About

Camila Alvarez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at UC San Diego, specializing in environmental sociology, environmental justice, and critical quantitative methodology. Her research focuses on issues related to environmental challenges and social justice, employing quantitative methods to analyze and address these topics. She has been recognized for her contributions to understanding the social dimensions of environmental issues and integrating critical approaches within quantitative research frameworks.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Medicine
• Geography
• Gender studies
• Environmental health
• Demography
• Economics
• Law
• Economic growth
• Mathematics
• Statistics

Selected publications

• Intersectional Climate Action

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2025-04-22

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Climate action must address the inequities faced by historically marginalized communities that are disproportionately affected by climate change, extreme weather events, and displacement. As such, using intersectionality as an analytic tool reveals the overlapping social identities and power structures that shape capacities for resistance and forms of climate action. This chapter reviews the following: (1) a brief history of intersectional thought; (2) definitions of climate risk, vulnerability, and resilience; (3) scales of power (macro to micro); and (4) case studies of climate action resistance. Environmental and climate justice scholars center multiple axes of inequality to illuminate how race, class, gender, Indigeneity, ability, nationality, and other facets of difference intersect to shape resistance to injustice. Intersectional approaches recognize that oppressions are linked, and that justice cannot be achieved until those most marginalized are centered as indispensable. The chapter concludes with encouragement toward intersectional climate action.

  PublisherDOI

• Exposure to Environmental Chemicals and Infertility Among US Reproductive-Aged Women

  International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · 2024-11-21 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Environmental chemical exposure has been rising over the past few decades but its impact on fertility remains uncertain. We assessed exposures to 23 common chemicals across a range of sociodemographic characteristics and their relationship with self-reported infertility. The analytic sample was non-pregnant women aged 18-49 years without a history of hysterectomy or oophorectomy (n = 2579) from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2013-2016). Environmental chemical exposure was assessed with biospecimens and dichotomized as high and low levels of exposure based on the median. Logistic regression models estimated the adjusted odds ratio (aOR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the association between high levels of exposure and infertility, adjusted for age, race, education level, family income, and smoking status. We observed associations between infertility and cadmium [aOR: 1.88; 95% CI: 1.02-3.47] and arsenic [aOR: 1.88 (1.05-3.36)]. Two pesticides hexachlorobenzene [OR: 2.04 (1.05-3.98)] and oxychlordane [OR: 2.04 (1.12-3.69)] were also associated with infertility in unadjusted analyses. There were negative associations with two Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances with n-perfluorooctanoic acid [aOR: 0.51: (0.30-0.86)] and n-perfluorooctane sulfonic acid [aOR: 0.51: (0.26-0.97). Specific chemicals may contribute to infertility risk, highlighting the need for targeted public health strategies to mitigate exposure.

  PublisherDOI

• A regional approach to militarized riskscapes: An environmental justice analysis of military proximity and air pollution in United States Environmental Protection Agency's regions

  Sociology Compass · 2023-02-22 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Recent advances in sociological appreciation of risk have culminated in the concept of riskscapes, which describe how the social, political, biophysical, and technological drivers of risk are embedded within different spaces in ways that can reinforce systemic inequities. The U.S. military has long been recognized as an important structural and institutional contributor to environmental problems and therefore potentially riskscapes. However, the regional environmental injustice consequences of military presence have received little attention. To address this need, here we construct a regionalized military riskscapes modeling strategy that focuses on understanding environmental riskscapes across regional contexts. Using multilevel models with random intercepts, our exploratory analysis reveals differences in racial and ethnic environmental health exposure associated with proximity to military facilities across the 10 administrative regions used by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Furthermore, we find that the relative contributions to local air pollution profiles arising from military and non‐military sources likely differ by region, as do consequent environmental justice concerns. For example, in the Midwest, Central Mountain, and West/Southwest regions neighborhoods with more Latinx residents experience intensified air pollution inequalities associated with proximity to military installations. Neighborhoods with more Black residents in the Midwest reported greater environmental health risk from air toxics associated with nearby military facilities. These results underscore the usefulness of viewing the environmental consequences of domestic military facilities and their activities as regionally specific and spatially contingent. We further suggest that scholars studying environmental inequalities relating to military and other sources of pollution should consider how regional processes contextualize the existence and persistence of environmental injustice.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Temporal trends in sociodemographic composition and land development within U.S. fenceline communities surrounding hazardous industrial facilities: 2001–2019

  Environmental Research Letters · 2023-10-26 · 9 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Unintended releases from industrial facilities can expose fenceline communities to hazardous substances, and distance between facilities and nearby residential development can play a role in preventing exposures. Here, we assess trends in fenceline community sociodemographic characteristics, land development, and the association between the two using sociodemographic data for census tracts ( n = 34 068) surrounding 2457 petroleum refining and chemical manufacturing facilities between 2001 and 2019. We find a higher median growth in percentage of Latinx populations among fenceline communities compared to neighboring communities with no industrial facilities. The increase in the median percentage of Latinx populations within fenceline communities was six times higher than for White populations overall (+6 and +1 percentage points, respectively). Though the percentage of the Black populations did not change within fenceline communities over this period, we find a minor sustained higher percentage of Black residents within fenceline communities relative to neighboring communities (20% versus 19%, respectively). Employing a spatial autoregressive model with autoregressive disturbances, we find that an increase in community percentage Latinx population is associated with a decrease in the rate of land development. Comparing fenceline and neighboring communities, we conclude that Black and Latinx populations are disproportionately located near industrial facilities, potentially contributing to inequitable exposure to unintended chemical releases. Our work lends support to the value of considering of sociodemographic composition of fenceline communities when evaluating industrial facility hazards.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Author response for "Temporal trends in sociodemographic composition and land development within U.S. fenceline communities surrounding hazardous industrial facilities: 2001–2019"

  2023-09-07

  peer-review
  PublisherDOI

• Structural Racism as an Environmental Justice Issue: A Multilevel Analysis of the State Racism Index and Environmental Health Risk from Air Toxics

  Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities · 2022 · 63 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Environmental health

  Communities of color and poor neighborhoods are disproportionately exposed to more air pollution-a pattern known as environmental injustices. Environmental injustices increase susceptibility to negative health outcomes among residents in affected communities. The structural mechanisms distributing environmental injustices in the USA are understudied. Bridging the literatures on the social determinants of health and environmental justice highlights the importance of the environmental conditions for health inequalities and sheds light on the institutional mechanisms driving environmental health inequalities. Employing a critical quantitative methods approach, we use data from an innovative state racism index to argue that systematic racialized inequalities in areas from housing to employment increase outdoor airborne environmental health risks in neighborhoods. Results of a multilevel analysis in over 65,000 census tracts demonstrate that tracts in states with higher levels of state-level Black-white gaps report greater environmental health risk exposure to outdoor air pollution. The state racism index explains four-to-ten percent of county- and state-level variation in carcinogenic risk and noncarcinogenic respiratory system risks from outdoor air toxics. The findings suggest that the disproportional exposure across communities is tied to systematic inequalities in environmental regulation and other structural elements such as housing and incarceration. Structural racism is an environmental justice issue.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Analyzing the Military’s Role in Producing Air Toxics Disparities in the United States: A Critical Environmental Justice Approach

  Social Problems · 2022-02-28 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The negative environmental, health, and social effects arising from U.S. military action in communities both domestically and abroad suggest that the military represents an understudied institutional source of environmental injustice. Moreover, scholars and activists have long argued that the state is an active or a tacit contributor to environmental inequality, thus providing an opportunity to link U.S. military activity with approaches to the state developed under critical environmental justice. We build on these literatures to ask: Does the presence of domestic military facilities significantly increase carcinogenic risks from air toxics? And do communities of color face additional military-associated carcinogenic risks? Multilevel analyses reveal that locales in closer proximity to a military facility and those exposed to greater military technological intensity, independent of each other, experience significantly higher carcinogenic risk from air toxics. We find that proximity to military facilities tends to intensify racial and ethnic environmental inequalities in exposure to airborne toxics, but in different ways for Latinx and Black populations. These results highlight the role of the state in perpetuating racial and environmental expendability as reflected in critical environmental justice and represent an important expansion of nationwide environmental justice studies on contributors to environmental inequality.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Intersectional inequalities in industrial air toxics exposure in the United States

  Health & Place · 2022 · 35 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Sociology

  Environmental justice and health research demonstrate unequal exposure to environmental hazards at the neighborhood-level. We use an innovative method-eco-intersectional multilevel (EIM) modeling-to assess intersectional inequalities in industrial air toxics exposure across US census tracts in 2014. Results reveal stark inequalities in exposure across analytic strata, with a 45-fold difference in average exposure between most and least exposed. Low SES, multiply marginalized (high % Black, high % female-headed households) urban communities experienced highest risk. These inequalities were not described by additive effects alone, necessitating the use of interaction terms. We advance a critical intersectional approach to evaluating environmental injustices.

  PublisherDOI

• Military as an Institution and Militarization as a Process: Theorizing the U.S. Military and Environmental Justice

  Environmental Justice · 2021-08-17 · 9 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  State reactions to Black Lives Matter demonstrations include heavily militarized domestic police responses and the deployment of the National Guard. These events place emphasis on understanding the U.S. military as an institution and militarization as a process; as well as their corresponding environmental justice (EJ) consequences. In this study, we integrate critical race theory, decolonial thought, carceral geography, and military and environmental sociology to theorize the military and militarization as potentially important and overlooked sources of environmental injustice that ought to concern scholars and activists. We use an interdisciplinary framework to highlight: the historical role of the military in the creation and maintenance of racialized and colonized difference, how the U.S. militarization is connected to localized and national overpolicing and environmental harm, and how the environmental risks of warfare may be transferred from combat zones to civilian EJ communities and sites, both domestically and abroad. We stress that the production of colonized and racialized space—and the criminalization of Black, Indigenous, and other bodies of color—happens within the context of militarization as a process and the U.S. military as an institution so future critical analysis should look to these levels. Our goal is to urge scholars and activists to recognize the military as a potentially significant contributor to environmental injustice and outline avenues for future study.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• DE LA NECESIDAD A LA ORGANIZACIÓN

  Repositorio Digital Institucional de la Universidad de Buenos Aires (Universidad de Buenos Aires) · 2020-01-01

  article

  El presente trabajo se propone reflexionar sobre las distintas herramientas, instrumentos y métodos elaborados a lo largo del trabajo territorial del TLPS, donde el punto de partida es la necesidad de conocer, para luego transformar, desde un abordaje multidisciplinar y colectivo. Desarrollamos como estrategia territorial, la visibilización, comprensión y determinación de variables a considerar en las intervenciones de mejoramiento integral del hábitat. Expondremos a continuación el proceso de trabajo en territorio con acuerdos realizados con vecines y organizaciones sociales, que han ido desarrollando estudiantes y docentes del Taller Libre de Proyecto Social (en adelante TLPS) a lo largo de los años 2018-2019, en los Barrios 14 de febrero y Las Lilas, situados en la localidad de Longchamps, partido de Almirante Brown, provincia de Buenos Aires. El Barrio 14 de febrero se conformó como un asentamiento urbano de 20 manzanas producto de un proceso de toma de tierras, del que fueron parte distintas organizaciones sociales y un grupo de 50 vecinos y vecinas en su conformación original. Ambos barrios presentan diferentes problemáticas en materia de accesibilidad, infraestructura, equipamiento urbano, y regularización dominial. A partir del año 2018 la organización social Frente de Organizaciones en Lucha (en adelante FOL) nos convoca, con motivo del décimo aniversario del surgimiento del barrio. Esto nos permitió construir un vínculo habilitante con la organización y las familias, y consensuar un acuerdo de trabajo con el objetivo  en primer lugar de, conocer el territorio, sus habitantes y sus problemáticas; en segundo lugar, trabajar de manera conjunta en la recuperación, sistematización y divulgación de experiencias que aporten a la construcción colectiva de la memoria e identidad del barrio y trabajar de manera participativa la comprensión del valor del hábitat autoconstruido. Para llevar adelante estas prácticas conjuntas, trabajamos con herramientas tales como relevamientos territoriales, registros gráficos y audiovisuales, observación participante, investigación histórica, entrevistas y recorridos. Junto con el desarrollo de metodologías participativas: mapeos infográficos colectivos, líneas de tiempo y jornadas comunitarias. También se elaboraron herramientas gráficas y audiovisuales de difusión y convocatoria. A lo largo de esta ponencia nos proponemos exponer las distintas herramientas, instrumentos y metodologías que elaboramos colectivamente y situados. Desde un territorio particular, con su historia y contexto, sus habitantes, y con las distintas organizaciones que se entrelazan allí aportando a los procesos de construcción. Para poder aportar metodologías y herramientas de construcción conjunta, que respondan a necesidades y al mejoramiento integral del barrio.

  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Daniel A. Shtob

  City University of New York

  7 shared

• Nicholas Theis

  University of Oregon

  3 shared

• Veronica Southerland

  Environmental Defense Fund

  3 shared

• Matthew Thomas Clement

  Texas State University

  2 shared

• Clare R. Evans

  University of Oregon

  2 shared

• Susan C. Anenberg

  2 shared

• Julius Alexander McGee

  2 shared

• Anna Calasanti

  University of Notre Dame

  1 shared

Labs

• Camila AlvarezPI

Awards & honors

• Career Enhancement Fellowship funded by the Mellon Foundatio…