The Connection of Power, People, and Place: Evaluating Environmental Equity Content in the 100 Resilient Cities Strategies of Latin America

Abstract

This study explores the frequency and depth of equity content within nine 100 Resilient Cities (100 RC) Latin American resilience plans. The research contributes to previous academic discussions by showing how often and how substantively proposal phase resilience plans from Latin America communicate equity and justice, topics of human identity, and the pursuit of citizen inclusion through resilience proposals. Environmental Justice Theory (EJT) posits people cannot experience a positive relationship with the environment if procedural, geographic, or social inequities prevent them from participating in the environmental decision-making process. To conduct the study, I embedded the framework of EJT into an original analysis instrument to search for and quantify the equity terms within each plan from the sample. Alongside a second plan coder, I reviewed each occurrence of equity vocabulary and thematically coded each substantive instance as exemplative of equity and justice, topics of citizen identity, or inclusion. This combination of quantitative and qualitative coding facilitated analysis of equity patterns across 100 RC’s sample of Latin American strategies and verification of 100 RC’s alignment on strategy content with the organization’s mission statement. The analysis results present a wide variation of content breadth and depth across all plans, apart from the plans’ immense consistent content focused on topics of citizen identity. The implications of the analysis include advocating for increased pairing of substantive equity passages with actionable language and the pursuit of increased consistency of inclusion content within resilience plans.