradition of environmental concern and advocacy directly related to everyday life experiences shaped by those urban and industrial settings (Gottlieb 1993). Such an approach contrasts a mainstream tradition of environmentalism which today can be situated as an advocate for and watchdog over the elaborate environmental policy process established primarily during the past 25 years, and an alternative environmentalism embedded in communities and issues of everyday life experience. It is this latter movement that is associated today with the new advocacy around environmental justice (addressing issues of equity and discrimination as well as class, race, and gender concerns) (Hofrichter 1993) and pollution prevention and toxics use reduction (raising the possibilities of new forms of urban and industrial design of products, processes, land uses, and infrastructure) (Gottlieb N.d.). Both environmental justice and pollution prevention movements and advocacy have the most direct potential to influence a collaborative model for environmental research. Those influences are just now beginning to be felt within environmental studies and environmental policy programs at a handful of universities around the country, including the research and education work I have been associated with at UCLA.

Recent collaborative research and education efforts at UCLA have specifically included the Community-University Forum (CUF) housed within the new School of Public Policy, which was itself established in July 1994. CUF research is most directly focused on the areas of environmental risk and justice, pollution prevention and industrial restructuring, and community and economic development. Forum participants, also associated with the UCLA Pollution Prevention Education and Research Center and the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, have begun to pursue a range of projects based on a collaborative research model that can link environmental researchers and community actors. Some of these projects are described below:

Project 1 - Toxic Cleaning Products Used in Janitorial Service Work

This project entails a series of case studies that seek to document the hazardous constituents in cleaning products used by janitorial service employees in commercial establishments and the opportunities for employee input and access to information about such products and the introduction of less hazardous cleaners. Case studies to date have included cleaning products used by the cities of Santa Monica and West Hollywood and by UCLA, with a prospective case study of cleaning products used at Disneyland. The case studies seek to analyze how employee input regarding the use of such products and possible replacement alternatives represent a different, more inclusive form of risk analysis and pollution prevention-based product or process changes on the job.

Project 2 - Cleaner Drycleaning by Reducing Toxic Chemical Use

This project involves a detailed analysis of the issues associated with the use of perchloroethylene in the drycleaning industry in Chicago and Los Angeles and the opportunities and barriers for switching to a non-toxic cleaning process. The project includes an analysis of the structure of the drycleaning industry, a comprehensive survey of drycleaners in the two regions and their choice of cleaning technologies, and an examination of the potential for community-industry collaboration in developing incentives for less toxic production choices. The project in Los Angeles is specifically exploring the potential for input and participation by Korean community groups (70% of the drycleaners in L.A. are Korean-owned) in developing demonstration projects based on this model, while also addressing the Korean cleaners deep seated mistrust of government regulation governing the use of chemicals in the industry.

Project 3 - Semiconductor Industry Restructuring

This project explores the recent restructuring in the semiconductor industry, including the shift towards "fablessness"; that is, the relocation of wafer fabrication units (often the most toxic-generating production units within semiconductor manufacturing) outside of central industry locations such as Silicon Valley. The restructuring is examined for both its environmental policymaking implications, community and economic development consequences, and the need for community linkages between most affected by such restructuring.

Project 4 - Urban Food Policy and Food Security

This project is an outgrowth of a study on the U.S. food system ("Seeds of Change: Strategies for Food Security in the Inner City," see Ashman et al. 1993) released in June 1993 by Community-University Forum participants. This study and subsequent research work has conceptually identified community food security (defined as access and availability to a culturally acceptable and nutritionally adequate diet for community residents) as an overarching framework for policy changes at both the inner city, regional, national, and global levels. The project also addresses the links between environmental questions associated with the food system (e.g., use of agricultural industrial chemicals; food processing issues; land use and transportation questions; etc.) to issues of hunger (food insecurity) and community and economic development, particularly within inner city neighborhoods.

Project 5 - Risk & Justice: Designing Alternatives to Comparative Risk

This project stems from the involvement of CUF participants in the Environmental Justice Committee of the California Comparative Risk Project. The Environmental Justice Committee was itself a collaboration between academics and activists. EPA-sponsored state comparative risk projects have sought to establish a model for ranking and comparing environmental risks. This process has been sharply criticized by community groups for its failure to address multiple risks in particular communities and for its failure to account for how such risks are experienced in any evaluative process. The Environmental Justice Committee produced a report that linked environmental justice, pollution prevention, and public participation considerations as part of the critique of comparative risk. The Environmental Justice Committee's findings were in turn significantly adopted by the California project.

Project 6 - A Collaborative Research Forum

This project involves efforts to develop an ongoing focus for community collaborative research and policy work in the environmental area, identifying research needs in the areas of environmental justice, pollution prevention, and community and economic development. The Forum would involve an annual exchange in a conference format of researchers, policymakers and community actors, sharing research and activity concerns, and identifying potential subjects for collaborative research and education efforts. The Forum will also seek to identify an environmental participant in the UCLA Department of Urban Planning's Community Scholars program, which provides for a one-year education and research program joining eight community activists with eight graduate students in course work and a collective research project.

Each of the UCLA projects described above requires a degree of collaboration in order to accomplish the kind of research proposed. The "Toxic Cleaning Products" project, for example, is contingent upon the active participation of the janitors in identifying risks and evaluating alternative products, and, ultimately, in establishing an inclusive "stakeholder" model in pollution prevention decision-making. The drycleaning study, similarly, though structured around evaluations of industry structure, chemical use, and technological alternatives, requires an understanding of the social and cultural context in how the industry has evolved, including chemical use, choice of technology, and response to government regulation. The involvement of both the Korean community groups and Korean drycleaning trade association have been essential to the research process itself. Equivalent relationships involving community or workplace participants have been essential to the other projects described as well, while the concept of the Research Agenda Forum is itself contingent on a collaborative model.

In sum, community collaborative research not only represents a new approach for university researchers in the environmental area, but a reexamination of the research process itself, part of the dynamic of change taking place within the world of environmental policy and its associated social movements.

REFERENCES

Ashman, Linda et al. 1993. "Seeds of Change: Strategies for Food Security in the Inner City." UCLA Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning, June.

Delgado, Gary, personal communication, 1993. Gardner, Andrea. 1994. "Safe Cleaning Products for Janitorial Service Work." UCLA Pollution Prevention Education and Research Center, July.

Gottlieb, Robert. 1993. Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.

Gottlieb, Robert, ed. N.d. Reducing Toxics: A New Approach to Policy and Industry Decision-Making. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. Forthcoming.

Hartman, Chester. 1992. "The Poverty and Race Research and Action Council." Newsletter of PEGS, the Committee on the Political Economy of the Good Society, Vol.2, No.3, Fall.

Hofrichter, Richard, ed. 1993. Toxic Struggles: The Theory and Practice of Environmental Justice. Philadelphia, PA: New Society Publishers.

Nyden, Philip, personal communication, 1993a.

Nyden, Philip et al. 1993b. "Diversity and Opportunity in a Local Economy: Community Business in Edgewater and Uptown." Loyola University of Chicago, April.

Nyden, Philip and Wim Wiewel. 1992. "Collaborative Research: Harnessing the Tensions Between Researcher and Practitioner." The American Sociologist 23(4):43-55. Policy Research Action Group. 1993. The Policy Research Action Group. Chicago.

Poverty & Race Research Action Council. 1992. "Research Grants Approved." Poverty & Race Research Action Council, October.

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