A Brief History of Environmental Justice

PART I: ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

Introduction

Chemicals

Land Use

Rural Environmental Justice: Summary

Solutions

A Brief History of Environmental Justice

Examples

Resources

PART II: HOW CAN RESEARCH HELP?

Participatory Research and Environmental Justice



Microsite Credits

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides the theoretical legal basis for intervening for environmental justice, but the Act itself is just one tool for environmental justice advocates. Carl Anthony of the Ford Foundation has called the environmental justice movement, "the next step of the Civil Rights movement." The threads of history that led to the environmental justice movement go back much further, to colonization of Native people and African Americans, to the Civil War, to Hiroshima and issues surrounding nuclear testing since the 1930s, and to the development of pesticides post- WWII. "Environmental justice is part of a history of struggle," according to one member of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 9 environmental justice office. Please see the attached "Time Line of Environmental Justice Events," distributed by the California EPA.

The modern environmental justice movement has diverse roots in a history of unionization, and organizing among different ethnic groups to address environmental problems. Important occurrences in the recent history of the movement include the discovery of abandoned hazardous waste beneath the working class community of Love Canal, New York; the 1982 struggle of residents of Warren County, North Carolina to oppose the siting of a poly-chlorinated biphenyl (PCB) dump; and growing awareness over the dumping of toxic wastes on Native lands. These three issues and many others added to outrage around the emerging link between environmental problems, health disparities, and people of color.

In 1983 the Governmental Accounting Office released an eye-opening report stating that three of four hazardous waste facilities in the Southeast were in African American communities. Several Environmental Protection Agency cases and lawsuits throughout the 1980s and the establishment of the Environmental Equity Working Group within the Environmental Protection Agency were also early influential occurrences. In 1987 the United Church of Christ published the groundbreaking study, "Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States." The study found that all non-whites experienced disproportionate impacts from hazardous waste, galvanizing leaders to not only work on local, place-specific issues, but also to stand in solidarity with other communities of color experiencing disproportionate impacts. Dr. Robert Bullard of Clark Atlanta University was instrumental in this study, and is considered to be one of the founders of the modern environmental justice movement. Beginning with a 1979 paper on an affluent African American community's attempt to block the citing of a sanitary landfill, Bullard also wrote Dumping in Dixie (1990).

The United Church of Christ's Commission for Racial Justice convened the first People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in 1991 to respond to environmental racism, link grassroots struggles, and make agencies aware of environmental justice concerns. Over 500 organizations were represented and the summit resulted in a list of guiding principles for the Environmental Justice (EJ) movement. At the time of the summit, the movement was still defining itself, the issues, the constituencies, and the allies. The principles developed at Summit I, available at http://www.toxicspot.com/env_justice/env_principles.html., emphasize the importance of healthy communities and a healthy environment, particularly for people of color.

Environmental justice is also defined by the last three decades of environmental law, and built momentum in the 1990s with the passage of specific environmental justice laws and policies at the federal, state and local levels. The development of non-governmental advocacy groups and the maturation of diverse agency mandates and approaches for increased environmental justice participation continue to evolve around the country.

Environmental justice is also growing internationally. Non-governmental organizations and international networks like the Indigenous Environmental Network help to facilitate connections between groups and build resistance to common injustices. While it remains difficult to solidify domestic or even regional alliances, as more information on health and environmental issues has become available, concern has transcended borders. The youth coalition at the second national People of Color Environmental Leadership summit was particularly energetic on making links between countries. Significantly, the only resolution that was created and passed at the summit was one against the war and international militarism. The resolution portrays the War on Terrorism and impending invasion of Iraq as escalating "physical, economic, political and cultural violence against people of color, indigenous peoples, and third world peoples," intensifying violence against women, victimizing poor and working-class youth of color through drafting, diverting attention from domestic social and environmental priorities, and drawing on faulty misconceptions of U.S. history. For a full copy, see the links on the Resources page.