Environmental Justice is for Everyone

As we near the end of Black History Month, I think it's important to talk about racial disparities in the effects of environmental degradation and climate change. This may be something you've already heard of or learned about, or it may be the first time you're hearing the term Environmental Justice. Either way, I'd love to welcome you to this conversation and discuss the ways in which environmental issues disproportionately affects low-income communities and people of color, and how we can all work toward environmental justice.

First, the basics:

Environmental Justice is defined by the United States Environmental Protection Agency as "the fair treatment of people of all races, cultures, incomes, and educational levels with respect to the development and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. Fair treatment implies that no population should be forced to shoulder a disproportionate share of exposure to the negative effects of pollution due to lack of political or economic strength." It is a concept that came out of the civil rights movement as activists spread awareness of the racial inequities surrounding harmful effects of climate change and environmental exploitation. Although it gained traction through the 1980s in the United States, many of us have only recently begun to hear about it. In the U.S. and throughout the world, low-income communities and communities of color (regardless of minority status) bear the burden of environmental degradation and climate change disproportionately more than other communities.

What problems are the environmental justice movement attempting to correct?

Here are some examples of how environmental inequities show up:

• In the United States, people of color represent 42% of the population, but they comprise 53% of the population living with unhealthy air quality.

• Africa has lower annual carbon dioxide emissions than most other continents, but it experiences the greatest impact from climate change. Many African countries also provide fossil fuels and rare earth minerals to the rest of the world without reaping the benefits they provide.

• Tax credits for accessing clean energy solutions in the U.S. are more accessible to higher-income households, keeping low-income communities stuck in less efficient and less environmentally friendly living situations.

Photo from the National Resource Defense Council's article on the Flint Water Crisis. Flint, MI is a Detroit suburb with a majority Black population and 34% of its residents living in poverty. After allowing decades of industrial pollution in the Flint River, city officials failed to protect residents from lead leaching out of pipes and into drinking water when they stopped providing treated water and moved to the cheaper option of sourcing city water from the Flint River in 2013. This resulted in almost 9,000 Flint children receiving lead-contaminated water for over a year.

How did this happen?

While the real answer to this starts with the world's long history of colonization, modern environmental justice issues were largely formed by a more insidious version of colonization, which includes things like zoning laws, gerrymandering, and eminent domain. Facilities that generate toxic waste have been shown to follow a "path of least resistance," often being built in areas where the surrounding community does not have the resources to fight back against their establishment. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that indigenous people must give free and informed consent before projects affecting their land can take place, yet oil drilling and pipeline projects in the United States threaten indigenous land and water. One prominent example of this is the Dakota Access Pipeline, which transports crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois. While the pipeline does not run through indigenous land, it crosses North Dakota's Lake Oahe just a mile north of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's reservation. An oil spill from the pipeline would contaminate Standing Rock's water supply and damage sacred sites. Technicalities like this ignore the reality of geography, which is that oil spills and other environmental degradation don't care about human-implemented boundaries.

The map for the Dakota Access Pipeline shows how close it runs to Standing Rock. Source: the NRDC.

Since time immemorial, communities with more resources have been exploiting those with fewer. This is not unique to environmental concerns or the United States. Environmental injustice is just one part of the larger conflict between the global north (formerly referred to as first-world countries) and the global south (formerly second- and third-world countries). In a world where money takes precedence over just about everything else, lawmakers unfortunately tend to look the other way, bend the rules, and even completely change the rules in favor of lining their pockets, and people who can't afford to move away from toxic waste, oil spills, infertile soil, and contaminated air and water are the collateral damage time and time again.

What can we do?

Oh, I'm so glad you asked :)

Yours Truly (in the back) with friends at the 2017 March for Science in New York City.

We've now concluded the doom-and-gloom portion of our program, and we're ready to move on to the exciting part. There are SO MANY people fighting for environmental justice, and if you've made it this far, I bet you're ready to join the fight! Here's what you can do:

1. Stay informed. All of the underlined sections of this blog post are links that will take you to sites with more information on these issues. Many of them have email lists you can sign up for. Some other resources include the Solutions Project, the Center for Climate Justice, the NAACP, the United Nations, and the Climate Justice Alliance.

2. If you're in the U.S., you can voice your concerns to your legislators. Earth Justice has action alerts where you can learn about current issues being discussed in congress, and you can find your elected officials here.

3. Take action in your community. Websites like Mobilize.us have searchable volunteer and action events like protests, canvassing, letter-writing, etc. You can filter by causes such as environmental and climate justice or environmental action. You can also look up local environmental or social justice organizations and see if they have volunteer opportunities.

4. Speak up in social situations and on social media. There are plenty of people who still don't know about environmental justice as a concept, and spreading the word is crucial. Make a post on Facebook, join Bluesky if you haven't already (it's like Twitter, but decentralized and focused on transparency), and share this blog post with your friends. Speak Up Against Racism has great resources to help you have conversations about racism and inequality.

5. Donate if you can. Nonprofits and grassroots organizations (like us!) are funded by donors and grants (which are often funded by donors). Even $5.00 makes a difference in our ability to tackle issues like environmental injustice and climate change. You can donate to the Wildlife Research Alliance here.

I hope you feel inspired, encouraged, and maybe a little outraged (outrage is good when it inspires change!). It can be really intimidating to stand up against such large, systemic issues as environmental injustice, but the more we do it, the larger our unified front becomes. We can absolutely affect change for our environment and the communities most affected by environmental injustice if we each do what we can.