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POVERTY, POLLUTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM:
STRATEGIES FOR BUILDING HEALTHY AND SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES
Robert D. Bullard, Ph.D.
Environmental Justice Resource Center
Clark Atlanta University
223 James P. Brawley Drive Atlanta, Georgia 30314 USA
(404) 880-69-11 (ph) (404) 880-6909 (fx)
ejrc@cau.edu
Website: www.ejrc.cau.edu
A Discussion Paper prepared for the National Black Environmental Justice Network (NBEJN) Environmental Racism Forum World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) Global Forum Johannesburg, South Africa July 2, 2002
Introduction
Despite significant improvements in environmental protection over the past several decades, over 1.3 billion individuals worldwide live in unsafe and unhealthy physical environments. Hazardous waste generation and international movement of hazardous waste and toxic products pose some important health, environmental, legal, political, and ethical dilemmas.
The systematic destruction of indigenous peoples' land and sacred sites, the poisoning of Native Americans on reservations, Africans in the Niger Delta, African-Americans in Louisiana's "Cancer Alley," Mexicans in the border towns, and Puerto Ricans on the Island of Vieques all have their roots in economic exploitation, racial oppression, devaluation of human life and the natural environment, and corporate greed. [1]
Unequal interests and unequal power arrangements have allowed poisons of the rich to be offered as short-term remedies for poverty of the poor. The last decade has seen numerous developing nations challenge the "unwritten policy" of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries shipping hazardous wastes into their borders. Most people of color communities in the United States and poor nations around the world want jobs and economic development-but not at the expense of public health and the environment.
Why do some communities get dumped on while others escape? Why are environmental regulations vigorously enforced in some communities and not in other communities? Why are some workers protected from environmental and health threats while other workers (such as migrant farm workers) are allowed to be poisoned? How can environmental justice be incorporated into environmental protection? What institutional changes are needed in order to achieve a just and sustainable society? What community organizing strategies and public policies are effective tools against environmental racism?
The paper analyzes the causes and consequences of environmental racism and the strategies environmental justice groups, community-based organizations, and government can use to improve the quality of life for their constituents.
Anatomy of Environmental Racism
The United States is the dominant economic and military force in the world today. The American economic engine has generated massive wealth, high standard of living, and consumerism. This growth machine has also generated waste, pollution, and ecological destruction. The U.S. has some of the best environmental laws in the world. However, in the real world, all communities are not created equal. Environmental regulations have not achieved uniform benefits across all segments of society. [2] Some communities are routinely poisoned while the government looks the other way.
People of color around the world must contend with dirty air and drinking water, and the location of noxious facilities such as municipal landfills, incinerators, hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities owned by private industry, government, and even the military.[3] These environmental problems are exacerbated by racism. Environmental racism refers to environmental policy, practice, or directive that differentially affects or disadvantages (whether intended or unintended) individuals, groups, or communities based on race or color. Environmental racism is reinforced by government, legal, economic, political, and military institutions. Environmental racism combines with public policies and industry practices to provide benefits for the countries in the North while shifting costs to countries in the South. [4]
Environmental racism is a form of institutionalized discrimination. Institutional discrimination is defined as "actions or practices carried out by members of dominant (racial or ethnic) groups that have differential and negative impact on members of subordinate (racial and ethnic) groups." [5] The United States is grounded in white racism. The nation was founded on the principles of "free land" (stolen from Native Americans and Mexicans), "free labor" (African slaves brought to this land in chains), and "free men" (only white men with property had the right to vote). From the outset, racism shaped the economic, political and ecological landscape of this new nation.
Environmental racism buttressed the exploitation of land, people, and the natural environment. It operates as an intra-nation power arrangement--especially where ethnic or racial groups form a political and or numerical minority. For example, blacks in the U.S. form both a political and numerical racial minority. On the other hand, blacks in South Africa, under apartheid, constituted a political minority and numerical majority. American and South African apartheid had devastating environmental impacts on blacks. [6]
Environmental racism also operates in the international arena between nations and between transnational corporations. Increased globalization of the world's economy has placed special strains on the eco-systems in many poor communities and poor nations inhabited largely by people of color and indigenous peoples. This is especially true for the global resource extraction industry such as oil, timber, and minerals. [7] Globalization makes it easier for transnational corporations and capital to flee to areas with the least environmental regulations, best tax incentives, cheapest labor, and highest profit.
The struggle of African Americans in Norco, Louisiana and the Africans in the Niger Delta are similar in that both groups are negatively impacted by Shell Oil refineries and unresponsive governments. This scenario is repeated for Latinos in Wilmington (California) and indigenous people in Ecuador who must contend with pollution from Texaco oil refineries. The companies may be different, but the community complaints and concerns are very similar. Local residents have seen their air, water, and land contaminated. Many nearby residents are "trapped" in their community because of inadequate roads, poorly planned emergency escape routes, and faulty warning systems. They live in constant fear of plant explosions and accidents.
The Bhopal tragedy is fresh in the minds of millions of people who live next to chemical plants. The 1984 poison-gas leak at the Bhopal, India Union Carbide plant killed thousands of people--making it the world's deadliest industrial accident. It is not a coincidence that the only place in the U.S. where methyl isocyanate (MIC) was manufactured was at a Union Carbide plant in in predominately African American Institute, West Virginia. [8] In 1985, a gas leak from the Institute Union Carbide plant sent 135 residents to the hospital.
Institutional racism has allowed people of color communities to exist as colonies, areas that form dependent (and unequal) relationships to the dominant white society or "Mother Country" with regard to their social, economic, legal, and environmental administration. Writing more than three decades ago, Carmichael and Hamilton, in their work Black Power, offered the "internal" colonial model to explain racial inequality, political exploitation, and social isolation of African Americans. Carmichael and Hamilton write:
The economic relationship of America's black communities . . . reflects their colonial status. The political power exercised over those communities go hand in glove with the economic deprivation experienced by the black citizens. Historically, colonies have existed for the sole purpose of enriching, in one form or another, the "colonizer"; the consequence is to maintain the economic dependency of the "colonized." [9]
Institutional racism reinforces internal colonialism. Government institutions buttress this system of domination. Institutional racism defends, protects, and enhances the social advantages and privileges of rich nations. Whether by design or benign neglect, communities of color (ranging from the urban ghettos and barrios to rural "poverty pockets" to economically impoverished Native American reservations and developing nations) face some of the worst environmental problems. The most polluted communities are also the communities with crumbling infrastructure, economic disinvestment, deteriorating housing, inadequate schools, chronic unemployment, high poverty, and overloaded health care systems.
The Quest for Environmental Justice
The environmental justice movement has its roots in the United States. However, in just two decades, this grassroots movement has spread across the globe. The call for environmental justice can be heard from the ghetto of Southside Chicago to the Soweto township. The environmental justice movement has come a long way since its humble beginning in 1982 in Warren County, North Carolina where a PCB landfill ignited protests and over 500 arrests. The Warren County protests provided the impetus for a 1983 U.S. General Accounting Office study, Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities. [10] That study revealed that three out of four of the off-site, commercial hazardous waste landfills in Region 4 (which comprises eight states in the southern U.S.) were located in predominantly African-American communities, although African-Americans made up only 20% of the region's population.
The protests also led the Commission for Racial Justice to produce 1987 Toxic Waste and Race, the first national study to correlate waste facility sites and demographic characteristics. [11] Race was found to be the most potent variable in predicting where these facilities were located--more powerful than poverty, land values, and home ownership.
In 1990, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality chronicled the convergence of two social movements--social justice and environmental movements--into the environmental justice movement. [12] African-American environmental activism emerged from the southern United States, the same region that gave birth to the modern civil rights movement. What started out as local and often isolated community-based struggles against toxics and facility siting blossomed into a multi-issue, multi-ethnic, and multi-regional movement.
The 1991 First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit was probably the most important single event in the movement's history. The Summit broadened the environmental justice movement beyond its anti-toxics focus to include issues of public health, worker safety, land use, transportation, housing, resource allocation, and community empowerment. [13] The meeting also demonstrated that it is possible to build a multi-racial grassroots movement around environmental and economic justice.
Held in Washington, DC, the four-day Summit was attended by over 1,000 grassroots and national leaders from around the world. Delegates came from all fifty states including Alaska and Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, and the Marshall Islands. People attended the Summit to share their action strategies, redefine the environmental movement, and develop common plans for addressing environmental problems affecting people of color in the United States and abroad.
On October 27, 1991, Summit delegates adopted 17 "Principles of Environmental Justice." These principles were developed as a guide for organizing, networking, and relating to government nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). By June 1992, Spanish and Portuguese translations of the Principles were being used and circulated by NGOs and environmental justice groups at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
Environmental Justice Framework
The dominant environmental protection paradigm manages, regulates, and distributes risks. It also institutionalizes unequal enforcement, trades human health for profit, places the burden of proof on the "victims" and not the polluting industry, legitimates human exposure to harmful chemicals, pesticides, and hazardous substances, promotes "risky" technologies, exploits the vulnerability of economically and politically disenfranchised communities, subsidizes ecological destruction, creates an industry around risk assessment and risk management, delays cleanup actions, and fails to develop pollution prevention as the overarching and dominant strategy.
The U.S. EPA defines environmental justice as the "fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies. Fair treatment means that no group of people, including racial, ethnic, or socio-economic groups should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, municipal, and commercial operations or the execution of federal, state, local, and tribal programs and policies." [14]
In 1992, the U.S. EPA published Environmental Equity: Reducing Risks for All Communities--the first time the agency embarked on a systematic examination of environmental risks to communities of color. [15] Environmental equity may mean different things to different people. Equity is distilled into three broad categories: procedural, geographic, and social equity.
Procedural equity refers to the "fairness" question: the extent that governing rules, regulations, evaluation criteria, and enforcement are applied uniformly across the board and in a nondiscriminatory way. Unequal protection might result from nonscientific and undemocratic decisions, exclusionary practices, public hearings held in remote locations and at inconvenient times, and use of English-only material as the language to communicate and conduct hearings for non-English speaking publics.
Geographic equity refers to location and spatial configuration of communities and their proximity to environmental hazards, noxious facilities, and locally unwanted land uses (LULUs) such as landfills, incinerators, sewer treatment plants, lead smelters, refineries, and other noxious facilities. For example, unequal protection may result from land-use decisions that determine the location of residential amenities and disamenities. Unincorporated, poor, and communities of color often suffer a "triple" vulnerability of noxious facility siting.
Social Equity assesses the role of sociological factors (race, ethnicity, class, culture, life styles, political power, etc.) on environmental decision making. Poor people and people of color often work in the most dangerous jobs, live in the most polluted neighborhoods, and their children are exposed to all kinds of environmental toxins on the playgrounds and in their homes.
The environmental justice framework rests on developing tools, strategies, and policies to eliminate unfair, unjust, and inequitable conditions and decisions. The framework attempts to uncover the underlying assumptions that may contribute to and produce differential exposure and unequal protection. It brings to the surface the ethical and political questions of "who gets what, when, why, and how much." Some general characteristics of this framework include the following:
The environmental justice framework adopts a public health model of prevention (i.e., elimination of the threat before harm occurs) and the precautionary principle as the preferred strategy.
The environmental justice framework shifts the burden of proof to polluters/dischargers who do harm, who discriminate, or who do not give equal protection to people of color, low-income persons, and other "protected" classes or vulnerable populations.
The environmental justice framework allows disparate impact and statistical weight or an "effect" test, as opposed to "intent," to infer discrimination.
The environmental justice framework redresses disproportionate impact through "targeted" action and resources. In general, this strategy targets resources where environmental and health problems are greatest (as determined by some ranking scheme but not limited to quantitative risk assessment).
The environmental justice paradigm embraces a holistic approach to formulating environmental health policies and regulations, developing risk reduction strategies for multiple, cumulative and synergistic risks, ensuring public health, enhancing public participation in environmental decision-making, promoting community empowerment, building infrastructure for achieving environmental justice and sustainable communities, ensuring interagency cooperation and coordination, developing innovative public/private partnerships and collaboratives, enhancing community-based pollution prevention strategies, ensuring community-based sustainable economic development, and developing geographically-oriented community-wide programming.
Dumping on the Poor
Hazardous waste generation and international movement of hazardous waste still pose some important health, environmental, legal, and ethical dilemmas. The "unwritten" policy of targeting Third World nations for waste trade received international media attention in 1991. Lawrence Summers, at the time he was chief economist of the World Bank, shocked the world and touched off an international firestorm when his confidential memorandum on waste trade was leaked. Summers writes: "'Dirty' Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs?" [16] Between 1989 and 1994, an estimated 2,611 metric tons of hazardous waste was exported from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries to non-OECD countries. [17]
Transboundary Waste Trade Conventions. In a response to the growing exportation of hazardous wastes into their borders, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the G-77 nations mobilized to pass two important international agreements. [18] On January 30, 1991, the Pan-African Conference on Environment and Sustainable Development in Bamako, Mali adopted the Bamako Convention on the Ban of the Import into Africa and the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous wastes within Africa or the Bamako Convention. [19]
The G-77 nations were instrumental in amending the Basel Convention to include Decision II/12, despite opposition from the United States. On September 1995, the third Conference of Parties to the Basel Convention (COP III) approved an amendment that would ban the export of hazardous wastes from highly industrialized countries (specifically OECD countries and Lichtenstein) to all other countries. [20] While Bamako and Basel may have made certain dumping formally illegal, in practice they have not prevented the transboundary movement of hazardous waste to developing countries. Loopholes still allow hazardous wastes to enter countries that do not have the resources or infrastructure to handle the wastes. For example, Karliner reports that "products such as pesticides and other chemicals banned or severely restricted by the United States, Western Europe and Japan because of their acute toxicity, environmental persistence or carcinogenic qualities are still regularly sent to the Third World." [21] Having laws or treaties on the books and enforcing them are two different things.
Whether at home or abroad, environmental racism disadvantages people of color while providing advantages and privileges for whites. A form of illegal "exaction" forces people of color to pay costs of environmental benefits for the public at large. The question of who pays and who benefits from the current industrial and development policies is central to any analysis of environmental racism.
U.S.-Mexico Border Ecology. The conditions surrounding the more than 1,900 maquiladoras, assembly plants operated by American, Japanese, and other foreign countries, located along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border may further exacerbate the waste trade. The industrial plants use cheap Mexican labor to assemble imported components and raw material and then ship finished products back to the United States. Over a half million Mexican workers are employed in the maquiladoras.
All along the Lower Rio Grande River Valley maquiladoras dump their toxic wastes into the river, from which 95 percent of the region's residents get their drinking water. [22] In the border cities of Brownsville, Texas and Matamoras, Mexico, the rate of anencephaly---babies born without brains---is four times the national average. Affected families filed lawsuits against 88 of the area's 100 maquiladoras for exposing the community to xylene, a cleaning solvent that can cause brain hemorrhages, and lung and kidney damage.
The Mexican environmental regulatory agency is understaffed and ill-equipped to adequately enforce its laws. Many of the Mexican border towns have now become cities with skyscrapers and freeways. More important, the "brown pallor of these southwestern skies has become a major health hazards." [23]
Radioactive Colonialism and Threatened Native Lands. There is a direct correlation between exploitation of land and exploitation of people. It should not be a surprise to anyone to discover that Native Americans have to contend with some of the worst pollution in the United States. [24] Native American nations have become prime targets for waste trading. [25] The vast majority of these waste proposals have been defeated by grassroots groups on the reservations. However, "radioactive colonialism" is alive and well. Winona LaDuke sums up this "toxic invasion" of Native lands as follows:
While Native peoples have been massacred and fought, cheated, and robbed of their historical lands, today their lands are subject to some of most invasive industrial interventions imaginable. According to the Worldwatch Institute, 317 reservations in the United States are threatened by environmental hazards, ranging from toxic wastes to clearcuts.
Reservations have been targeted as sites for 16 proposed nuclear waste dumps. Over 100 proposals have been floated in recent years to dump toxic waste in Indian communities. Seventy-seven sacred sites have been disturbed or desecrated through resource extraction and development activities. The federal government is proposing to use Yucca Mountain, sacred to the Shone, a dumpsite for the nation's high-level nuclear waste. [26]
Radioactive colonialism operates in energy production (mining of uranium) and disposal of wastes on Indian lands. The legacy of institutional racism has left many sovereign Indian nations without an economic infrastructure to address poverty, unemployment, inadequate education and health care, and a host of other social problems.
In 1999, Eastern Navajo reservation residents filed suit with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to block a permit for uranium mining in Church Rock and Crown Point, New Mexico. The Mohave tribe in California, Skull Valley Goshutes in Idaho, and Western Shoshone in Yucca Mountain, Nevada are fighting the construction of a radioactive waste dumps on their tribal lands.
The threats to indigenous peoples are not solely confined to the United States. Native and indigenous people all cross the globe are threatened with extinction due to the greed of mining and oil companies and "development genocide." Sociologist Al Gedicks' 2001 book Resource Rebels: Native Challenges to Mining and Oil Corporations traces the development of grassroots multiracial transnational movement that is countering this form of environmental racism. [27] Over 5,000 members of the U'Wa tribe of Colombia have organized to prevent Occidental from drilling on sacred U'Wa land.
The Threat from Military Toxics. Private industry does not have a monopoly on ecological threats to communities of color. War and military activities are also big players. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has left its nightmarish nuclear weapons garbage on Native lands and the Pacific Islands. In fact, "over the last 45 years, there have been 1,000 atomic explosions on Western Shoshone land in Nevada, making the Western Shoshone the most bombed nation on earth." [28]
The Marshall Islands residents live under a constant threat from radioactive contamination from weapons testing. Many island residents were uprooted, relocated, and displaced from their homeland-never to be fully compensated for their losses. For decades, island residents have waged a campaign for reparations from the U.S. government.
The military has also spoiled pristine lands in Alaska. Over 648 U.S. military installations, both active and abandoned, in Alaska are polluting the land, groundwater, wetlands, streams and air with extensive fuel spill, pesticides, solvents, PCBs, dioxins, munitions, and radioactive materials. Many of these military installations are in close proximity to Alaska Native villages and traditional hunting and fishing areas. Military toxics threaten the way of life of Alaska Natives. [29]
Residents on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico are engaged in a heated battle against the U.S. Navy. The tiny island is inhabited by 9,000 residents who are bordered on both sides by the Navy. The Navy has used the U.S. commonwealth island as a bombing range since 1941. In 1999, a stray Marine Corps bomb killed a civilian security guard. [30] Over 600 protesters have been arrested. Opponents contend that the bombing exercises threaten the environment and health of island residents. Several studies point to health-problems which are directly related to the level of noise coming from the ship-to-shore shelling of Vieques. [31]
Residential Apartheid and Discriminatory Zoning
In the real world, all communities are not created equal. Government and industry are major perpetrators of environmental injustice. [32] Racism is a potent factor in sorting people into their physical environment. Racism influences land use, housing patterns, and infrastructure development. [33]
Zoning is probably the most widely applied mechanism to regulate and use. Zoning laws broadly define land for residential, commercial, or industrial uses, and may impose narrower land-use restrictions (e.g., minimum and maximum lot size, number of dwellings per acre, square feet and height of buildings, etc.).
Exclusionary zoning has been used to zone against something rather than for something. On the other hand, "expulsive" zoning has pushed out residential and allowed "dirty" industries to invade communities. Largely the poor, people of color, and renters inhabit the most vulnerable communities. With or without zoning, deed restrictions or other devices, various groups are unequally able to protect their environmental interests. More often than not, people of color communities get shortchanged in the neighborhood protection game. Race still plays a significant part in distributing public "benefits" and public "burdens" associated with economic growth. The roots of racial discrimination are deep and have been difficult to eliminate.
Racism in the United States
Apartheid-type housing and development policies in the U.S. have resulted in limited mobility, reduced neighborhood options, decreased environmental choices, and diminished job opportunities for people of color. Home ownership is still a major part of the "American Dream." Housing discrimination contributes to the physical decay of inner-city neighborhoods and denies a substantial segment of African Americans and other people of color a basic form of wealth accumulation and investment through home ownership. [34]The number of African American homeowners would probably be higher in the absence of discrimination by lending institutions. Only about 59 percent of the nation's middle-class African Americans own their homes, compared with 74 percent of whites. [35]
Eight out of every ten African Americans live in neighborhoods where they are in the majority. Residential segregation decreases for most racial and ethnic groups with additional education, income, and occupational status. However, this scenario does not hold true for African Americans. African Americans, no matter what their educational or occupational achievement or income level, are exposed to higher crime rates, less effective educational systems, high mortality risks, more dilapidated surroundings, and greater environmental threats because of their race. For example, in the heavily populated South Coast air basin of the Los Angeles area, it is estimated that over 71 percent of African Americans and 50 percent of Latinos reside in areas with the most polluted air, while only 34 percent of whites live in highly polluted areas. [36]
It has been difficult for millions of Americans in segregated neighborhoods to say "not in my backyard" (NIMBY) if they do not have a backyard. Nationally, 46.3 percent of African Americans and 36.2 percent of Latinos own their homes compared to over two-thirds of the nation as a whole. Homeowners are the strongest advocates of the NIMBY positions taken against locally unwanted land uses or LULUs such as the construction of garbage dumps, landfills, incinerators, sewer treatment plants, recycling centers, prisons, drug treatment units, and public housing projects. Generally, white communities have greater access than people of color communities when it comes to influencing land use and environmental decision making.
The ability of an individual to escape a health-threatening physical environment is usually related to affluence. However, racial and ethnic barriers complicate this process. The imbalance between residential amenities and land uses assigned to central cities and suburbs cannot be explained by class factors alone. People of color and whites do not have the same opportunities to "vote with their feet" and escape undesirable physical environments.
Institutional racism continues to influence housing and mobility options available to African Americans of all income levels---and is a major factor that influences quality of neighborhoods they have available to them. The "web of discrimination" in the housing market is a result of action and inaction of local and federal government officials, financial institutions, insurance companies, real estate marketing firms, and zoning boards. More stringent enforcement mechanisms and penalties are needed to combat all forms of discrimination.
Some residential areas and their inhabitants are at a greater risk than the larger society from unregulated growth, ineffective regulation of industrial toxins, and public policy decisions authorizing industrial facilities that favor those with political and economic clout. People of color communities are often victims of land-use decision making that mirrors the power arrangements of the dominant society.
Historically, exclusionary zoning (and rezoning) has been a subtle form of using government authority and power to foster and perpetuate discriminatory practices-including environmental planning. Zoning ordinances, deed restrictions, and other land-use mechanisms have been widely used as a "NIMBY" (not in my backyard) tool, operating through exclusionary practices. In Houston, Texas, the only major American city that does not have zoning, NIMBY was replaced with the policy of "PIBBY" (place in blacks back yard). The city government and private industry targeted landfills, incinerators, and garbage dumps for Houston's black neighborhoods for more than five decades. Black neighborhood were rendered "invisible." [37] Racism lowered residents' property values, accelerated physical deterioration, and increased disinvestments in the community. A similar discriminatory facility siting pattern have been discovered in people of color communities across the United States. [38]
Racism in Brazil
Racism is still an important factor in explaining social inequality, political exploitation, social isolation, and health and well being of blacks in Brazil, South Africa, and the United States. Racism plays a major role in sorting people into Brazil's favelas, South Africa's townships, and the United States' ghettos, barrios, and reservations. Racism provides privileges for "whiteness" at the expense of blacks. [39]
Race remains an important indicator of privilege in Brazilian society. Racism maintains "white supremacy" in Brazil. Race is the main factor determining an individual's social and economic position in Brazilian society. [40] Brazilian society still maintains an "unofficial caste system" based on color. In this system, brancos (whites) remain at the top, people of mixed racial ancestry (mulattos, mestios, morenos, coboclos, etc.) occupy the middle sector, and blacks (pretos) occupy the lowest rung. [41] Nearly half of Brazil's 165 million people are of African descent, the largest black population outside Nigeria. Yet, only 6 percent of the population classify themselves as black. Brazil's "racial democracy" is a myth (Astor, 2000).
A visit to the hundreds of favelas or shantytowns of Rio de Janeiro reveals the faces of racism up close and personal. In the early days of settlement, wealthy inhabitants claimed the land near beaches and harbor, leaving the step, inaccessible hillside to the poor. Over one third of Rio's eleven million people live in the poverty-stricken shantytowns perched precariously along the mountainsides in the hills of the metropolis.
Some of the favelas are more than 100 years old. Others are newer. Whether old or new, the problems are the same. Most favela residents are poor and uneducated. Crime and drug trafficking take a heavy toll on residents. While one may find persons of all colors in the favelas, the color most often seen is black. The densely populated favelas are cities within the city where sanitation, water, fire, police, hospitals and health, and transportation services are not guaranteed. Most of the favelas also lack drivable roads and adequate infrastructure (Hart, 2000; Gewertz, 2000). Racism harms the environment and the favela inhabitants. Residents build flimsy houses on the hillsides where the terrain is fragile. Many are killed and injured by frequent landslides.
Racism in South Africa
Section 24 of the South African Constitution states that "Everyone has the right: (a) to an environment that is not harmful to their health or well-being, and (b) to have the environment protected for the benefit of present and future generations." (South African Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, 1996: 7). The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, while speaking directly to the environment, is very serious about "equal protection for all." Nevertheless, blacks in the U.S. and blacks in South African have had to grapple with the legacy of legalized segregation or apartheid and dismantling "separate and unequal."
The environmental and health crisis faced by present-day South African originates through the combination of poor land, forced overcrowding, poverty, importation of hazardous waste, inadequate sewage, dumping of toxic chemical into the rivers, strip mining of coal and uranium, and outdated methods of producing synthetic fuels. Apartheid herded approximately 87 percent of the black population into 13 percent of the country's territory. Such a policy spelled environmental disaster (Kalan, 1994).
Government Response
After much prodding from environmental justice activists and advocates, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) acknowledged its mandate to protection all Americans. The EPA defines environmental justice as: "The fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies. Fair treatment means that no group of people, including racial, ethnic, or socio-economic groups should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, municipal, and commercial operations or the execution of federal, state, local, and tribal programs and policies." [42]
Today, millions of Americans have heightened concern about the threat of exposure to chemical and biological agents. The tragic events of September 11, 2001 (terrorists attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, and the plane crash in Pennsylvania) and the Anthrax scare heightened concern and worry. However, toxic chemical assaults are not new for many people of color who are forced to live next to and often on the fence line with chemical industries that spew their poisons into the air, water, and ground. These residents experience a form of "toxic terror" twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. When chemical accidents occur, government and industry officials tell residents to "shelter in place." In reality, locked doors and closed windows do not block the chemical assault by polluting industries on the nearby communities.
Increased globalization of the world's economy has placed special strains on the eco-systems in many poor communities and poor nations inhabited largely by people of color and indigenous peoples. [43] Globalization makes it easier for transnational corporations and capital to flee to areas with the least environmental regulations, best tax incentives, highest profit, and cheapest labor. [44]
POVERTY AND POLLUTION - GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
Double Burden -- Poverty and Pollution. Poverty and pollution are intricately linked. [45] Poor people are disproportionately exposed to hazards [46] in their environment that in turn makes them sick due to the lack of clean and fresh water, and adequate food, shelter, fuel and air. [47] Poverty impacts health [48] because it determines how much resources poor people have and defines the amount of environmental risks [49] they will be exposed to in their immediate environment. It is the "poorest of the poor", that one-fifth of the world's population living on less than $1 a day and unable to secure adequate food, water, clothing, shelter, and health care, who is most vulnerable to environmental threats. Most of the governments in the poorest part of the world spend around $10 per person per year on health care. [50]
Over 25 percent of all preventable illnesses are directly caused by environmental factors. [51] Almost one third of the global burden of disease falls on the most vulnerable population-children under 5 years of age who constitute no more than 12% of the world's population. Three environmental problems (contaminated drinking water, untreated human excrement, and air pollution) account for 7.7 million deaths annually or 15 percent of the global death toll of 52 million. One in five children in the poorest regions of the world will not live to see their fifth birthday, mainly because of environment-related diseases, i.e., mostly due to malaria, acute respiratory infections or diarrhoea-all of which are largely preventable. This amounts to 11 million childhood deaths a year worldwide. [52]
Inadequate Sanitation. Of the 7.7 million deaths, five million deaths result from poor drinking water, poor sanitation, and lack of infrastructure. More than one billion people in developing countries live without adequate shelter or in unacceptable housing and more than 2.9 billion people have no access to adequate sanitation and all of these are necessary for good health. [53] Lack of sanitary conditions contributes each year to approximately 2 billion diarrhea infections and 4 million deaths, mostly among infants and young children in developing countries. [54] In the United States, inadequate sanitation accounts for 940,000 diarrhea infections and about 900 deaths each year.
Water Poverty. An estimated one-sixth of the world's population (1.1 billion people) remains without access to improved sources of water. More than 1.4 billion people lack access to safe water. Dirty water is the worlds "deadliest" pollutant. [55]
In-Door Air Pollution. Air pollutants adversely affect the health of 4 to 5 billion people worldwide. A growing world population is burning more fossil fuels, emitting more industrial pollution and driving more automobiles. Over 2.7 million annual global deaths can be attributed to air pollution. [56] Two-thirds of the global air-pollution related deaths occur in rural areas, where the burning of biomass fuel. Over 3.5 billion people, mostly in rural areas, are exposed to high level of air pollutants in their homes. An estimated 2 million deaths result from exposure to stove smoke inside their homes. [57]
Access to Clean Energy. More than two billion people in the world today do not have access to sufficient energy to meet their basic needs. Some 80 percent of all energy used in the world comes from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are the main contributors to environmental and health problems. In 1998, new renewable energy accounted for only about 2% of all primary energy consumption globally.
Childhood Lead Poisoning. In most large cities in the developing world the percentage of children affected by lead poisoning is staggering. Motor vehicles account fro up to 90 percent of all airborne lead contamination in urban areas where leaded gasoline is still widely used. Although lead from air pollution causes relatively few deaths, it causes a great deal of disability, particularly among children. According to the Global Lead Network, 47 countries has completed phase-out of leaded gasoline in January 2002. [58] However, many other countries and regions still sue gasoline with high lead content, including Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The World Health Organization estimates the effect of lead poisoning to be about 1 to 3 points of IQ lost for each 10 ug/dl lead level. At higher levels, the effect may be larger. Lead affects almost every organ and system in the body-including the kidneys and the reproductive system. Recent studies supported by NIEHS suggest that a young person's lead burden is not only linked to lower IQ and lower high school graduation rates but to increased delinquency. An estimated 16 percent of juvenile delinquent behavior in the U.S. is attributable to high lead exposure. [59]
Toxic Production. An estimated 40 percent of world deaths can now be attributed to various environmental factors, especially organic and chemical pollutants. Approximately 80,000 different chemicals are now in commercial use with nearly six trillion pounds produced annually in the United States. [60] More than 80% of these chemicals have never been screened to learn whether they cause cancer, much less tested to see if they harm the nervous system, the immune system, the endocrine system or the reproductive system. [61] The current U.S. approach is also not based on real life exposures since people and animals are not exposed to one chemical in isolation, but rather are exposed to an array of toxic chemicals. [62] Of the top 20 chemicals reported to the U.S. Federal EPA under the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) as those released in the largest quantities in 1997, nearly 75 percent are known or suspected neurotoxins.
Pesticide Poisoning. Nearly 3.3 million pounds of pesticide product were exported from the U.S. between 1997 and 2000. [63] The bulk of these products were shipped directly or indirectly to the developing world. Pesticide poisoning continues to be a severe environmental and health problem in developing countries. An estimated 25 million poor farmers and farmworkers suffer from pesticide poisoning each year; hundreds of thousands die. [64] In the U.S. between 3-5 million migrant farm workers labor in the fields at low wages and unsafe, unsanitary, and unjust work conditions.
Cancer and the Environment. Of the 80,000 pesticides and other chemical in use today, 10 percent are recognized as carcinogens. [65] There are more than 8 million Americans who have cancer. [66] Cancer-related deaths in the U.S. increased from 331,000 in 1970 to 521,000 in 1992, with an estimated 30,000 death attributed to chemical exposure. [67] The fraction of cancer deaths caused by occupational exposures vary from four per cent to over 20 per cent due to the lack of data on the carcinogenic potential of most industrial chemicals and the absence of effective public health surveillance systems for occupational disease. [68]
Toxics on the U.S.-Mexico Border. All along the Lower Rio Grande River Valley maquiladoras dump their toxic waste into the river, from which over 95 percent of the region's residents get their drinking water. Shantytowns or colonias are home to 1 of every 5 residents of the 14 Texas counties along the U.S.-Mexico border. Of the 11 million border inhabitants, about 50% live in the three twin cities of: Ciudad Ju‡rez -- El Paso; Mexicali -- Calexico; and Tijuana -- San Diego. In 1998, about 3,000 maquiladoras were in operation within the country of Mexico, of which 2,400 were situated in the border region. In 1997,maquiladoras employed more than 900,000 people working at more than 3,000 plants, mainly along the border. Heavy exposure to toxics is not limited to workers. The maquiladoras produce large quantities of hazardous waste, little of which finds it way back to the country of origin for proper disposal. In addition, the air and water of local residential communities is fouled by toxic emissions in the air and untreated industrial waste.
POVERTY AND POLLUTION IN THE UNITED STATES
Toxic Foods. The United States has one of the safest food supplies in the world. Still, Food borne diseases cause approximately 76 million illnesses, 325 000 hospitalizations, and 5 000 deaths in the U.S. each year. [69] Known food borne pathogens account for 14 million of the illnesses, 60,000 hospitalizations and 1,800 deaths. [70] Unknown agents account for approximately 81% of food borne illnesses and hospitalizations and 64% of deaths. [71]
Number One Environmental Threat to Children. In many African cities, childhood lead poisoning can be as high as 90 percent. Even in the United States, lead poisoning continues to be the number one environmental health threat to children, especially poor children, children of color, and children living in inner cities. [72] Lead poisoning affects an estimated 890,000 American preschoolers or 4.4 percent of the under 5 age group. [73] African children are five times more likely to be poisoned than white children. Some 22 percent of African American children living in pre-1946 housing are lead poisoned, compared with 5.6 percent of white children and 13 percent of Mexican American living in older homes.
Geography of Air Pollution. The number of automobiles is increasing three times faster than the rate of population growth. According to National Argonne Laboratory researchers, 57 percent of whites, 65 percent of African Americans, and 80 percent of Hispanics live in 437 counties with substandard air quality. [74] In the heavily populated Los Angeles air basin, the South Coast Air Quality Management District estimates that 71 percent of African Americans and 50 percent of Latinos live in areas with the most polluted air, compared to 34 percent of whites. Air pollution costs Americans $10 to $200 billion a year. [75]
Asthma Epidemic. The number of asthma sufferers doubled from 6.7 million in 1980 to 17.3 million in 1998. [76] Over 4.8 asthma sufferers are children. [77] Asthma hits poor, inner-city dwellers, and people of color hardest. African Americans and Latino are almost three times more likely than whites to die from asthma. [78] In 1995, more than 5,000 Americans died from asthma. [79] The hospitalization rate for African Americans and Latinos is 3 to 4 times the rate for whites. [80] The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that asthma accounts for more than 10 million lost school days, 1.2 million emergency room visits, 15 million outpatient visits, and over 500,000 hospitalizations each year. Asthma cost Americans over $14.5 billion in 2000. [81]
Toxic Wastes and Race. Nationally, three out of five African Americans and Latino Americans live in communities with abandoned toxic waste sites. [82] Discrimination influences land use, housing patterns, and infrastructure development. Zoning ordinances, deed restrictions, and other land-use mechanisms have been widely used as a "NIMBY" [83] (not in my backyard) tool, operating through exclusionary practices. [84] The U.S. General Accounting Office estimates that there are between 130,000 and 450,000 brownfields [85] (abandoned waste sites) scattered across the urban landscape from New York to California. Most of these brownfields are located in or near low-income, working class, and people of color communities. [86]
Toxic Housing. A 2000 study by The Morning News and the University of Texas-Dallas found that some 870,000 of the 1.9 million (46 percent) housing units for the poor, mostly minorities, sit within about a mile of factories that reported toxic emissions to the Environmental Protection Agency. [87] Homeowners have been the most effective groups to use "NIMBY" (Not in My Back Yard) tactics and practices in keeping locally unwanted land uses (LULUs) out of their back yards and communities. However, racial discrimination prevents millions of people of color from enjoying the advantages of home ownership. A little over 46 percent of African Americans and Latinos own their homes compared with 73 percent of whites in 1999. If blacks and Hispanics owned homes at the same rate as whites of similar age and income, their homeownership rates would have been 61 percent in 1998 versus 72 percent for whites. [88] African American and Latino American households, on average, must pay discrimination "tax" of roughly $3,700. [89]
Toxic Schools. More than 600,000 students in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Michigan and California were attending nearly 1,200 public schools that are located within a half mile of federal Superfund or state-identified contaminated sites. [90] No state except California has a law requiring school officials to investigate potentially contaminated property and no federal or state agency keeps records of public or private schools that operate on or near toxic waste or industrial sites. [91]
Toxic Jobs. Farm work is the second most dangerous occupation in the United States. Farm workers suffer from the highest rate of chemical injuries of any workers in the United States. EPA estimates that pesticide exposure causes farmworkers and their families to suffer between 10,000 to 20,000 immediate illnesses annually, and additional thousands of illnesses later in life. [92] Of the 25 most heavily used agricultural pesticides, 5 are toxic to the nervous system; 18 are skin, eye, or lung irritants, 11 have been classified by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as cancer-causing; 17 cause genetic damage; and 10 cause reproductive problems (in test of laboratory animals). [93] Annual use of the pesticides causing each of these types of health problems totals between one and four hundred million pounds. [94]
Farms employing less than 10 workers are exempt from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Over 85% of migrant farm workers work on farms with fewer than 10 employees. Over 80% of migrant farm workers in the U.S. are Latinos. An estimated 250,000 children of farm workers in the U.S. migrate each year, and 90,000 of them migrate across an international borders; half of all migrant children have worked in fields still wet with pesticide and more than one third have been sprayed directly; over 72.8% of migrant children are completely without health insurance.
An estimated of 137 American workers die from job-related diseases every day. [95] This is more than eight times the number of workers who die from job-related accidents. Fear of unemployment acts as a potent incentive for many workers to stay in and accept jobs that are health threatening. This practice amounts to "economic blackmail." Workers are often forced to choose between unemployment and a job that may result in risks to their health, their family's health, and the health of their community.
The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that more than half of the country's 22,000 sewing shops violate minimum wage and overtime laws. [96] Many of these workers labor in dangerous conditions including blocked fire exits, unsanitary bathrooms, and poor ventilation. Government surveys also reveal that 75% of U.S. garment shops violate safety and health laws. [97]
Military Toxics. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has left its nightmarish nuclear weapons garbage on Native lands and the Pacific Islands. In fact, "over the last 45 years, there have been 1,000 atomic explosions on Western Shoshone land in Nevada, making the Western Shoshone the most bombed nation on earth." [98] Over 648 U.S. military installations, both active and abandoned, in Alaska are polluting the land, groundwater, wetlands, streams and air with extensive fuel spill, pesticides, solvents, PCBs, dioxins, munitions, and radioactive materials. Many of these military installations are in close proximity to Alaska Native villages and traditional hunting and fishing areas. Military toxics threaten the way of life of Alaska Natives.
The U.S. Navy has used the tiny island of Vieques, Puerto Rico as a bombing range since 1941. [99] Fifty years of military exercises including the use of bombs, artillery shells, depleted uranium ordnance, and napalm have left local communities with serious health problems and destroyed ecosystems. Nearly three-fourths of the island's 9,000 residents live in poverty. Soils are degraded and contaminated, and both Navy and independent testing of bombing areas have found at least 10 toxic constituents including metals, benzene, and chloroform.
Radioactive Colonialism. There is a direct correlation between exploitation of land and exploitation of people. It should not be a surprise to anyone to discover that Native Americans have to contend with some of the worst pollution in the United States. Native American nations have become prime targets for waste trading. [100] The vast majority of these waste proposals have been defeated by grassroots groups on the reservations. However, "radioactive colonialism" is alive and well. Winona LaDuke sums up this "toxic invasion" of Native lands as follows:
While Native peoples have been massacred and fought, cheated, and robbed of their historical lands, today their lands are subject to some of most invasive industrial interventions imaginable. According to the Worldwatch Institute, 317 reservations in the United States are threatened by environmental hazards, ranging from toxic wastes to clearcuts.
Reservations have been targeted as sites for 16 proposed nuclear waste dumps. Over 100 proposals have been floated in recent years to dump toxic waste in Indian communities. Seventy-seven sacred sites have been disturbed or desecrated through resource extraction and development activities. The federal government is proposing to use Yucca Mountain, sacred to the Shone, a dumpsite for the nation's high-level nuclear waste. [101]
Radioactive colonialism operates in energy production (mining of uranium) and disposal of wastes on Indian lands. The legacy of institutional racism has left many sovereign Indian nations without an economic infrastructure to address poverty, unemployment, inadequate education and health care, and a host of other social problems.
Eastern Navajo reservation residents have been struggling to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission form permitting a uranium mine in Church Rock and Crown Point, New Mexico. The Mohave tribe in California, Skull Valley Goshutes in Idaho, and Western Shoshone in Yucca Mountain, Nevada are currently fighting proposals to build radioactive waste dumps on their tribal lands. Native and indigenous people all cross the globe are threatened with extinction due to the greed of mining and oil companies and "development genocide." A growing grassroots multiracial transnational movement has emerged to counter this form of environmental racism. [102]
Climate Justice. Climate justice looms as major environmental justice issue of the 21st century. [103] The United States emits one quarter of the world's gases that cause global warming. People of color are concentrated in cities that failed EPA's ambient air quality standards. Global warming is expected to double the number of cities that currently exceed air quality standards. A study of the fifteen largest American cities found that climate change would increase heat-related deaths by at least 90 percent. People of color are twice as likely to die in a heat wave. Global warming will increase the number of flood, drought and fire occurrences worldwide. Also, low-income people typically lack insurance to replace possessions lost in storms and floods. Only 25 percent of renters have renters insurance. Climate change will reduce discretionary spending because prices will rise across the board. Poor families will have to spend even more on food and electricity, which already represent a large proportion of their budgets. Indigenous people are losing traditional medicinal plants to a warming climate, and subsistence households are suffering from the loss of species that are unable to adapt.
Conclusion
The environmental justice movement emerged in response to environmental inequities, threats to public health, unequal protection, differential enforcement, and disparate treatment received by the poor and people of color. Poverty and environmental degradation are intricately linked and take a heavy toll on billions of people in developing and industrialized countries alike. Thus, any search for sustainable development must address the root causes of both poverty and pollution and seek solutions to this double threat.
Redefinition of Environmental Protection. The environmental justice movement redefined environmental protection as a basic right. It also emphasized pollution prevention, waste minimization, and cleaner production techniques as strategies to achieve environmental justice for all without regard to race, color, national origin, or income. Many countries have environmental and human laws to protect the health and welfare of its citizens-including racial and ethnic groups and indigenous peoples. However, all communities have not received the same benefits from their application, implementation, and enforcement.
Design a Holistic Approach to Environmental Protection. The environmental justice movement has set out clear goals of eliminating unequal enforcement of environmental, civil rights, and public health laws, differential exposure of some populations to harmful chemicals, pesticides, and other toxins in the home, school, neighborhood, and workplace, faulty assumptions in calculating, assessing, and managing risks, discriminatory zoning and land-use practices, and exclusionary policies and practices that limit some individuals and groups from participation in decision making. Many of these problems could be eliminated if existing environmental, health, housing, and civil rights laws were vigorously enforced in a nondiscriminatory way.
Clean and Affordable Energy. Governments should initiate an action program to make available finances and infrastructure to bring clean and affordable and sustainable energy sources to the 2 billion people who lack these energy service by 2012. Governments should adopt a target increasing the global share of new renewable energy sources to 15% by 2010.
Decrease Pesticide Use. Institute protocols and plan to decrease pesticide use, including prohibiting the export of banned or never registered pesticides, implement integrated pest management (IPM), evaluate the hazards posed by pesticide exports, and improve the quality and quantity of information pesticide production, trade and use and publish information in the public record.
Reduce Children's Exposure to Neurotoxicants. Abate lead in older housing; complete phase-out leaded gasoline; target high-risk children, screening, early detection, treatment; increase allocation of medications that help reduce or remove lead; use new, safe lead removal techniques; and dietary improvements.
Strengthen Legislation and Regulations. A legislative approach may be needed where environmental, health, and worker safety laws and regulations are weak or nonexistent. However, laws and regulations are only as good as their enforcement. Unequal political power arrangements also have allowed poisons of the rich to be offered as short term economic remedies for poverty.
Design Strategies to Combat Economic Blackmail. There is little or no correlation between proximity of industrial plants and employment opportunities of nearby residents. Having industrial facilities in one's community does not automatically translate into jobs for nearby residents. Many industrial plants are located at the fence line with the communities. Some are so close that local residents could walk to work. More often than not, poor are stuck with the pollution and poverty, while other people commute in for the industrial jobs.
Close Corporate Welfare Loopholes. Tax breaks and corporate welfare programs have produced few new jobs by polluting firms. However, state-sponsored pollution and lax enforcement have allowed many communities of color and poor communities to become the dumping grounds. Industries and governments (including the military) have often exploited the economic vulnerability of poor communities, poor states, poor nations, and poor regions for their unsound, "risky", and nonsustainable operations. Environmental justice leaders are demanding that no community or nation, rich or poor, urban or suburban, black or white, should be allowed to become a "sacrifice zone" or dumping grounds. They are also pressing governments to live up to their mandate of protecting public health and the environment.
Forge International Cooperative Agreements. Governments will need to take responsibility and develop policies that address global environmental racism. The poisoning of African-Americans in Louisiana's "Cancer Alley," Native Americans on reservations, and Mexicans in the border towns all have their roots in the same economic system, a system characterized by economic exploitation, racial oppression, and devaluation of human life and the natural environment.
Environmental Reparations. The call for environmental and economic justice does not stop at the U.S. borders but extends to communities and nations that have been the "victims" of economic exploitation via the export of hazardous wastes, toxic products, "dirty" industries, indigenous resource extraction, and nonsustainable development practices. Much of the world does not get to share in the benefits of the United States' high standard of living. From energy consumption to the production and export of tobacco, pesticides, and other chemicals, more and more of the world's peoples are sharing the health and environmental burden of the United States' wasteful throw-away culture. Hazardous wastes and "dirty" industries have followed the "path of least resistance." Poor people and poor nations are given a false choice of "no jobs and no development" versus "risky low-paying jobs and pollution."
Building A Global Environmental Justice Movement. The environmental justice movement has begun to build a global network of grassroots groups, community based organizations, university-based resource centers, researchers, scientists, educators, and youth groups. Better communication and funding is needed in every area. Resources are especially scare for environmental justice and anti-racist groups in developing countries. The Internet has proven to be a powerful tool for those groups who that have access to the worldwide web. Erasing the "digital divide" becomes a major strategy to combat environmental racism.
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Robert D. Bullard is the Ware Professor of Sociology and Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center, Clark Atlanta University, 223 James P. Brawley Drive, Atlanta, GA 30314. Phone: (404) 880-6911; Fax: (404) 880-6909; E-mail: ejrc@cau.edu.
1. Robert D. Bullard, Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots. Boston: South End Press, 1993.
2. Robert W. Collin and Robin Morris Collin (1998). "The Role of Communities in Environmental Decisions: Communities Speaking for Themselves," Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation 13: 3789.
3. Laura Westra and Peter S. Wentz (1995). Faces of Environmental Racism: Confronting Issues of Global Justice. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.; Luke Cole and Sheila R. Foster (2001). From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement. New York: New York University Press.
4. Bullard, Confronting Environmental Racism, Chapter 1.
5. Joe R. Feagin and Clarece B. Feagin, Discrimination American Style: Institutional Racism and Sexism. Malabar, FL: Robert E. Krieger (1986); Christopher Bates Doob, Racism: An American Cauldron. New York: Harper Collins, 1993.
6. Alan B. Durning, "Apartheid's Environmental Toll," Worldwatch Paper 95. Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute (May 1990); Heteen Kalan, "Apartheid and the Environment: Polluting the Poor," Toward Freedom (January 1994); South African Department of Environment and Tourism (1996). An Environmental Policy for South Africa: Green Paper for Public Discussion. (October). Posted on the South African government website at www.policy.org.za/govdoc/green_papers/enviro.html.
7. Al Gedicks, Resource Rebels: Native Challenges to Mining and Oil Corporations. Boston: South End Press, 2001; Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land Rights and Life. Boston: South End Press, 1999.; Joshua Karliner, The Corporate Planet: Ecology and Politics in the Age of Globalization. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1997.
8. Robert D. Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000.
9. Stokeley Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power. New York: Vintage, 1967, pp. 16-17.
10. U.S. General Accounting Office, Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1983.
11. Commission for Racial Justice, Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States. New York: United Church of Christ, 1987.
12. Bullard, Dumping in Dixie, Chapter 1.
13. Charles Lee, Proceedings: The First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, New York: United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, 1992.
14. U.S. EPA, Guidance for Incorporating Environmental Justice in EPA's NEPA Compliance Analysis. Washington, DC: EPA, 1998; Council on Environmental Quality, Environmental Justice: Guidance Under the National Environmental Policy Act. Washington, DC: CEQ (December 10, 1997).
15. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Environmental Equity: Reducing Risk for All Communities. Washington, DC: U.S. EPA, 1992.
16. Greenpeace, "The Case for a Ban on All Hazardous Waste Shipment from the United States and Other OECD Member States to Non-OECD States," (June 1993 ), pp. 1-2.
17. Greenpeace, The Database of Known Hazardous Waste Exports from OECD ro Non-OECD Countries. 1989-1994. Washington, DC: Greenpeace, 1994.
18. Rozelia S. Park, "An Examinatioin of International Environmental Racism Through the Lens of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes," Indiana University Law School Journal (1999), Website: www.law.indiana.edu/glsj/vol5/no2/14/14parks.html.
19. Bamako Convention, Bamako Convention on the Ban of The Import into Africa and the Control of Transboundary Movement and Management of Hazardous Wastes Within Africa, opened for signature (Jan. 29, 1991).
20. Mary Tiemann, Congressional Research Service Report to Congress Waste Trade and the Basel Convention: Background and Update (December 30, 1998).
21. Karliner, The Corporate Planet, p. 152.
22. Beatriz Johnston, Hernandez, "Dirty Growth," The New Internationalist (August 1993).
23. Tom Barry and Beth Simms, The Challenge of Cross Border Environmentalism: The U.S.-Mexico Case. Albuquerque, NM: The Inter-Hemispheric Education Resource Center, 1994, p. 37.
24. Valerie Taliman, "Stuck Holding the Nation's Nuclear Waste," Race, Poverty & Environment Newsletter (Fall 1992), pp. 6-9.
25. Al Gedicks, The New Resource Wars: Native and Environmental Struggles Against Multinational Corporations. Boston: South End Press, 1993.
26. Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land Rights and Life. Boston: South End Press, 1999, pp. 2-3.
27. Gedicks, Resource Rebels.
28. LaDuke, All Our Relations, p. 3.
29. Pamela K. Miller, "The War Against Military Toxics in Alaska," in R.D. Bullard, People of Color Environmental Groups Directory 2000. Flint, MI: Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.
30. Jessica Reaves and Mark Thompson (2001). "Vieques Under Fire: Standoff in Puerto Rico," (April 27), posted on TIME.com website: www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8559,107846,00.html.
31. See CNN.com, "Second Day of Protest Greets Vieques Exercise," (April 28, 2001), posted on CNN.com website: www.cnn.com/2001/US/04/28/vieques.protests/.
32. Robert. D. Bullard, Glenn S. Johnson, and Beverly H. Wright. "Confronting Environmental Injustice: It's The Right Thing to Do." Race, Gender & Class, Vol.5, No.1, 1997: 63-79.
33. Robert D. Bullard, J. Eugene Grigsby, and Charles Lee, Residential Apartheid: The American Legacy. Los Angeles: UCLA Center for African American Studies Publication, 1994.
34. Florence W. Roisman, "The Lessons of American Apartheid: The Necessity and Means of Promoting Residential Racial Integration," Iowa Law Review (December 1995): 479-525.
35. Bullard et al., Residential Apartheid.
36. Eric Mann, L.A.'s Lethal Air: New Strategies for Policy, Organizing, and Action Los Angeles: Labor/Community Strategy Center, 1991.
37. See Robert D. Bullard, Invisible Houston: The Black Experience in Boom and Bust. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1987.
38. See Bullard, Dumping in Dixie; Robert D. Bullard, Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1996.
39. Anthony W. Marx, Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of the United States, South Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998; France W. Twine, Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997; Bullard et al., Residential Apartheid.
40. Twine, Racism in a Racial Democracy.
41. Darin J. Davis, Avoiding the Dark: Race and the Forging of National Culture in Modern Brazil. Research in Migratioin and Ethnic Relations. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Co., 1999.
42. U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. Guidance for Incorporating Environmental Justice in EPA's NEPA Compliance Analysis. Washington, DC: USEPA, 1998; See Robert Bullard and Glenn Johnson. "Environmental and Economic Justice: Implications for Public Policy." Journal of Public Management & Social Policy, Vol. 4, No.4, 1998: 137-148.
43. Robert Bullard. "Confronting Environmental Racism in the 21st Century." Paper prepared for the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development Conference on Racism and Public Policy, September 2001, Durban, South Africa. http://www.unrisd.org/racism/a-bullard.htm
44. See Robert D. Bullard. "Environmental Racism Shifts the Costs of Industry to the Poor." Daily Mail & Guardian, August 27, 2001, http://www.mg.co.za/archive/2001aug/features/27aug-environmental.html
45. Robert D. Bullard. Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000.
46. Robert D. Bullard and Beverly H. Wright. "Environmental Justice for All: Community Perspectives on Health and Research Needs." Toxicology and Industrial Health, Vol. 9, No. 5, 1993: 821-841.
47. Robert D. Bullard. "It's not just pollution." Our Planet, Vol.12, No.2, 2001: 22-24.
48. Kenneth Olden. "The Complex Interaction of Poverty, Pollution, Health Status." The Scientist 12(2) 7, February 16, 1998; See NIEHS: Division of Extramural Research and Training: Health Disparities Research, http:www.niehs.nih.gov/dert/programs/translat/hd/ko-art.htm
49. Robert D. Bullard. "It's not just pollution." Our Planet, Vol.12, No.2, 2001: 22-24.
50. Nat Quansah, "Pharmacies of life," Our Planet 12 (2001): 12.
51. Thorbjorn Jagland, "Everything Connects." Our Planet Vol. 12, no. 2 (2001): 7.
52. Leslie Roberts, World Resources 1998-1999. London: Oxford University Press, 1998.
53. Kirit S. Parikh. "Poverty and Environment Turning The Poor Into Agents of Environmental Regeneration." (Working Paper Series). United Nations Development Programme Poverty Related Publications, October 1998. See http:www.undp.org/poverty/publications/wkpaper/wp1
54. Geoffrey Lean. "At A Glance," Our Planet Vol. 12, No. 2 (2001): 16.
55. Ibid.
56. Davis J. Tenenbaum, "Tackling the Big Three," Environmental Health Perspective 106 (May, 1998).
57. Ian Johnson and Kseniya Lvosvsky, "Double Burden," Our Planet 12, no. 2 (2001): 19.
58. Global Lead Network, "Worldwide Phase-Out of Leaded Gasoline," Global Lead Network website at http://www.globalleadnet.org/policy_leg/policy/leadgas_progress.cfn.
59. H. Needleman, J. Reiss, M. tobin, G Biesecker, and J. Greenhouse. "Bone lead levels and delinquent behavior." Journal of American Medical Association 275, 5 (1996).
60. See http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/gary-cn.htm
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid.
63. Al Krebs, "Chemical Poison Exports Abroad Increase in 1997-2000 by 15% from 1992-1996, Including 65 Million pds. Of U.S. Banned Poisons," Agribusiness Examiner No. 142 (February 4, 2002).
64. Geoffrey lean, "At a Glance," Our Planet Vol. 12, No. 2 (2001): 16.
65. Environmental Pollution and Degradation Causes 40 percent of Deaths Worldwide, Cornell Study Finds." Cornell News, September 30, 1998. See http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Sept98/ecodisease.hrs.html.
66. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Environmental Diseases from A to Z. NIH Publication No. 96-4145. http://www.nieehs.nih.gov.
67. Environmental Pollution and Degradation Causes 40 percent of Deaths Worldwide, Cornell Study Finds." Cornell News, September 30, 1998. See http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Sept98/ecodisease.hrs.html.
68. Occupational and Environmental Working Group-Toronto Cancer Prevention Coalition. Preventing Occupational and Environmental Cancer: A Strategy for Toronto, 2001. Also see http://www.uswa.ca/eng/hs&e/prevcancer.pdf.
69. P.S. Mead, L. Slutsker, V. Dietz, L.F. McCaig, J.S. Bresee, C. Shapiro, P.M. Griffin, and R.V. Tauxe, "Food-Related Illness and Death in the United States," Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal 5 (September-October 1999).
70. Ibid.
71. Ibid.
72. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Environmental Diseases from A to Z. NIH Publication No. 96-4145 (1996); NIEHS, "Lead -- The #1 Environmental Hazard to many Children," NIEHS Fact Sheet #8, LEAD (March, 1997). http://www/niehs.nih.gov/oc/factsheets/fslead.htm.
73. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "HHS Helps in Effort to Eliminate Childhood Lead Poisoning," HHS Fact Sheet (March 4, 2002).
74. D. R. Wernett, D. R. & L. A. Nieves. Breathing polluted air: Minorities are disproportionately exposed. EPA Journal, 18: (1992): 16-17.
75. Robert D. Bullard. "Climate Justice and People of Color." http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/climatechgpoc.htm.
76. "Asthma's At-A-Glance 1999." http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/asthma_old/ataglance/default.htm
77. Ibid.
78. Centers for Disease Control, "Asthma: United States, 1980-1990," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 39(1992), pp. 733-735.; See also Robert D. Bullard, Glenn S. Johnson, and Angel O. Torres. Sprawl City: Race, Politics, and Planning in Atlanta, Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000.
79. "Asthma's At-A-Glance." http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/asthma_old/ataglance/default.htm
80. H.P. Mak, H.Abbey, and R.C.Talamo, "Prevalence of Asthma and Health Service Utilization of Asthmatic Children in an Inner City," Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology 70 (1982), pp. 367-372; I.F. Goldstein and A.L. Weinstein, "Air Pollution and Asthma: Effects of Exposure to Short-Term Sulfur Dioxide Peaks," Environmental Research 40 (1986), pp. 332-345; J. Schwartz, D. Gold, D.W. Dockey, S.T. Weiss, and F.E. Speizer, "Predictors of Asthma and Persistent Wheeze in a National Sample of Children in the United States," American Review of Respiratory Disease 142 (1990), pp.555-562; F. Crain, K. Weiss, J. Bijur, et al., "An estimate of the Prevalence of Asthma and Wheezing among Inner-City Children," Pediatrics 94(1994), pp. 356-362.;See also Robert D. Bullard, Glenn S. Johnson, and Angel O. Torres. Race, Equity, and Smart Growth: Why People of Color Must Speak for Themselves. Atlanta, GA: Environmental Justice Resource Center, 2000.
81. "Asthma's At-A-Glance 1999." http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/asthma_old/ataglance/default.htm
82. Commission for Racial Justice. Toxic wastes and race in the United States. New York: United Church of Christ, 1987.
83. Robert D. Bullard and Beverly H. Wright. "The Quest for Environmental Equity: Mobilizing the African-American Community for Social Change." Society and Natural Resources, Vol.3, 1990: 301-311.
84. Robert D. Bullard. "The Legacy of American Apartheid and Environmental Racism." St. John's Journal of Legal Commentary, Vol.9, Issue 2, (Spring 1994): 445-474; See also Robert D. Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality (3rd ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000.
85. R. Twombly. (1997). "Urban uprising." Environmental Health Perspective 105 (July): 696-701.
86. See Robert D. Bullard, Glenn S. Johnson, and Angel O. Torres. Race, Equity, and Smart Growth: Why People of Color Must Speak for Themselves. Atlanta, GA: Environmental Justice Resource Center, 2000.
87. "Study: Public Housing is too Often Located Near Toxic Sites." Dallas Morning News, October 3, 2000. See http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/10/03/toxicneighbors.ap/
88. Robert D. Bullard, Glenn S. Johnson, and Angel O. Torres. Race, Equity, and Smart Growth: Why People of Color Must Speak for Themselves. Atlanta, GA: Environmental Justice Resource Center, 2000.
89. Robert D. Bullard, Glenn S. Johnson, and Angel O. Torres. Race, Equity, and Smart Growth: Why People of Color Must Speak for Themselves. Atlanta, GA: Environmental Justice Resource Center, 2000.
90. Child Proofing Our Communities Campaign. March 2001. Poisoned Schools: Invisible Threats, Visible Actions. Falls Church, VA: Center for Health, Environment and Justice; See also http:www.childproofing.org/mapindex.html.
91. Cat Lazaroff. "Pesticide Exposure Threatens Children at School." Environmental News Service, January 5, 2000.
92. Caroline Cox. "Working With Poisons on the Farm." Journal of Pesticide Reform, Vol. 14, No.3, (Fall 1994): 2-5; U.S. General Accounting Office. Pesticides on Farms: Limited Capability Exists to Monitor Occupational Illnesses and Injuries. Report to the Chairman, Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, U.S. Senate. Washington, D.C. (December 1993).
93. Caroline Cox. "Working With Poisons on the Farm." Journal of Pesticide Reform, Vol. 14, No.3, (Fall 1994): 2-5; A/L. Aspelin. "Pesticide Industry Sales and Usage: 1992 and 1993 Market Estimates. U.S. EPA. Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances." Office of Pesticide Programs. Biological and Economic Analysis Division. Washington, D.C., (June 1994); D.P. Morgan. "Recognition and Management of Pesticide Poisonings. Washington, D.C.: U.S. EPA. Office of Pesticide Programs. Health Effects Division, 1989; U.S. EPA Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances. List of chemicals evaluated for carcinogenic potential. Memo from Reto Engler, senior science advisor, Health Effects Division to Health Division Branch Chiefs, et. al. Washington, D.C.(August 31, 1993); U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Public Health Service. Centers for Disease Control. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances. Microfiche Edition. Sweet, D.V. (ed.). Cincinnati, OH (January 1993).
94. Caroline Cox. "Working With Poisons on the Farm." Journal of Pesticide Reform, Vol. 14, No.3, (Fall 1994): 2-5.
95. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Environmental Diseases from A to Z. NIH Publication No. 96-4145. http://www.nieehs.nih.gov
96. See Sweatshop Watch: Frequently Asked Questions. http://www.sweatshopwatch.org/swatch/questions.html
97. "Sweatshops and Women of Color." http://www.incite-national.org/involve/sweatshops.html.
98. LaDuke, All Our Relations, p. 3.
99. Jessica Reaves and Mark Thompson, "Vieques under Fire: Standoff in Puerto Rico," TIME.com. Teme website at http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,107846,00.html.
100. Al Gedicks. The New Resource Wars: Native and Environmental Struggles Against Multinational Corporations. Boston: South Ends Press, 1993.
101. Winona LaDuke. All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land Rights and Life. Boston: South End Press, 1999, pp. 2-3.
102. Al Gedicks, Resource Rebels: Native Challenges to Mining and Oil Corporations. Boston: South End Press, 2001.
103. Robert D. Bullard. "Climate Justice and People of Color." http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/climatechgpoc.html
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