Episode 35: Disasters and Climate Justice
“These communities were not only living every day with contaminated water before disaster, but when the drought hit another layer of inequality happened—the water that was left in some of their private wells was even more toxic, as you know, because there was less water to dilute some of the pollution that was coming from agricultural water runoff and contamination”
A conversation with Dr. Michael Méndez (UC Irvine) about climate-induced disasters, planning, responses, and justice in the Los Angeles area. Released April 8, 2022.
guests on the show
Dr. Michael Méndez
Dr. Michael Méndez is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Planning and Policy at the University of California, Irvine and a Visiting Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Michael has more than a decade of senior-level experience in the public and private sectors, where he consulted and actively engaged in the policymaking process. In 2021, California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Dr. Méndez to the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, which regulates water quality in a region of 11 million people. Dr. Méndez’s award-winning book, “Climate Change from the Streets,” provides an urgent and timely analysis of the contentious politics of incorporating environmental justice into global climate change policy. In conjunction with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Dr. Méndez’s new work explores the disparate impacts of extreme wildfire events on undocumented Latino/a and Indigenous migrants. Méndez received his PhD from UC Berkeley's Department of City and Regional Planning, where he was a Ford Foundation Fellow and UC Chancellor’s Fellow. He has a graduate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he received the Department of Urban Studies & Planning’s Award for Best Master Thesis and the Excellence in Public Service Award, and two Advocacy Planning Awards from the American Planning Association (APA). Follow Dr. Méndez @MikeMendezPhD
Transcript
Faith Kearns
Welcome to Water Talk. Today we're excited to have the opportunity to talk with Michael Mendez. Dr. Mendez is an assistant professor in the School of Social Ecology at UC Irvine and has spent time doing public policy work as an advisor, senior legislative consultant lobbyist, and as a gubernatorial appointee during the passage of California's internationally acclaimed climate change laws. Most recently, Governor Newsom appointed Dr. Mendes to the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, which regulates water quality in a region of 11 million people. He is the author of the book climate change from the streets.
I'm really excited to talk with Dr. Mendez today, because he's really somebody who's been at the forefront of a lot of efforts related particularly to climate change and disasters, and the two disasters that are really front of mind for a lot of people in California right now, which is drought and wildfire. And he also does this really interesting and much, much needed work. He really is filling a gap that was previously unaddressed by focusing on marginalized communities, including undocumented migrants, and also queer communities, that are often left out of disaster planning and recovery efforts. So I really look forward to talking with Dr. Mendez today, and I'm wondering, Sam and Mallika, what are you looking forward to?
Sam Sandoval
I'm really looking forward to that with Dr. Mendes. He's working on something that I also realized when I started working here, which is the gap that exists when we are doing some conversations related to policy or defining strategies, and how those are discussed in a certain language. And then when you go out and talk to the irrigators in Español or in Spanish, basically, it's a different discourse, they might not be aware of some of the strategies, they might not be aware of some of the decisions. And I think in this case, he's working towards that area. I'm really looking forward to that. And the second career that or third career that he has done, he has a very interesting path.
Mallika Nocco
Sam, I really looking forward to talking with Dr. Mendez as well. I'm excited to spend a day really thinking about climate change as it relates to different groups of people, and environmental justice, and thinking about this context. I'm excited that we're talking to someone from Dr. Mendez’s is discipline, social ecology is really exciting and interesting for me to think about. And then I do think it's super interesting, I guess, to think, a little bit more about just this environmental justice frame. I've just had this on my mind over the past couple of days, just thinking a little bit about how I think that regenerative ag and these types of terms really need to incorporate an environmental justice frame or it's not really regenerative. But yeah, I've been thinking about that over the past few days, and just how I think that any sort of solutions that are thinking about climate are thinking about regenerative agriculture are thinking about green living, green cities, all of this stuff really needs to incorporate a justice frame. So I'm excited to think more about that framing today.
Sam Sandoval
I'm also really looking forward to how Dr. Mendez talks about expertise, how we are labeling the experts, because he's going to communities understanding, collecting the knowledge, collecting the feedback from all the different members of the community, and including that into some of his stories. And once again, reframing this part of changing our mindset in terms of who we think is the expert, and who should we also be listening to. So for that, I think I'm also really looking forward for that part of indoctrination.
Faith Kearns
Without further ado, let's jump right into our conversation with Dr. Michael Mendez. So, Dr. Mendez, welcome! We are so excited to have you on Water Talk. We would love to start by asking a bit more about you and your career path as someone born and raised in California, and who is now working on such critical issues in the state -- climate change, wildfire, and water with a particular focus on marginalized communities. What has your path been like to get to where you are today?
Mike Mendez
Thank you Faith and thank you to the podcast for inviting me, it's such a great opportunity to share with you some of my embodied perspectives as well as of course, my new research that's very policy relevant to the world of water and water justice or environmental justice in general. I think your question goes to the heart of my agenda, both as an academic and as a practitioner, I grew up in the Northeast San Fernando Valley, the area of Los Angeles that faced multiple environmental threats, largely Latino, low income immigrant community. And I grew up having seen individuals resisting environmental inequalities from the siting of toxic landfills and toxic properties to demand cleaner air.
I really saw how they wanted to push forward and understand how these situations originated to develop alternative solutions and imagine more sustainable environmental futures. So that really impacted me seeing that activist organizing and trying to bond change their physical environments or their built environments as well. I really have this embodied perspective of seeing that experiencing that the pollution itself in my body, as well as the general social cultural experience of that, I also have my parents, my mother, in particular, who grew up in the San Fernando Valley, to understand the lack of opportunities in that part of the Northeast San Fernando Valley.
She really wanted me to have other education opportunities. So she bussed me to the West San Fernando Valley, so many are a little bit older may remember the San Fernando Valley sort of being the icon of Americana suburbia. It was the ideal place of what suburbia meant for the rest of the country and sometimes for the rest of the Western world. The Brady Bunch was filmed there, Karate Kid, you know, a lot of those kind of 80s and 90s idea of suburbia comes from that San Fernando Valley. So she bussed me to the West San Fernando Valley, which at the time was primarily white, for better education opportunities. I would wake up every morning, and see the changes in my built environments from corner liquor stores and trash and unpaved streets and sidewalks. And, yes, places like Los Angeles, even still to this day, lack some street lighting and physical infrastructure like streets and sidewalks and I would see those changes as I would ride on that bus every early morning and see how the our physical environments change, large lots greenery, open space parks, and I really started to question why were those changes in amenities and between these two neighborhoods in the same city.
That really led me to urban and environmental planning, to study that both as an undergraduate and getting a master's degree at MIT, and then eventually working in Sacramento for the state assembly member that represented the environmental justice community I worked for. And that's where my career kind of took off and spent a little over 10 years working in public policy around environmental policy and injustice issues.
Then I wanted to have a more of an independent voice to talk about these issues, have a platform to investigate more in depth, some of these inequalities, and also train the next generation of environmental leaders and scholars because as we know, the field of environmental science, policy, and planning is primarily white and male. And we need to have a profession, and an academic setting as well, that is representative of our changing environment here in California and throughout the United States.
Faith Kearns
That leads so nicely into my next question, which is about your book Climate Change from the Streets: How Conflict and Collaboration Strengthen the Environmental Justice Movement, which is focused on climate change and inequality. In your book, you argue that local knowledge, culture, and history must be central to addressing climate change. Can you tell us a bit about how you have reframed climate change action in California in this book?
Mike Mendez
Thank you for highlighting my book. It was published through Yale University Press. And it's important to note that this was the first book that Yale, who has a big environmental publishing program, had ever published a monograph entirely on environmental justice. So that was my first book. And from what I've been told also, I'm the first Latinx scholar unfortunately of that environment, the program. This book is in many aspects -- from highlighting the structural inequalities in our environment to even research as I mentioned -- being the first and yet one of the top university presses really wanted to center and forefront people of color leading on environmental policy. Leadership in particular when we think of California as being a global environmental leader, particularly around climate change.
You often think sort of surfers, people driving hybrids or Tesla's and other individuals that live in primarily white coastal districts, but the reality is that California is very heterogeneous in terms of environmental conditions and our environmental perspectives and worldviews. So like the beginning of this podcast I talked about my embodied experience as very central to who I am as a scholar and practitioner and as an individual, and that has really influenced my outlook on the environment and my relationship or conceptualization of the environment and climate change. I think it's important for all of us, male, or female, or straight or gay, or of another racial group, to understand acknowledge our positionality and the privileges that I have, as a male, even though I'm a person of color, I have a lot of privilege as a male and understand that as well.
Because of these different positionalities, we have different environmental values, different what I call climate change worldviews that influence policy development, or more importantly, how we problematize environmental issues, and how we gather what data, what we measure, what we value, and its corresponding policy solutions.
I really want to hit on that idea of acknowledging these different climate change worldviews, conceptualizations, and environmental values, and how that creates conflicts and schisms that nobody really wants to talk about, at least in the policy making process. It's not just about race and ethnicity, but it's also about culture, and the social institutions, and political and economic settings, that we all occupy and how that all works energetically to create these sort of disparate outcomes in the environment.
Faith Kearns
In addition to working on these climate change issues, you've also spent quite a bit of time luckily for all of us, researching disasters, particularly drought and wildfire. And maybe we can start with drought, as it's sort of this big issue on a lot of Water Talk listeners minds right now. Maybe you can tell us a bit about your work on drought in what are known as disadvantaged communities, and how you're thinking about this as we head into yet another drought year.
Mike Mendez
I should add it I didn't add about the book. I talk about these worldviews and how people are coming from locations that are offered worlds apart. So I center people of color on the in terms of their relation to climate change from the local scale to the statewide scale to the global south or the United Nations and how these individuals are bringing in those environmental disparities perspectives to push state lawmakers, regulators, and other experts in mainstream environmentalism to change their prioritization of environmental issues that often exclude low income people of color.
The very idea of first and hardest hit, centering people of color and environmental justice, climate change issues, Justice 40, all of that we all hear about all come from experiments in complex and implementation projects that environmental justice groups, low income people of color, in particular have pushed, either through oppositional tactics, either lawsuits, oppositional campaign tactics or legislation, to really change how we think of climate change from this global, abstract sort of utilitarianism approach to one focused on local communities first and hardest hit. So that was the book and how I centered through various case studies of these activists moving between different policy scales. That research was about climate mitigation policy, really at the local to the very higher elite policymaking perspective.
My second book project now is titled Undocumented Disasters Invisible Populations to confront the climate change and environmental injustices, the immediate impacts of climate change, because we understand that no longer can we just focus on prospective mitigation, but understanding that the impacts of climate change like wildfires, heat waves, drought, and other extreme weather events are happening sooner than expected, and they're happening more often and are more severe. We need to protect the most socially vulnerable communities from these extreme climactic events or, if you will, climate induced disasters. So the three key impacted communities that I'm looking at here in California are impacts of undocumented migrants, these are migrant individuals that are coming primarily from Mexico, there are both Latino migrants, but there are also Indigenous migrants. I make the strong distinction between Latino and indigenous migrants.
Faith Kearns
Thank you so much, I really look forward to your analysis. And as you mentioned, you've done some work on how wildfires are also affecting undocumented migrant communities. And folks in these communities have really been overlooked in disaster planning, response, and recovery efforts. Can you talk a little bit about your work on wildfires in particular, and how they affect undocumented migrant communities, and how the response could be improved. And I'm curious about your observations about the difference between thinking about drought and wildfire as disasters.
Mike Mendez
Yeah, thank you. I think in all disasters, not just wildfires, undocumented migrants of Latino, Indigenous and other races and ethnicities are rendered invisible in the context of disaster planning. So obviously, these individuals are not invisible. And I put parentheses around invisible because again, these people are rendered invisible in the context of public policies people have been living.
These individuals have been living in these regions throughout California for years, if not decades, and they're a vital and essential part of our society and our economies. But political choices are being made at the city, county, and even state level and of course, at the federal level, that are prioritizing some lives over others. So when the city and county do their disaster planning, they're not reaching out to these communities even though they know that, particularly in agricultural areas, wine country, coastal wine country, people know that they're a vital part of our society. But there's no outreach, there's no mention of them in the disaster plans until most recently, because of COVID.
And a lot of this stems, no matter what disaster, from ideas about the prioritizations of some lives over others, and particular cultural norms about US citizens. And who is considered a worthy disaster victim definitely influences our policymaking process on disaster planning. So that's a general broad idea of like, no matter what disaster planning you're doing, if it's hurricanes in New York, you see a similar impacts in the most recent hurricanes in New York, as well as Texas, these disparate outcomes for this undocumented population.
And in terms of wildfires here, in particular for farmworkers and other outdoor workers, they're often asked to risk their lives to harvest crops, such as wine grapes, and other precious crops, when there is smoke and ash. There's fear particularly within the wine industry, that smoke and ash permeate the skin of the grape, and that will affect the taste and smell of wine, and what they call smoke taint, smoke tainted wine. But these individuals are asked to risk their lives and sometimes to enter into mandatory evacuation zones that are considered hazardous to the general population to harvest and safeguard these crops. But there's little regard to how this smoke and other types of toxics from these wildfires are also not only tainting the wine but also tainting the lungs of these workers. So, we really emphasize “tainted grapes tainted lungs” and the lack of occupational health and safety standards that are put in place for these individuals in terms of N95 respirator masks, other equipment, hazard pay exposure, health screening and, health services.
These are all instances of these individuals, because they're undocumented status, not being given the same type of protections or disaster relief and assistance that US legal residents have. The biggest disparities are the federal government's explicit exclusion of undocumented migrants from disaster aid. We know when a wildfire disaster strikes the homeowner or even a renter, the average payout to a disaster victim could be anywhere between $10,000 to $50,000. So these individuals experiencing power outages, just food, it could be $500 alone, but for undocumented migrant, that's likely making less than $18,000, so it's probably even less, $500 is a lot of money. So just imagine what other expenses you have, from these wildfires, from loss of employment, because either you lose your job because you're not allowed to enter into the mandatory evacuation zone sometimes, or the farm or the house that you work at burns up in flames. So just there's multiple cascading impacts, and these individuals are not allowed to access federal and to some extent, some state funds.
Faith Kearns
Those are such important issues. You know, as somebody who's been working on wildfire in California for a long time, at this point, I definitely see that as such an important issue. And I also appreciate the sort of tainted lungs tainted grapes situation, because we certainly hear a lot about the loss to agricultural commodities. So thank you.
You've also recently been working with another group that really tends to get overlooked in disaster planning, and that is LGBTQIA+ people. So your recent research indicates that queer communities are routinely left out of disaster planning and recovery efforts. Why is that? And what are some of the most important ways that queer people can be better included in these disaster efforts?
Mike Mendez
I think it's another population rendered invisible in disaster planning because of their cultural norms. Because we were looking at undocumented migrants in terms of citizenship, and their sort of value to society, undocumented individuals experienced that, but so too do LGBTQ community, LGBTQ people, which can also be undocumented as well. But in general the LGBTQ community often is not thought about as being a vulnerable population, because often they're thought of the being the primarily white and wealthy. They're not seen as being socially vulnerable.
But you know, research does show that a large majority of about, I think it's about 40%, identify as people of color, and the vulnerability factors that make other people vulnerable to disasters, such as income, health status, and a couple of others -- education and homeless status as well --also show that LGBTQ communities have high rates of homelessness, as well as poverty, and health challenges. So understanding those individuals is really important when you when you have larger populations in the United States, where I think also really thinking about different types of LGBTQ community, individuals, particularly transgender individuals, that often times, there's been documented cases where these individuals have gone to shelters, and are prohibited from going into a women's bathroom and actually been arrested.
We also need a more inclusive approach to the family structure of LGBTQ individuals from you know, lesbian couples, to gay couples, chosen families, individuals; that has changed somewhat in some places, but in more conservative rural areas, that hasn't. So there's been documented cases where lesbians will says they are sisters so they can stay together as a unit. Also, it’s really important to have faith based organizations involved in disaster planning and recent resources and recovery. They're a big part of it. But some of the organizations such as Salvation Army and other local churches have been shown to be anti gay and have positions that are not welcoming of the LGBTQ community. So it's important that governments have a plan for communities to have secular options for shelters and emergency disaster relief services as well. So not entirely depending solely on faith based organizations as collaborators there, they should always be included, but just thinking about individuals that may be uncomfortable with dealing with those organizations.
Mallika Nocco
That's really interesting. And it's just interesting to kind of go back to what you were mentioning about worldviews and values that are in place you know in different organizations, how that can create certain outcomes that may or may not be beneficial for different groups of people. So I think that work that you're doing is so exciting and interesting and important. I have a question related to your new role. So you recently been appointed by Governor Newsom to the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board. As that appointment is just beginning, we were wondering if you could tell us a little bit about the types of things you'll be working on and what you're most excited about related to that appointment?
Mike Mendez
So yes, I've been over a little over a year now. So yes, still felt fairly new. And we just got two more new board members. So the dynamics of the board is changing, we’ve got some great new additions. And I think with existing board members were really a robust and, quite frankly, I think, the most diverse both in terms of gender and race and ethnicity, of all of the regional boards in the state. So we're really proud of that. But we also have, obviously, everyone there is very talented and have a strong sense of expertise that we bring in.
We have a lot of pending issues in which I'm prohibited from talking about, but in general, what I'm really excited about is having that stronger environmental justice lens, and ensuring that when we have difficult discussions that I and my other board members are bringing in, pushing hard, on having an equity lens and trying to look at our board decisions and actions with a different perspective. And that brings a community and even thinking about the community even when the community is not there. Because in the water world, as you know, it's hard to get community based organizations to attend. You know, water is a very complex issue that I sometimes get stumped about the technical jargon and expertise that is needed to understand certain items before us and the extra briefings that I have to do on a technical side. And not to mention the legal procedures, the arcane legal procedures and policies. So I think being able to help mediate some of those issues and jargon and push harder for these issues and have had the staff in particular and other board members think from a different angle about these issues.
Sam Sandoval
Before our final question I do want to say it really resonates with me when you were talking about centering people of color, or any minority group in environmental policies. How that is different when we're thinking drought and people of color and through their jobs, they may have been exposed to more of the severity of the drought rather than others than when a drought happens. Could you elaborate that how you do your work? Or how can we center people of color in in environmental policies?
Mike Mendez
I think that's an excellent question. I think it's building relationships with some of these organizations, some of their community leaders as well, and understanding the context and trying to build over the long-term relationships and not just trying -- particularly academics and other experts – to come in and helicopter in trying to publish. And while I know I can't do this in every instance, I try to co-publish, co-write with some of the many organizations that I work with, particularly on the wildfire issues. I know I won't be able to do it every time. But to the extent that I do have that flexibility, that offer of not just collaborating but also a sense of ownership for they can be invested in the project over the long term as well. And I think that's important in terms of a tenant, and in principle of environmental justice, allowing these communities to speak for themselves.
It's a framework of like, how can we make it more CO production? And that will be used more in the science policy world as the coproduction of knowledge, right? So how can we do that in amore equitable fashion? I think that's one way and it's just really getting to know the community that you're working with, I think it's the work I primarily do is very interpretive, it's very ethnographic. But I tie that up with existing quantitative data from other scholars to bring that ethnographic interpretive approach to the policymaking process. It can't just be data alone, which is very, very important. I'm not discounting that at all. It’s also that lived experience and contextual experience and perspective of communities is also should supplement any data analysis, and therefore, your policy analysis and solutions.
Mallika Nocco
I was just really excited about some of the embodied experiences that you were mentioning with built infrastructure and green infrastructure, growing up as well as just the work that you're doing in that area. And I can't help but notice your zoom background and it's like, you know, this kind of park like, or urban built green infrastructural background, and I'm curious, when I've studied green infrastructure in the past, it's been kind of like there is there's like one ideal infrastructure that is going to serve a particular engineering purpose or design, you know, in the cityscape. I have some experience studying stormwater infrastructure and how we can capture stormwater in this environment, clean it and all of that, but even within that green infrastructural space, there's so many choices that can be made. Even thinking about which plants are chosen or how the design of that built infrastructure is going to look. And I'm curious, how you envision a more equitable built infrastructure in the Los Angeles area, like if there were to be more equity in that green infrastructure space? How would you envision that looking?
Mike Mendez
I really like the movement that's happening around climate adaptation and resilience around infrastructure, and really trying to look at multi benefit multi purpose projects. So one of the organizations that I've worked for, or more likely supported, we haven't done any research projects, but I've supported over the years is Tree People, which is the largest tree organization in California, and probably one of the largest in the country. And their movement really on understanding watershed management practices, creating urban ecological systems that are adapted to our changing environment, but also have multiple benefits , addressing drought addressing water recharge. And the third multi benefit, of course, is recreational and green and open space. And then the fourth, obviously, or the overarching one, would be inequity plans and justice lens is putting this in the communities first. So that shift in infrastructure, and particularly in our sciences, and our environment, our engineering world is tough. One, just trying to do multi benefit projects, and then to trying to argue and trying to prioritize these communities first, but I think there's a movement over the last 10 years or so definitely the last over the last two or three to have more of these multi benefit projects, focusing on infrastructure and communities to low income communities of color.
Sam Sandoval
Thank you, thank you so much, Michael, for all the work that you're doing, also for paying attention who we as a society, sometimes we do not pay attention referring to Latinx and Indigenous migrants, LGBTQTIA and others. We always finish our podcast, asking you how can we support your work? Us and our listeners? How can we help you out on this?
Mike Mendez
I guess the biggest thing is supporting my book, and more importantly, the policy relevant research that I'm doing now on wildfires on undocumented Latino Indigenous migrants. I do a lot of policy briefs to make sure that individuals not from academic world can access it easily and it’s translatable to them.