While calls for, and work toward, energy democracy have been entrenched in social movements, and the concept has a burgeoning posture in academic discourse, perhaps the most significant implication for its development is the potential for its implementation at the local governance scale. In order for municipal efforts to be wholly democratic, energy policy must be accessible and responsive to the needs of all communities. This necessitates the convergence of an energy democracy paradigm with principles and practices of both energy justice and just sustainabilities that encourage communities and households' entrée to the energy planning arena, as participants in policy making and with access to renewable innovations. By using a case study as its means of analysis, this paper will evaluate municipal-scale energy programming by considering the prospects of energy democracy on a sub-state scale. In our analysis of Washington, DC's sustainable energy utility, we highlight challenges that limit the potential for energy democracy in the nation's capital, along with practices that lead DC toward energy justice and democracy. We conclude by offering indicators for democratized urban energy planning.
Sustainable food systems education (SFSE) is rapidly advancing to meet the need for developing future professionals who are capable of effective decision-making regarding agriculture, food, nutrition, consumption, and waste in a complex world. Equity, particularly racial equity and its intersectional links with other inequities, should play a central role in efforts to advance SFSE given the harmful social and environmental externalities of food systems and ongoing oppression and systemic inequities such as lack of food access faced by racialized and/or marginalized populations. However, few institutional and intra-disciplinary resources exist on how to engage students in discussion about equity and related topics in SFSE. We present perspectives based on our multi-institutional collaborations to develop and apply pedagogical materials that center equity while building students' skills in systems thinking, critical reflection, and affective engagement. Examples are provided of how to develop undergraduate and graduate sustainable food systems curricula that embrace complexity and recognize the affective layers, or underlying experiences of feelings and emotions, when engaging with topics of equity, justice, oppression, and privilege.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate socioeconomic factors related to COVID-19 mortality rates in New York City (NYC) to understand the connections between socioeconomic variables, including race and income and the disease.
Design/methodology/approach
Using multivariable negative binomial regression, the association between health and mortality disparities related to COVID-19 and socioeconomic conditions is evaluated. The authors obtained ZIP code-level data from the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the US Census Bureau.
Findings
This study concludes that the mortality rate rises in areas with a higher proportion of Hispanic and Black residents, whereas areas with higher income rates had lower mortality associated with COVID-19, among over 18,000 confirmed deaths in NYC.
Originality/value
The paper highlights the impacts of social, racial and wealth disparities in mortality rates. It brings to focus the importance of targeted policies regarding these disparities to alleviate health inequality among marginalized communities and to reduce disease mortality.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.