Veronica Herrera, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Urban Planning
Urban Planning and Political Science; Urban Environment Research
5640 Public Affairs
veronicaherrera.luskin.ucla.edu
IoES Faculty Advisor to Graduate Student(s):
Herrera’s research investigates the social, economic, and political dimensions of natural resource management in developing countries, with a focus on Latin American cities. She studies how urban communities compensate for weak states and institutions in their consumption of environmental goods and services, such as drinking water and flood protection, and the negative impacts of environmental degradation, such as toxic exposure to pollution. Her work on water and sanitation services, river remediation, flooding, wetlands governance, and landfill and plastics policy draw on social science theory from political science, urban planning, sociology, and geography. Her research engages broad debates about institutions, collective action, and citizenship.
Her new book, Slow Harms and Citizen Action: Environmental Degradation and Policy Change in Latin American Cities (Oxford Univ Press, 2024) investigates the rise of environmental justice movements to remediate contaminated river basins in the capital regions of Argentina, Colombia, and Peru. In her award winning first book, Water and Politics: Clientelism and Reform in Urban Mexico (Univ. of Michigan Press, 2017), she examines the link between water scarcity in Mexican cities with politicians’ exchange of water services for the vote, and the role of civil society in pressuring for more accountable, and sustainable, local public services. She has written numerous peer-reviewed articles that center the role of citizen participation in natural resource management as well as qualitative methodology, these have appeared in World Development, Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Politics, Latin American Politics and Society, Journal of Development Studies, among others. New projects focus on the relationship between solid waste, plastics, and the climate crisis. Dr. Herrera is increasingly involved in investigating environmental issues in California, as a board member of LAWaterkeepers which promotes the remediation of the LA River and organizing policy research to inform California plastics policy.
Dr. Herrera received a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.A. from Swarthmore College.
Herrera also serves as IoES Advisor to Isabel Sheng (Undergraduate Thesis)