Environmental Justice in Hamburg, Germany

Abstract

This environmental justice study investigates whether disempowered segments of the population in Hamburg, Germany, namely, foreigners and the poor, reside disproportionately in neighborhoods that contain, have higher concentrations of, and are in closer proximity to facilities releasing toxic chemicals into the environment. Methods include choropleth mapping; comparisons of means, correlation, and ordinary least squares (OLS); and spatial econometric regression. The results provide evidence that toxic release facilities are disproportionately located within, and closer to, neighborhoods with comparatively higher proportions of foreigners and the poor as compared to those with higher proportions of German citizens and the non-poor. We speculate that the causes of this pattern of environmental inequity are similar to the causes scholars have proposed for comparable patterns observed in many U.S. cities, where marginalized immigrant or minority groups subject to discrimination in housing and employment have sought low-wage labor in industrial areas, whereas wealthier German citizens have settled in environmentally safer parts of the city.