2003 Introducing equity: The multidimensional environmental justice movement is transforming mainstream environmentalism in the US

Introducing equity: The multidimensional environmental justice movement is transforming mainstream environmentalism in the US.
by Peter Montague


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Publication Information: Article Title: Introducing Equity: The Multidimensional Environmental Justice Movement Is Transforming Mainstream Environmentalism in the US. Contributors: Peter Montague - author. Magazine Title: Alternatives Journal. Volume: 29. Issue: 1. Publication Date: Winter 2003. Page Number: 19+. COPYRIGHT 2003 Alternatives, Inc.; COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group

2003 - An article about the origins, characteristics (neighborhood movement) and rising impact of Environmental justice


SINCE 1980, an alternative to the traditional environmental movement has been slowly forming in the US, though so far it has gained little national visibility. It is called the "environmental justice" movement, and though it has some problems of its own, it represents a different approach to environmental protection, one that speaks to people about protecting the places where they live, work and play.

As Daniel Faber and Deborah McCarthy have documented, the fabric of the US environmental justice movement is woven from six strands: (1)

The civil rights movement. Apartheid officially ended in the US in 1964, but environmental racism is still all too common. The environmental regulatory system created during the 1970s and 1980s had the unintended effect of funneling pollutants into communities of color. Well-off white people can usually buy their way out of polluted neighborhoods, but people of colour and the poor often cannot. Pollution trading schemes, being promoted by some traditional environmentalists, may be economically efficient but they tend to heap additional burdens and injustices on the poor and people of colour.

The occupational safety and health movement. The US passed its first national job safety law in 1970, but since then enforcement has been lax or nonexistent.

Furthermore, the law excludes tens of millions of workers, such as farm workers. At least 60,000 workers die each year as a result of injuries and illnesses related to dangerous working conditions. Another 850,000 are made sick. (2) At least 35 million non-union workers say they would join a union if they could, to protect themselves, but US laws violate international human rights standards by making unionization an uphill battle. Added to existing unions, those 35 million would create the largest union movement the US has ever known, effectively shifting the balance of power between the corporate elite and wage earners.

The indigenous peoples' and native land rights movements, made up of Native Americans, Chicanos, African Americans, and other marginalized indigenous communities struggling to retain and protect their traditional lands. Partly these groups are fighting to control land resources, and partly they are trying to retain cultural lifeways that are threatened with extinction by the dominant society.

The toxics movement (also known as the environmental health movement) has been fighting for the clean-up of thousands of contaminated waste sites across the country since 1978. The toxics movement has also taken the initiative in discouraging toxic technologies such as municipal garbage incinerators, pesticides, so-called "low-level" radioactive waste dumps, coal-burning power plants, buried gasoline tanks, toxicants dumped by the military and more.

Solidarity movements, human rights movements, and environmental activists in the Third World are providing powerful allies and examples of extraordinary, fearless activism. In South Africa, Mexico, Burma, Indonesia, Nigeria, Central America, the former Soviet Union and elsewhere, local groups are fighting the same battles being fought in the US but with fewer resources and against greater odds - sometimes sacrificing their lives in their persistent demand for environmental protection, sustainability, self-determination and justice.

Community-based activists working for social and economic justice have traditionally focused on issues of housing, public transportation, crime and police conduct, access to jobs, a living wage, redlining and lender practices, affordable daycare, deteriorating schools and dozens of other neighborhood issues. They have not traditionally viewed their work as "environmental" but now when they work on lead poisoning, cleaning up abandoned toxic sites ("brownfields"), poor air quality, childhood asthma and other issues with an environmental component, they are indisputably a part of the "environmental justice" movement.

In addition to these six strands, we see a powerful, burgeoning seventh - people whose health has been affected by multiple chemical sensitivities, birth defects, breast cancer, endometriosis, lymphoma, diabetes, chronic fatigue, veterans affected by Agent Orange and Gulf War Syndrome and many others.

An eighth strand includes the international "zero waste" and "clean production" movements, which are quietly revolutionizing the material basis of the industrial enterprise.

This powerful environmental justice movement-which clearly has the potential to become a new political mass movement - is still in its infancy To grow to its potential it will need to be fed, nurtured, cared for. It will need resources. In their report, "Green Of Another Color," Faber and McCarthy show that, of all funds available for environmental work during the period 1996 to 1999, some 96 percent went to the lawyers and scientists of the traditional environmental movement, and only four percent went to all the thousands of groups working to build the "environmental justice" movement. (3) To really protect the environment (and overcome the political power of the anti-environment "conservatives"), these funding priorities would have to change substantially.

Follow up

The Environmental justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University maintains an active site on US environmental justice news, events and resources: www.ejrc.cau.edu/

Notes

(1.) D. R. Faber and D. McCarthy, Green Of Another color (Boston, Mass.: Northeastern University. 2001), p. 2. Available on-line at: .

(2.) See Rachel's Environment & Health News #578.

(3.) Faber and McCarthy, ibid.. pi.

Peter Montague is editor of Rachel's Environment & Health News and director of Environmental Research Foundation, Annapolis, Maryland. This article first appeared in Rachel's Environment & Health News #744 (Feb. 14, 2002). Back issues are available at.