Warren County lies along the Virginia and North Carolina border. It is a rural area. The 444-square mile region, which was established in 1779, was once home to antebellum tobacco and cotton plantations. This was before the rise of the textile mills in late 1800s. Warren County is largely known for being the birthplace of modern environmental justice, thanks to a landfill and a group dedicated Black activists.
It all began in 1982, in the fall. Afton, North Carolina, a predominantly Black community was chosen as a location for a hazardous waste dump. The landfill was selected as a dump site for 60,000 tons PCB-contaminated soil. Also known as polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs), PCBs are extremely toxic industrial compounds.
The community was understandably upset. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP), organized a massive protest. More than 500 people were arrested after activists gathered at the landfill to raise their voices. They were unsuccessful in their goal to stop toxic waste being dumped in the landfill. They did however garner national attention for environmental justice and galvanized the environmental movement of today.
The environment: A human rights problem
The climate crisis, like the refugee crisis and human trafficking, is also a human rights issue. The UN Environment Programme reports that more than 100 constitutions worldwide outline the human right of a healthy environment. While many states have adopted environmental protection measures through their constitutions, the US as a whole has not.
However, even with these measures in force, lax enforcement can lead countless human rights violations. These include issues ranging from water and air pollution to sanitation. The impacts of industrial gold mining on Indigenous peoples is one example. GuyanaSouth America. This includes water contamination, deforestation, and other problems despite the fact that South America has a constitution. ProvisionsHealthy environment.
Hinkley in California, was also witness to environmental-related human right violations. The 2000 film portrayed the 1992 case. Erin Brockovich, Brockovicha, a legal clerk without any background in law, almost single-handedly built a case against Pacific Gas & Electric Company regarding contaminating the town’s groundwater. The case led to the largest direct-action lawsuit payout at the time: $333 Million.
Similar examples of environmental injustices are common across the country: Flint in Michigan’s water crisis; the Oil Refineries of Cancer Alley in Louisiana; the dumping and cleanup of coal ash at Uniontown, Alabama; the pollution of the Bronx in New York City. While they may differ in geography, all these areas share one thing in common: They are all predominantly BIPOC and low income communities.
Elsa Mengistu, a 20-year-old activist whos worked with a number of environmental organizations, including Zero Hour, Ocean Heroes Bootcamp, and Generation Green, says the placement of these polluters in minority communities is not an accident.
The Bronx is made up of a majority of Latino, Black, and Latino immigrants. These are the most vulnerable communities. Mengistu says that while they can advocate for themselves they are not given the resources or the platform to do so in an effective manner. This is where children have the most asthma. The Bronx is where polluters are allowed to do it, while Manhattan would be impossible.
How environmental racism targets communities with color
According to a survey, 75 percent of communities of color live in highly polluted regions. 2020 reportPrinceton. These areas include toxic waste locations, factory farms and landfills, among other industrial facilities.
According to a 2018 StudyAccording to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), people with color inhale more particulate air pollutants than their white counterparts. This means that people of color are more likely to die due to environmental causes and have more health problems related to pollution, such as asthma and lung disease. According to the Princeton report, 13.4% of Black children are affected by the latter, while only 7.3% of white children are affected. More than one million Black Americans are at higher risk of developing cancer due to air pollution.
Communities of color are also more susceptible to climate change-related extreme weather events such as heat waves and environmental degradation.
The reason these communities are targeted to place highly-pollutive dairy farms, factories, and slaughterhouses is simple: Profit. These areas are generally more profitable for corporations because they have a lower cost of land. Subsidized housing has been built in areas with poor environmental facilities, too. (Not to be forgotten, the practice subsidizes housing in areas with pollutive facilities. RedliningMany minority households were denied housing loans.
Shrine Center on Poverty Law in 2020 reported that 70% of hazardous waste sites were located within one-mile of public housing. According to the report authors, environmental racism played a key role in this devastation. Write. They note that laws and policies like the US’s allocation of federal housing assistance have allowed minority communities to be in close proximity to environmental toxins. Because housing built for Black and Brown households has often been built in direct proximity to contaminated land,” the authors explain, “these families have been disproportionately exposed to these health and environmental threats.
Inspiring environmental justice movements
The environmental justice movement was not born out of passion, but as a way to survive for BIPOC communities and low-income communities. There were environmental efforts in place long before the Warren County protest. There were many environmental nonprofits long before 1982. However, they often ignored the link between environmental degradation and racial disparities.
The Sierra Club, founded in 1892, was one of the first groups, while the National Audubon Society was established 13 years later. These organizations were primarily concerned with issues such as the conservation of wildlife, biodiversity and the protection of the oceans. The organizations did not promote equity and diversity, as the majority of their board members were white. Simply put, environmental justice was not on their radar.
Warren County was a catalyst for greater political debate, and it became a model community for others across the country. Detailed explanationEileen McGurty is a professor at John Hopkins University. The Warren County events were a catalyst for the creation of the environmental justice movement. They also influenced contemporary environmentalism.
The 1982 protest triggered a domino effect in the area of environmental justice. A number of studies were done to determine the link between race and hazardous sites. The 1987 study was one of many. Toxic Waste and Race report. The most significant factor in hazardous waste facility location was race according to the study. It was found that 60% of Black and Hispanic residents lived near toxic waste sites.
100 Black leaders addressed the issue of race in mainstream conservation groups in 1990. SouthWest Organizing Project was a grassroots advocacy group that was founded in 1980. They sent a 12-page letter to the Big 10, which consisted of the Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation and Nature Conservancy.
The SWOP letter is also known as the SWOP letter. It addresses concerns about racism and exclusionary practices. These include not diversifying staff and excluding people from public policy making. The authors stated that racism is a root cause for your inaction regarding environmental problems in our communities. The result? Many of these groups have since cleaned up their act by hiring people of color and enacting eco-justice initiatives.
The SWOP Letter also led to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in 1991. More than 1,000 people, mostly Black, Latino, Pacific Islander, Asian American activists, gathered in Washington, D.C., for a discussion on the incontrovertible link between race, environmental injustices, etc. The 17 principlesAdopted the principles of environmental justice, which provided the framework for many current federal and state environmental policies.
One year later, the Office of Environmental Equity, which was part of the EPA was established. It credited the 1980s environmental equity movement with the watershed event of the landfill protests. The Clinton administration also issued an executive order in 1994 making environmental justice public law.
Today’s environmental justice activism continues to grow. Wawa Gatheru, another grassroots activist, bridges the gap between environmental and racial injustice. The 22-year-old Rhodes Scholar and founder of BlackGirlEnvironmentalist, a supportive community of Black girls, womxn, and non-binary environmentalists, regularly uses her platform of 24,000 Instagram followers to speak up about environmental racism.
I felt out of place as a Black woman in the environment field. As one of the few faces of color in my major, and in my search for representation in the field, she . But, it was precisely this discomfort that revealed the critical nature of my involvement in this movement. Bettmann/Getty Images
Roadblocks in the way of environmental justice
In January, the EPA was revealed new plansTo advance environmental justice, we have invested more than $600,000. in air pollution monitoring equipment in order to measure toxins in Cancer Alley. More than 150 petrochemical companies are located on the 85-mile stretch between New Orleans and Baton Rouge along the Mississippi River.
Despite this progress, the statistics on high-polluting industries in low-income and minority communities and the resulting health problems still stand. More must be done on the environmental justice front.
According to a 2019 reportAccording to the UN Environment Programme, despite the nearly 40% increase in environmental laws in the 1970s and the need for enforcement, the greatest obstacle in tackling most environmental problems, including pollution and global warming, is still enforcement.
This new compelling report explains why pollution, declining biodiversity, climate change, and other problems persist despite the proliferation environmental laws in recent years. Detailed explanationDavid Boyd is an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, and UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Environment. Unless the environmental rule of law is strengthened, even seemingly rigorous rules are destined to fail and the fundamental human right to a healthy environment will go unfulfilled.”
Nathaniel Stinnett (executive director of the Environmental Voter Project), a nonpartisan nonprofit that mobilizes voters to be consistent environmentalists, says political leaders are also stretched too thin. He explained that every politician has a limited amount political capital to spend only on a handful of issues. The environmental movement simply doesn’t have enough political power to pressure politicians into leading on climate and environmental justice.
Stinnett says that politicians constituents are the ones who push for such laws to be passed. He says that we need to flood the polls at every level, whether it’s local, state or federal, until environmental issues are addressed by politicians.
What does voting rights have to say about climate justice?
Voting isn’t easy for everyone.
Stinnett says that because they are most directly affected by environmental injustices, people with color are more likely prioritize environmental issues when voting. He says that voter suppression laws make it difficult for victims of environmental injustices to vote.
Despite the 1965 passage the Voter Rights Act which outlawed discriminatory voting practices like literacy tests, some states still have measures that make it difficult to vote for certain groups. Stinnett says that environmentalists today are not wealthy white suburbanites. In fact, the opposite is true: today’s environmentalists are disproportionately people of color, young people, and people who make less than $50,000 per year, which are the same three groups that are always targeted by voter suppression efforts.
Stinnett states that when voting restrictions are made more difficult for these groups, it also disproportionately drains the power of the environmental movement, which makes it even harder to fight back against environmental injustices within their communities.
However, organizations such as the Environmental Voter Project are resolute in their fight for voters’ rights and are urging them to speak out. Young activists and thought-leaders of color are carrying the torch proudly. Changemakers like Mengistu or Gatheru, who are the next generation of activists, are determined to protect the planet’s future and rectify the past by increasing awareness of the history of environmental racism. Knowledge is the key to making change happen.