Eco-Apartheid and Global Greenwaves: African Diasporic Environmental Justice Movements

Abstract

The advent of global warming portends a worsening of “eco-apartheid,” or the unequal distribution of environmental benefits and burdens among poor and minority people. This article explores how activists in the contemporary African diaspora address current and future environmental injustices, as well as the neoliberalization of their natural resources. Using case studies, including the discriminatory siting of toxic waste facilities in the United States, conservation programs in South America, and ecotourism projects in Central America, I examine how activists present their oppositional identities in complex ways. For example, some underscore their African heritage, while others downplay it and emphasize instead their aboriginal, class, or geographic identities. Whereas in some cases, the environmental struggles of African-descended people are fairly inextricable from those of indigenous populations, in other cases, long-standing ethnic, racial, and cultural divisions make such alliances impractical. In still other cases, activists strategically shift between racial, ethnic, geographic, and class-based identities. Ultimately, the examples presented in this article raise larger questions about regional and transnational social movement alliances, diasporic identities. North/South differences, and the salience of social movement actors' positioning within the global economy.