Archive Tag: Environmental Justice

Members of The Promise Institute for Human Rights, part of the UCLA School of Law, played a large role in developing a new legal definition for ecocide. In part, the new definition includes any, “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused.” Should this definition be accepted by the international community, it could be revolutionary in holding corporate and governmental decision makers personally responsible for damages to the environment.

Read more

UCLA law students participating in the California Environmental Legislation and Policy Clinic, hosted by UCLA Law’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, conducted wildfire research used to inform Senate Bill 63, introduced by Sen. Henry Stern. Through the aggregation of information from various, often conflicting sources, they created a thorough proposal for local-level wildfire prevention.

Read more

A new study (PDF) published by the California State Water Board and supported by UCLA research identifies a risk for failure among a significant portion of the state’s small and medium-sized public water systems. The report is the first comprehensive analysis of how clean water is provided in California, and it estimates how much it would actually cost to deliver safe water to every resident.

Read more

For many Los Angeles residents, the daily commute is frustrating. A project by three UCLA faculty members aims to change that — especially for those who ride to work on two wheels — by creating bicycle “flows” that produce real-time digital art exhibitions throughout the city.

One of the project’s goals is to make cycling to work feel as accessible and safe as other modes of travel, so the professors envision groups, or flows, of cyclists that would be organized by a smartphone app. The app would encourage reluctant or inexperienced cyclists to participate by pointing them toward those flows, suggest routes that are optimized for enjoyability and safety over efficiency or speed, and enable participants to share their experiences.

Read more