In October 1991, First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit All of them togetherNearly 300 Black, Latino American Indian, Pacific Islander and Asian Americans are involved in raising the profile of the organization. Environmental justice movementThe movement aims to address inequitable distributions of environmental risks among vulnerable populations. The movement was People of color founded the company with an explicit emphasis on securing “political, economic and cultural liberation that has been denied for over 500 years of colonization and oppression.”
The summit was a defining moment in the environmental justice movement’s Histories. There, leaders outlined the movement’s mission and, in doing so, established a clear connection between environmental justice and public health, highlighting inequities in environmental factors that affect health—such as access to clean air, land, food, and water; the right to a safe and healthy work environment; protection from toxic/hazardous waste; and more.
The summit produced a defining document: The 17 Principles of Environmental Justice. These principles outlined the movement’s demands and emphasized its intersection with the environmental drivers of health.
The principles that were developed at the 1991 summit are still relevant today, thirty years later. Environmental injustice continues to be a major cause of health inequalities that disproportionately affect low-income and communities of color. Here’s an example: Tree coverage—which reduces air pollutants and improves health in multiple other ways—has been found to vary by neighborhood population demographics, with greater coverage and health benefits in Whiter, wealthier neighborhoods. Today, communities of color and low income communities are more vulnerable to the growing health risks posed by climate change. This is because they lack the infrastructure and resources to rebuild after severe weather events.
Environmental justice also concerns the geographic distribution of state and federal infrastructure projects. A Report on environmental racism from 1987, four years before the summit, found that race was “the most significant among variables tested in association with the location of commercial hazardous waste facilities” nationally; at the time, “three out of every five Black and Hispanic Americans lived in communities with uncontrolled toxic waste sites.” As Ramon Jacobs-Shaw discussed in a Forefront article, the Dakota Access Pipeline placement less than a mile north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation is a modern-day example of environmental racism: “when marginalized racial and ethnic minority communities are disproportionately burdened by environmental hazards (such as oil pipelines) compared to more privileged groups.”
Although environmental justice has become more visible over the years, there is still much to be done. Policy makers should reexamine the mission, key goals, and principles of the environmental justice movement. This will allow them to more effectively address historical and current environmental inequalities that cause health inequalities. Policy interventions should take inspiration from and build on community-led initiatives and target the connection between environmental injustices and health inequities according to the needs of the communities they are affecting. This intersection can lead to more profound and far-reaching changes than if they were addressed separately.
In this article, I will explain how the Principles of Environmental Justice could inform policy and support community empowerment. My focus is on two frameworks in the Principles of Environmental Justice: distributive and participative justice.
Where to Target Interventions
Environmental justice must be the foundation of environmental interventions to improve health equity. There are many levels of environmental injustice that need to be addressed. However, I prefer to focus on the points where disparities in the distribution of environmental benefits and burdens can translate into health disparities.
Many are familiar to the river analogy. It refers to the social health determinants of health. In this case, people with poor health are pulled out of a river by those who are sickened by something upstream. This upstream infection is an indicator of the social determinants, and those who pull patients from the river are the modern medical systems.
I offer an alternative analogy for the relationship of environmental and health injustice. It is a tree with roots and a trunk with branches and fruit at the tips.
The roots are the root causes of environmental injustice. In this analogy, they are racism and income inequality. These are the hidden drivers that allow for the exploitation and abuse of powerless people and natural resource, and they are the foundation from which the tree can grow. The tree’s trunk and branches represent the places where power and wealth are stored. The trunk represents where decisions are made about resource distribution, while the branches represent communities that require resources to thrive. The fruit on the tree is the result of resource distribution across branches. Some branches will produce large quantities of plump fruit, while others will produce smaller and less fruit. Some branches will not survive the next winter; others will continue to grow stronger each year.
Environmental injustice transforms into health injustice at the point when power and wealth can be wielded to improve or protect the environment—in the trunk—but are instead routed away from struggling populations—weak branches—to those that are already thriving—strong branches already bearing fruit. The weakest branches are then even more vulnerable.
The decision-making power that is lodged in the tree trunk must be shared with the communities that will be affected by its outcomes to address the intersection between environmental and health justice. This section should be addressed through interventions that are rooted in participatory justice. To address the intersection of environmental justice and health justice located in the branches, the effects of decisions made in the trunk need to be distributed equitably—this doesn’t mean that every branch receives the same resources every year, but that every branch receives what it needs to thrive and produce fruit equally to the other branches. This section of the tree should be addressed with interventions that are grounded in distributive justice.
Rooting Interventions in Justice
The Principles of Environmental Justice state that public health can be improved by advancing environmental justice through interventions that are rooted in participation and distributive justice.
Participatory Justice
Participatory justiceFair participation in decisions that could cause problems or provide solutions for people is what this is all about. This involves reallocating decision making, often held by people who have had power in society in the past, to those affected by the decisions, which are usually people disproportionally lacking power in society. Participatory justice is an integral part of the environmental justice movement as outlined in several Principles of Environmental Justice.
- Environmental Justice requires that everyone has the right to be equal partners in all decision making processes, including planning, implementation and enforcement.
- Environmental Justice affirms all peoples’ fundamental right of political, economic, cultural and environmental self-determination.
- Environmental Justice must recognize the special legal and natural relationship Native Peoples have to the US government through treaties agreements, compacts and covenants that affirm sovereignty and self-determination.
To ensure participatory justice in the decision-making and policy-making processes that impact communities’ physical and social environments, representatives from these groups need to be more than “at the table”; they need to be the actual decision makers. Representatives from the affected groups need to increase their knowledge about the policies and outcomes of unequal resource distribution and projects that can cause harm to the environment and increase the health risks for communities. Participatory justice means empowering community leaders to learn about the environmental justice issues and possible solutions in their localities.
Many communities are pursuing self-empowerment initiatives to increase participation in justice. The example of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice is a resource for environmental justice research, education, and health and safety training for environmental careers with a goal of developing “leaders in communities of color along the Mississippi River Chemical Corridor and the broader Gulf Coast Region that are disproportionately harmed by pollution and vulnerable to climate change.” The Center offers workshops about how to monitor neighborhood environmental hazards, understand the risks of toxic exposures, know the duties of governmental agencies, develop strategic advocacy for policies and decisions that prevent and remedy unsafe environmental conditions, and more.
Furthermore, Greenaction for Health and Environmental JusticeIt is a grassroots organization for environmental justice and health that partners with low-income, working-class, urban, rural, as well as indigenous communities. They offer trainings to youth and the general public on topics such as environmental review processes, best practices for community organizing, how to reduce risks to health, and how to minimize them. They also help communities document the health and environmental impacts of harmful projects as well as document the living stories of communities “to ensure that community voices are at the forefront of their struggle and to ensure communities remain in control of their narratives.”
Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice and the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice help to complete a crucial part of participatory justice by empowering citizens and empowering them to be advocates and experts about environmental injustices in their own communities. These community leaders and representatives cannot participate in policy-making that affects their communities if they don’t hold any political power. Participatory justice requires that policy-making power is redistributed away from current policymakers to the local leaders of communities most affected.
This means that current power structures require that environmental justice leaders are elected who can accurately represent their constituents and then act upon them. Such organizations include WE ACT for Environmental JusticeThe League of Conservation Voters, and the Sunrise MovementProvide leadership development opportunities for individuals and build support for candidates who uphold environmental justice values at all levels. In a political system such as that of the US—in which financial support and endorsements from large, nationally known organizations are nearly essential for electoral victory—organizations such as these are a vital steppingstone on the path to redistributing decision-making power to environmental justice leaders.
Distributive Justice
Distributive justice is about more than fair participation in decision making—it is about the outcome of those decisions. Distributive justice refers to how benefits and burdens should differ. According to the 2007 text Environmental Justice and Environmentalism, while “many aspects of the environment cannot physically be transferred from one community to another,” distributive justice in terms of environmental justice is about “the distribution of benefits and costs of environmental resources.”
Distributive justice is reflected within several Principles of Environmental Justice. It is an integral part of the environmental justice movement.
- Environmental Justice is the right to ethical, balanced and responsible use of land and renewable resources for the benefit of humans and all living things.
- Environmental Justice is the belief that urban and rural ecopolitical policies are needed to restore balance between nature and cities, while respecting the cultural heritage of all our communities. [provide]Fair access for all to the full range resources
- Environmental Justice requires universal protection from nuclear testing, extraction and production of toxic/hazardous materials and poisons, along with nuclear testing that may threaten the fundamental rights to clean air and water.
Both benefits and burdens are involved when it comes to the environment. Environmental injustice is often caused when there is inequity in the distribution of a burden. This makes an environment less healthy and does not provide any additional benefits or resources. An example of this is the inequitable distribution of polluted ozone. A 2013 North Carolina studyHigher levels of air pollution were associated with lower socioeconomic status, higher deprivation and higher minority populations. Increases in air pollution have been linked to an increase in Hospital admissions and mortalityDue to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.
Community with poor environments would be protected from ongoing risks by establishing environmental burdens and benefit allocation through distributive justice. Communities that have been exempted from or protected themselves from environmental harm as well as those who have done harm to other communities will receive their fair share of the environmental burdens. Anchoring environmental policy within distributive justice would ensure that resources are distributed fairly to support communities’ investment in building and sustaining healthy environments.
This could be done by assessing the environmental benefits and burdens and their impact on health and making decisions to allocate these positive and adverse outcomes fairly. This means that all branches of the tree deserve resources. In some cases, however, certain branches should be given more to compensate for previous generations of inequitable distribution. This redistribution is not easy for many reasons, including that Whiter, wealthier communities are historically resistant to hosting environmental burdens and have the power and resources to protect themselves, shunting these burdens—such as the Placement of hazardous waste facilities—to the communities without the economic and political power to resist them.
Use environmental impact statementsAnd Health impact assessments is a great place to start measuring the distribution of environmental benefits and burdens, but making sure to track outcomes against the initial estimates is vital—and is part of the participatory justice work outlined in the previous section. It is also important to enforce regulations regarding who drafts environmental impacts statements. This was a key problem in the placement of the EPA. Dakota Access Pipeline.
Communities with poor health outcomes due to their environment will benefit from prioritizing those most at risk. The Principles outline that the movement for environmental justice is focused on the balance of environmental resources and their subsequent health effects.
There are numerous efforts to integrate environmental justice priority into new policies and projects in the US through acts of distributive Justice. For example, St. Paul, Minnesota’s Climate Action and Resilience Planning includes explicit equity components to ensure disadvantaged neighborhoods are not left behind in the city’s adaptations and preparedness for the effects of climate change. To reduce emissions from transportation, the plan outlines transportation equity efforts to support low-income and communities of color.
Policy makers can also ensure that green space protection laws are applied to low-income communities and communities of color to preserve parks. Parks are often associated Numerous positive health outcomesProtection against the harmful effects Climate Change. In 2017, US Representative Nanette Barragán (D-CA) introduced to the House the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership Grant Program ActIt would, however, be in Barragán’s words, “protect a National Park Service program that promotes the development of greenspaces and recreation facilities in underserved parts of cities.” Passing laws such as this one aid in equitably distributing greenspace, a beneficial environmental resource.
Moving forward
Now, targeting interventions at the trunk and branches does not address the roots of the tree—racism and income inequality. Instead, this target level focuses on the effects and not the causes of racism or income inequality.
This approach is often criticized by many because it doesn’t allow equity to be achieved in systems that are built on an inequitable basis. This can be true, but we can also wish to improve lives and advance equity in existing systems, while they still exist, to prevent illness and death. Interventions are needed at all levels of the tree—we must uproot structural inequities while still treating those living with the health outcomes caused by them.
The Principles of Environmental Justice provide a framework for future interventions to improve the health of people and the environment. The Principles could be used to frame these reforms, which would improve the environment and then advance justice and equity in health care.