Editor’s Note: This article is the third in a new opinion series by the Anti-Racist Collective, a student organization seeking to “deconstruct racial discrimination on campus.” This series is titled “World Conflicts & Humanitarian Exigency.”
By Anti-Racist Collective President Oumye Toure, Guest Columnist
Introduction
By design, the communities in close proximity to environmental hazards are of color. In fact, race is a more reliable indicator of proximity to pollution than income alone. The Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) uses “science, policy, law, and people power to confront the climate crisis, protect public health, and safeguard nature.” The NRDC defines environmental racism as a form of systemic racism that disproportionately burdens communities of color. Environmental Racism (ER) is achieved through policies and practices “that effectively place low-income and communities of color in close proximity to polluting facilities like power stations, plastics plants, and methane gas pipelines or to infrastructure like major highways.” The Environmental Protection Agency defines Environmental Justice as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”
A Brief History of Environmental Advocacy
In the 1950s, the term Environmental Justice emerged from a study that pointed out the government’s bulk placement of hazardous waste sites in African American communities. Since then, “light has been shed on countless other discriminatory policies and planning, for example, the fact that both governing bodies and private corporations benefit financially from polluting in these vulnerable communities; that policies meant to sustain residents, such as the Safe Drinking Water Act, are underenforced in vulnerable communities; or that vulnerable communities have the least amount of public amenities such as parks or healthy grocery stores.” In the 1970s, we saw the emergence of the American Environmental Justice Movement (EJM) responding to ER advocates against the disproportionate placement of environmental hazards in communities of color when Black activists in Warren County, North Carolina, began organizing and fighting against “toxic dumping” in their community.
In Texas, Dr. Robert Bullard started researching and challenging racist policies that led to 82% of Houston’s trash being dumped in Black communities despite Black residents making up a mere 25% of the population. In 1982, Civil Rights leader Benjamin Chavis coined the term environmental racism, describing it as “racial discrimination in environmental policy-making, the enforcement of regulations and laws, the deliberate targeting of communities of colour for toxic waste facilities, the official sanctioning of the life-threatening presence of poisons and pollutants in our communities, and the history of excluding people of colour from leadership of the ecology movements.” Environmental racism ranges from citizens drinking contaminated groundwater to schools in decaying buildings with asbestos problems. In 2007, Dr. Robert Bullard’s landmark study found “race to be more important than socioeconomic status in predicting the location of the nation’s commercial hazardous waste facilities”. The study discovered Black Americans were five times more likely to have lead poisoning from proximity to waste than Caucasian children; even black Americans making $50-60,000 a year were more likely to live in polluted areas than their white counterparts making $10,000. In the UK, “a government report found that black British children are exposed to up to 30% more air pollution than white children.” A 2018 study by the Environmental Protection Agency scientists discovered “people of color breathe more particulate air pollution on average, a finding that holds across income levels and regions of the US… The findings expand a body of evidence showing that African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and other people of color are disproportionately exposed to a regulated air pollutant called fine particulate matter.” Living in close proximity to pollution leads community members to higher rates of serious health problems, such as cancer, lung conditions, and heart attacks, as well as higher prevalence and severity of asthma, lower birth weights, and greater incidence of high blood pressure. Black Americans “breathe 56 percent more pollution than they produce, and Latinos breathe 63 percent more – while Whites breathe 17 percent less.” Current initiatives in the EJM include the fight for safe water in Flint, Michigan, clean air in South Bronx’s Asthma Alley, oil and gas projects overburdening many U.S. tribal reservations, raw sewage backing up homes in Centreville, Illinois, toxic petrochemical plants in St. James. Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley”, and oil fields in Los Angeles are linked to “dangerous birth outcomes.”
Global Reach and Nature of Environmental Injustice
While this article largely focuses on the domestic implications of ER, it is a wide reaching, global issue. While industrialized nations such as the United States are often the biggest contributors to global pollution (through factories, transportation, consumption habits, etc.), non-industrialized countries are most affected by climate change and toxic waste. Rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and resource scarcity disproportionately affect impoverished populations while the demand for resources in industrialized countries promotes environmentally destructive extraction processes. Mining, deforestation, and unsustainable agriculture often lead to “widespread pollution, ecosystem destruction, and displacement of local communities” and immoral, exploitative practices like contemporary slavery in cobalt mining for mainstream technology companies in the United States. The humanitarian implications of environmental injustice are far reaching, from disproportionate health issues and neglect following natural disaster in domestic communities of color to displacement, severe droughts, and hurricanes abroad.
How to Get Involved
- Find local and national organizations to volunteer with or advocate alongside to champion Environmental Justice initiatives.
- Volunteer with or donate to WE ACT for Environmental Justice, a Harlem based-nonprofit whose mission is to “build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and/or low income residents participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices.”
- Volunteer with Earth Justice, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting for clean air, wildlife preservation, clean energy, and anti-pollution policy through law and political advocacy. Using social media, civil disobedience & marches, to spread awareness about environmental injustice.
- Boycott: “Holding your community and public officials accountable while not being intentional about where you spend your dollars is counterintuitive. Before you shop, investigate the environmental practices of corporations. While many companies have become increasingly transparent about their practices, deliberate environmental harm in vulnerable communities for economic gain is sadly commonplace. Instead of solely relying on big companies, consider investing your dollar in your local economy, e.g. shopping locally for groceries or buying directly from small or minority-owned businesses.”
- Conduct research! As college students and academics we are uniquely situated in environments that encourage and facilitate field or digital research. Considering involving or centering Environmental Injustice in upcoming research papers and projects, demonstrating its significance and connection to various aspects of academia/society.
- Stay informed about environmental issues in your community. Advocate for the prioritization of environmental justice when policy design, land use plans, and similar locally-organized events are taking place. Hold your community & representatives accountable.
How to Learn More
- Read and review research concerning different examples of Environmental Injustice such as water in Flint Michigan & Camp Lejeune, transportation injustice throughout the US, aftermath & abandonment post-Katrina, petrochemical abuse in the Mississippi River, and more.
- World Economic Forum, “What is Environmental Racism and How Can We Fight It?”
- Yale Sustainability, “How to Support Environmental Justice Everyday”
- Fordham University, “An Environmental Justice Framework for Transportation Equity.”
