Up until the 21st century, mainstream discussions of environmentalist issues have frequently been framed as a concern that is either spiritual or survivalist. Concern for the planet’s welfare is regarded as a moral obligation to the very creatures and habitats that have provided the resources that enabled industrial levels of growth and the abundant luxuries of the Global North. Such a perspective of environmentalism overlooks social dimensions which are a critical component in the realization of its ideals. As Alex Steffen and Sarah Rich, the executive editors of online environmentalist journal Worldchanging, have observed, environmental degradation is in itself a social injustice.
“…it’s become glaringly obvious that these [environmental movements and social justice movements] are inextricably linked – that environmental degradation is a civil injustice – and from the junction of the two, the environmental justice movement has emerged.” (Steffen & Rich, 2007)
Green-collar employment consultant Van Jones neatly summarized the questions which environmental justice asks in one question at the Green Festival in Chicago last year: “Who are we going to take with us, and who are we going to leave behind?” As both an environmental advocate and a proponent of social justice, Jones was ultimately concerned about how environmental activism is divided along class lines, where the ‘green demands’ of the upper classes take precedence over the welfare of the lower classes. (Anderson, 2007)
Therefore environmental justice concerns are those in which issues of infrastructure, development, distribution and the availability and quality of resources correspond to a community’s health and well-being.
Consider for example the intense amount of attention given to cap-and-trade systems or emissions trading schemes as policy instruments to encourage industrial sectors to find ways of reducing their greenhouse emissions. Such systems work by creating a financial incentive for emission reductions: companies within a given industrial sector are limited by a cap that limits the total amount of emissions they generate. If such companies cannot meet reduce their emissions, they can purchase emissions permits and those which can successfully reduce emissions can sell their emissions permits for profit.
Ultimately, the goal for all companies is to reduce their emissions at or below cap levels by innovating the techniques and technologies that would enable them to do so in a way that is more cost-effective than purchasing permits.
However, cap-and-trade systems and emissions trading schemes also present the potential for environmental justice, mostly when they are poorly designed or when they result in the inequitable externalization of emissions costs. Because such systems do not take into account the geographical distribution of polluting facilities, it is possible for companies to distribute pollution away from certain communities in a manner that will earn them the most useful political and social capital. The result is a NIMBY effect where pollution becomes densely localized, creating ‘emissions ghettos.’ (Komanoff, 2008)
The NIMBY effect is the “Not in My Backyard” effect, a controversial term which is applied to economic services or civic infrastructure that is perceived to be a benefit, but is deemed undesirable by residents, whether as an aesthetic concern or a health one, and it is the latter one where environmental justice plays. In such cases, health issues arise from the development of city services.
Where cap-and-trade systems present hypothetical cases of environmental injustice arising from the air quality problems that could result from highly localized pollution, the case of development in the South Bronx of New York presents a concrete example of how environmental justice issues play out. In 2001, former film student Majora Carter founded the Sustainable South Bronx project, primarily to oppose the mayor’s plans to shut down the landfill in Staten Island and relocate waste management to Carter’s neighborhood in the South Bronx, a comparatively small area of New York that was already handling 40 percent of the city’s waste management.
While no city can do entirely away with waste management, this plan would have delegated an unjust distribution of the impacts of waste management on a mostly poor, black population.
While, The Sustainable South Bronx’s work was successful, this should not mean that the burden of environmental justice should lie solely upon social activism. A fair and just means of addressing environmental concerns will require effective intervention strategies and just social policies whether at the governmental level or the civic level. A successful social policy on sustainability and environmentalism should require that improvements to communities and the protection of environmental welfare be applied not ‘without discrimination’ as some might wrongheadedly assume, but rather with responsibility and justice.
As environmental journalist Liza Featherstone argues, environmental justice is predicated on the very fact that specific communities and individuals are more affected by environmental problems than others. As such, a non-discrimination policy is just as likely to be unjust as a discriminatory one. A sincere environmental justice policy would require that developmental institutions and government attend to redressing the environmental wrongs in communities that are already badly hit, which more often than not are lower income neighborhoods. This is not an abstract point to be made, as environmental degradation is inextricably linked with poverty.
As Alex Steffen (2005) observes, for the world’s rural poor, the “environment” is where they obtain the resources necessary for basic survival. The degradation of these environments prevents them from ‘leapfrogging’ out of poverty, while for the urban poor, those areas that have become environmental dead zones are usually the last areas to receive the kind of infrastructure development necessary to improving their social and economic welfare. Simply put, environmental justice is not just a matter of social equity, but a matter of intervening for the betterment of the poor.
REFERENCES
Steffen, A. & Rich, S. (2007, May 28) “Principle 17: Environmental Justice.” Worldchanging. Retrieved online from: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//006778.html [November 12, 2008]
Anderson, D. (2007, April 22) “Dispatch from Greenfest Chicago: Van Jones on Green Collar Jobs and Our Shared Future, Part 1.” Green Options. Retrieved online from: http://davidanderson.greenoptions.com/2007/04/22/dispatch-from-greenfest-chicago-van-jones-on-green-collar-jobs-and-our-shared-future-part-i/ [November 12, 2008]
Komanoff, C. (2008, May 13) “National ‘EJ’ Coalition Blasts Cap-and-Trade, Backs Carbon Tax.” Carbon Tax Center. Retrieved online from: http://www.carbontax.org/blogarchives/2008/06/13/national-%E2%80%9Cej%E2%80%9D-coalition-blasts-cap-and-trade-backs-carbon-tax/ [November 12, 2008]