Is there no justice?

Abstract

Minority communities, indigenous areas, and low-income neighborhoods, all of which have historically borne unequal burdens of environmental hazards, were the focus of recommendations in a recent iteration of the original report from the 1990s Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-income Populations. Therein, environmental and civil rights advocates recommended extensive policy changes and statutory/regulatory implementation to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and US Department of Justice. Regrettably, these communities and peoples – lacking both the resources and the power to resist unwanted modification of nearby air, water, and land – have been subject for many decades to what amounts to discrimination, characterized as institutionalized racism. The almost universal “not-in-my-backyard” reaction to undesirable land uses has resulted in a disproportionate number of landfills and waste-handling facilities being sited in low-income communities. Many social-welfare groups have been active in attacking injustices in environmental practices, policies, and laws. For instance, in 1991 the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit drafted and adopted 17 principles of environmental justice in Environmental Justice in the 21st Century (www.ejrc.cau.edu/ejinthe21century.htm), a defining document for the growing grassroots-level environmental justice movement. In 2002, “Summit II” produced Environmental Justice Timeline – Milestones (www.ejrc.cau.edu/summit2/%20EJTimeline.pdf), which summarized the progress made since the first summit: “Over the past two decades, environmental justice and environmental racism have become household words. Out of the small and seemingly isolated environmental struggles emerged a potent grassroots community-driven movement”. The environmental justice movement in the US clearly has roots in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Around 1970, the US Public Health Service acknowledged that lead poisoning – primarily from lead-based paint – was disproportionately affecting African-American and Hispanic children. Recognition of such issues matured over the next decade and paralleled the general “public awakening” to environmental dangers and individual health risks in the 1980s. More specifically, however, the awareness of community-level environmental injustice in the US may in fact derive from an unlikely source: the United Church of Christ. In 1982, the Church questioned the location – as selected by the State of North Carolina in 1979 – of a landfill, one containing some 60 000 tons of soil contaminated by polychlorinated biphenyls that had been applied to unpaved roads for dust control in rural Shocco Township, NC. Shocco's population is about 75% African-American and ranks 97th out of 100 counties in North Carolina in terms of income. Demonstrators protesting the state's actions regarding the landfill received national media coverage, and more than 500 people were ultimately arrested for civil disobedience. Environmental groups and the United Church of Christ harrassed state and federal agencies, leading to an extensive analysis of the site – which eventually resulted in the site's decontamination and closure about 21 years later. Then-Governor Michael Easley described the closing as “a watershed event for the many people who came together and worked diligently to identify and carry through a solution”. The Shocco protests also gave rise to several seminal publications and, in 1990, sociologist Robert D Bullard published the first text on environmental justice, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality. The guiding principles of the civil rights movement have many parallels in the environmental justice movement: (1) Ecological unity of all peoples and non-human species; (2) Ethical and responsible use of land and renewable resources in the interest of a sustainable planet for humans and other living things; (3) Universal protection from hazardous and radioactive wastes, which threaten the fundamental rights to clean air, land, water, and food; (4) The rights of all workers to a safe and healthy work environment; (5) Opposition to environmentally destructive operations – whether random or systematic – of governments, multinational corporations, and other entities. Eventually, in 1986, the US Congress passed the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA). This substantive law – requiring the dissemination of information to persons previously uninformed about environmental risks – was designed to educate people about local emergencies relating to dangers from chemical storage, use, and release in their midst. In 1992, the EPA established the Office of Environmental Justice, and Congress also passed the policy-based Environmental Justice Act, which has since gone through several iterations. In 1994, President Clinton signed an Executive Order aimed solely at issues pertaining to environmental justice, minorities, and children. However, despite the Civil Rights Acts and later EPCRA strictures, other substantive legal solutions to the injustices in the workplace and neighborhood have not been dealt with comprehensively – rather, case-by-case lawsuits, siting challenges, and rallying points have been the force behind the movement.