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No Coastal Justice without Environmental Justice: �A Systematic Literature Review

Amanda D. Stoltz, Olivia M. Won, Emma K. C. Gee, and Katherine L. Seto

University of California, Santa Cruz/University of Delaware Disaster Research Center

MR2025: Mobility, Adaptation, and Wellbeing in a Changing Climate

June 18, 2025

Columbia University, New York City

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The fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies (EPA, 2020)

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Systematic Literature Review Methods

Environmental justice/climate justice
Low income
Minority
People of color/persons of color
Sea-level rise
Coast/coastal
Flood/flooding
Erosion
Storm
King tide
Hurricane/cyclone/typhoon
Tsunami

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Graphic by Vermouth Li

63 percent of the papers said that the most vulnerable populations are the most at risk to coastal hazards using a census data/mapping approach

Flooding: 79%

SLR: 67%

In this image, we see this lowlying area with homes with poor infrastructure, some people living in tents, no one has a car or the ability to evacuate quickly if they need to, and all of these reasons would make them more vulnerable to coastal hazards like flooding.
In contrast, the house on the hill with the two car garage is less vulnerable to coastal hazards. They have insurance.
It’s also less exposed to coastal hazards, because it’s not in the low-lying area where the low-income community is located.
Now this isn’t the situation on every coast, but I see this same picture again and again. Even when I went out to Alaska to work in coastal indigenous villages there was the village in the flood zone and a literal mansion on the hill.

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Which Marginalized Communities did the Literature Focus on?

Low-income communities (85%)
People of color/non-white people (62%)
Elderly people or children (40%)
Women (36%)
Renters (32%)
Rural communities (23%)�

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Vulnerabilities�

Factors that determine a population’s ability to cope with and recover from coastal hazards:

Economic (89%++)
Less representation in government/institutions (40%)
Less info on/access to aid (28%)

�

Photo: Matthew Fortner

Taylor et al. 2022

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Systems of Oppression

Systemic racism (20%)
Segregation or discrimination (20%)
Colonialism (10%)
Sexism (6%)
Slavery (5%)
Neoliberalism (5%)
Genocide (2%)

�

Rachel Stewart and Erika LaTorre Sanchez, 2020

- both historical and current systems of oppression. However, these systems of oppression were only mentioned by name in 42% of the papers.

the systems that impact where people live, including buyouts, resettlement, and land reuse—are intertwined with legacies of racism and colonialism

Segregation or discrimination (20%),

In Austin periodic flooding was a factor in the racial segregation of the city (Maldonado, 2016)

Slavery (5%) which still influences where people live today, such as the decendents of previously enslaved people who make up the Gullah geechee people and who face extreme flood risks

When you don’t say why, the reader can only assumes that the negative impacts on marginalized populations are at best exogenous or at worst the fault of the marginalized populations themselves. This can serve to further victimize these populations and lead to mistrust between researchers and the communities who they study

in other words, you cant write about coastal justice without writing about justice.

Now I know what you might be thinking, how is this literature going to move forward under our current age of government censorship. and I think instead of using EJ as this umbrella term, we start being more specific about what we're actually talking about.

- cultural and historical resources

There’s a racist legacy of land preservation in south Carolina exemplified by the preservation of plantation lands

These words can be used!!

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The Problem/Solution Mismatch

Scholars/practitioners need to learn more

Photo: Jessice Wakeman

Monetary solutions

Transformation

56%

15%

5%

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Recommendations

For researchers:

Describe the oppressive social structures responsible for the injustices
Acknowledge the limitations of using census data
Consider avenues for decreasing vulnerabilities to hazards

For practitioners:

1) Take account of social groups that are likely to be excluded without intentional action

2) Improve the collection and accessibility of data and information related to underserved communities

3) Create spaces for marginalized social groups to participate in and guide decision making procedures

4) Address systemic and structural drivers

that future EJ and CJ research on the coast more comprehensively engages with the oppressive social structures such as systemic racism that have led to the environmental injustices being described, (only 4 papers used historical data as a data source)

YOU CANT WRITE ABOUT COASTAL JUSTICE WITHOUT WRITING ABOUT JUSTICE

that studies acknowledge the limitations of using census data to describe communities in EJ and CJ research, and when possible, go beyond the use of previously created indicators to pursue a deeper understanding of their study population, and

that proposed solutions to injustices on the coast should consider avenues for decreasing specific vulnerabilities to hazards as well as approaches to addressing the structural conditions that increase or maintain these vulnerabilities.

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��As our coastal ecosystems undergo irreversible ecological transformation, so should our social systems. �

Acknowledgments: This research was supported by funds from the UC National Laboratory Fees Research Program of the University of California , the UC Santa Cruz Institute for Social Transformation's Building Belonging and Sprout Grants, and the UCSC Center for Coastal Climate Resilience Seed Grant.

Thank you!