2008

The environmental justice movement: environmental inequalities and "race"

Katia Poneti

1. Environmental inequalities

This contribution aims to provide a contribution to the forum on critical race theory by focusing on a specific theme: that of environmental inequality. It is an unusual topic in the Italian context: it originated and has developed in the United States alongside the environmental justice movement, and includes amongst its leading exponents the African-American sociologist and activist Robert D. Bullard (1). In the view of environmental justice theorists, the environmental protection paradigm adopted in the United States tends to worsen existing inequalities by intensifying them and broadening their impact to the point of impacting the field of environmental protection itself, thus generating a new type of inequality: environmental inequality. The term refers to the unequal distribution of environmental costs: the movement denounces the unequal distribution of industry-related pollution in the U.S. and shows how minority communities bear a disproportionate share of the burden of this pollution with respect to the wider population.

Most areas surrounding polluting plants are inhabited by blacks. According to a study carried out in Detroit's metropolitan area, the percentage of African-Americans living within a radius of one mile from polluting industrial plants is 51%, compared with 31% of whites (out of the total sample), whereas the percentage that lives within a mile from plants for the processing of hazardous waste is 15% for blacks and 3% for whites (2). Furthermore, an analysis of the socio-demographic characteristics of the populations living close to four major landfills for dangerous waste in different states has demonstrated a marked "negative privilege" for blacks: 90% of the population living close to the Chemical Waste Management landfill (Alabama) is black, and 100% of this same population lives under the poverty line. Thirty-eight percent of the population living near the SCA Service landfill (South Carolina) is black; in this case, too, the entire population lives under the poverty line. 52% of the population living in the vicinity of the Industrial Chemical Co. landfill (South Carolina) is black, with 92% living under the poverty line. Finally, 66% of the population living in the vicinity of the Warren County PCB Landfill (North Carolina) is black, and 90% of these individuals live under the poverty line (3). To correctly read these data it is necessary to bear in mind that blacks represented one-fifth of the region's population at the time that the survey was carried out.

2. Theory and practice of the environmental justice movement: democracy and rights

Areas populated mainly by black or Hispanic communities, in fact, are those chosen as locations for polluting plants, be they industrial or waste management plants: this was the conclusion reached in an enquiry carried out in 1987 by the Commission for Racial Justice (4), which indicated race, regardless of social class, as the decisive factor in the choice of location for polluting sites. The Commission's executive director, Benjamin Chavis, used the term "environmental racism" to refer to the phenomenon (5).

The environmental justice movement's chief demand is for equality between blacks and whites in bearing the burden of pollution, i.e. an equal redistribution of the negative consequences of economic development. Some activists and supporters of environmental justice keep their distance from the mainstream environmental movement, from which they claim to be different because of the attention they focus on the social dimension of the environment. In other words, environmental protection must be not only the protection of wilderness but also of the environment in which people live, and of people within their environments. The movement's claims are laid out in the Principles of Environmental Justice, drafted in 1991 on occasion of the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in Washington, DC. The various "souls" of environmentalism are visible in this text: not only does it discuss respect for Mother Earth and acknowledge the interdependence of the different species, and that between the latter and the environment; it also puts forward other more broadly social claims such as the non-discriminatory implementation of environmental public policies, the right of communities to participate in decisions that will affect them, and the right of all workers to a healthy working environment.

Environmental justice principles are presented as claims to rights. They start by affirming the general right to freedom from environmental destruction and then proceed with the right to an ethical, balanced, and responsible use of land and renewable resources and the right, defined as fundamental, to clean air, land, water, and food, alongside the above-mentioned rights to political participation and healthy working environments. Analyses carried out by environmental justice scholars and activists have identified the reasons why communities of color shoulder a greater amount of pollution (6). The closeness of the polluting plants to neighborhoods inhabited by communities of color can be explained first of all by taking into account the phases of industrial development and the black population's impoverished conditions: homes built near factories were initially occupied by white factory-workers, who later left the area thanks to improved economic conditions, and were subsequently inhabited by blacks. Alternatively, houses for blacks were built close to the industries since land was cheaper in those areas. In other cases, polluting plants were built in areas already inhabited by minority communities.

The criteria used to select locations suitable for the construction of polluting plants encourage the choice of areas inhabited by the poorest populations, and those of color. Among these criteria is the compatibility of the pollution with the area's prior uses, which makes some areas preferable to others for the construction of polluting plants: the criterion means that already-polluted areas tend to attract further pollution. But the factor that makes areas populated by minorities especially attractive for polluters is the fact that communities of color have less capacity, vis-à-vis the white middle and upper classes, to protest and organize opposition movements. Difficult economic conditions help make communities of color an easy target for the pollution industry's choices of location: the hope of obtaining jobs and other economic benefits makes people of color more tolerant than whites of the prospect of living close to a polluting plant.

Environmental justice theorists deem the lack of political power of blacks to be the main reason for the existence of public policies that are essentially, even if not formally, discriminatory: the fact that the entities making decisions on environmental matters are composed mostly of whites explains why the interests of the black community are considered subordinate to those of whites. In addition, blacks have less resources at disposition, both economic and cultural, for criticizing and actively opposing environmental decisions that work against their interests.

To tackle environmental inequality, the environmental justice movement has followed in the footsteps of the civil rights movement. One tool of struggle has been the lodging of court appeals, and several class action suits have marked fundamental passages in the movement's history. These suits have asked judges to acknowledge that the right of blacks to a healthy environment is equal to that of whites, and have taken place alongside the development of a network of grassroots community organizations that focus around the theme of environmental inequality to claim greater social justice (7). But the movement's foremost political demand is for greater democracy with respect to decision-making processes regarding environmental matters: it wants to see not only greater participation by black communities in the decision-making processes that affect them, and therefore more participatory democracy, but also a more balanced presence of blacks within the bodies that make decisions on environmental matters.

3. Looking at the environmental justice movement through the lens of critical race theory

The environmental justice movement certainly brings the concept of race into play in a political sense (8), by using it to face up to and tackle the relationship of subordination that exists between blacks and whites in the United States, also with relation to health care and environmental protection. It is interesting to compare some of the concepts developed by critical race theorists with the use that the environmental justice movement makes of the concept of race: the former can be particularly helpful for reading between the lines of the movement's arguments to better grasp the various meanings that it gives to this concept.

Neil Gotanda has analyzed the various ways in which the term "race" can be used (and has actually been used in U.S. court decisions) (9). He compares the notion of race used in a formal sense to those used in the historical and cultural senses, and argues that while the formal use of the notion (for example, in the color-blindness principle (10), i.e. the indifference of law to race) can end up concealing real inequalities, its use in a historical sense (11) makes it possible to take account of the real inequalities that are historically rooted in U.S. society. The concept of race in a cultural sense can go even further, pointing up typical features of black culture and giving weight to the cultural difference as a value in itself within the context of a pluralist society (as pointed out by Lucia Re elsewhere in this forum).

The environmental justice movement uses the concept of race in all three senses. Race in a formal sense is the meaning used before judges, who are asked to acknowledge the right, equal for blacks and whites, to live pollution-free. Blacks challenge the "negative privilege" granted to them by way of political decisions regarding the location of polluting sites, and claim equal rights through an appeal to the color-blindness principle, contrasting the latter with political choices that take the "path of least resistance", i.e. that privilege areas promising weaker social opposition to the polluting site.

Race in a historical sense is used to critique the criteria by which polluting sites are selected. Communities of color become targets of polluters not only because they have fewer resources with which to oppose political decisions, but also because the neutral color-blind selection criteria for the location of polluting sites results in the choice of areas inhabited by black communities, since the criterion used is that of the previous use of the land, meaning that pollution tends to be concentrated in areas where it is already present. Notwithstanding this criterion of collective utility, which would seem to bring maximum advantage to society in an apparently neutral manner, the reality is exposed through a historical understanding of race: the most polluted areas are those inhabited by the poorest, generally black, populations. Despite the abandonment of the "separate but equal" doctrine born with the Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka decision of 1954, housing segregation has never ceased in the United States. This phenomenon is accompanied by that of sprawl in many U.S. cities, i.e. the irrational expansion of city outskirts, where scattered housing, lacking access to utilities or shops, is constructed for the poorest communities (12).

The environmental justice movement uses the notion of race in a cultural sense to critique what they define as the mainstream environmental movement, and to propose a new understanding of the term environment. Black culture can enrich this concept with a greater attention towards its social and community dimension: a consideration of the urban environment, and domestic and working environments, as places to be protected from various forms of pollution completes the concept of environment, making it more suitable for a pluralist society and increasing its potential as a tool for societal critique.

While all three notions involve claims of equality against discriminatory policies, the different understandings of the concept of race are functional to three different understandings of the concept of equality: equality in a formal sense, equality in a substantive sense and equality in the sense of equal political participation. While the first two have to do with the struggle for rights, the latter belongs to the expansion of democracy. The three understandings of the concept of race are not in conflict with one another in the arguments of the environmental justice movement, but instead tend to present a single picture that highlights the wealth and plurality of needs for equality.

In deciding on cases that denounce environmental inequalities, U.S. courts have mainly based themselves on the understanding of race in the formal sense. Environmental justice activists have tried to assert environmental inequality in the courts through references to both environmental and civil rights legislation (13). Environmental legislation has made it possible to have judgments grounded on local, state or federal statutes and regulations, and discrimination has been inferred based on the manner in which decisions were reached, the extent of public participation, or how the scientific or technical basis of the decision was derived. Environmental impact assessments and community involvement, which are provided for by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), have been used to dispute the validity of plans that involve unequal impacts on populations of color.

Civil rights legislation has been invoked to denounce environmental inequalities as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause or of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Cases based on the Equal Protection Clause have been rejected by courts based on the argument that the plaintiff must demonstrate that the governmental decision being challenged is the result of intentional discrimination against the community. Furnishing such proof has proved exceedingly burdensome, indeed impossible, in a context where discrimination is institutionalized and structural: discrimination here is not an individual event which can affect individuals in a particular situation, but a type of discrimination deriving from systematic racial subordination. The formal meaning of race used by courts has tended to deny any such "link" by circumscribing racism to a subjective prejudice, thus making it impossible to use legal instruments to tackle violations of rights that are part of systematic discriminations (14).

Cases filed under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act had initially fared better. In order to implement this legislation, in fact, many federal agencies issued regulations which, rather than requiring proof of intentional discrimination, considered demonstration of a discriminatory or differentiated impact sufficient proof that a decision went against the law. A number of class actions were won by organized communities of color, until the Alexander v. Sandoval decision (15), where the Supreme Court ruled that private individuals may not file lawsuits under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, thus putting an end to the possibility of using this means to assert environmental inequalities.

4. Race as a diagnostic tool: the need for a new paradigm for the environment

As Thomas Casadei points out in his introduction to this forum, the idea of race as a "diagnostic tool" is central to the arguments elaborated by critical race theorists. Race taken in the historical sense has a revealing effect on inequalities that color-blind policies, according to which good policies are those that are indifferent to race, suppress or conceal. Barbara Flagg uses the metaphor of "seeing" (16) - "I was blind before, now I can see" - to indicate how, by taking a certain perspective or using a specific tool, we can see what would otherwise remain hidden.

Considerations on the use of the concept of race as a diagnostic tool can help us understand how much critique is involved in the environmental inequalities debate: race becomes an analytical tool with which to understand how the environmental protection paradigm currently reigning in the United States works. The environmental justice movement pinpoints race as the criterion according to which environmental risks are distributed: thus race allows us to see environmental inequality. As shown by data from environmental inequalities studies, and contrary to what has been argued by Ulrich Beck (17) smog is not democratic, in the sense that it does not uniformly affect the whole population, but prefers that with a dark skin and fewer resources.

This revealing action makes it possible to analyze environmental policies in a new way, and to grasp the fundamental role of the color-blindness principle upon which they are based. As already mentioned, an important criterion of land planning and environmental protection is that of the land's previous use: polluting plants tend to be located in areas that are already polluted so that pollution can be concentrated only in some areas. The theoretical assumption that underlies environmental policies was defined by the economist John Dales at the end of the 1960s as the separate-facilities criterion (18): according to this theory, it is good to keep polluted areas separate from more healthy ones so that individuals, as they move from one place to another, can choose the advantages offered by both. The separate facilities theory is based on an abstract notion of people with the means and possibility to choose over time where they prefer to live or work. The environmental inequalities approach radically disrupts this image by showing how deeply it fails to reflect the real conditions of blacks: the environmental justice approach has in fact highlighted how residential segregation is still strong in the United States, forcing African-Americans to live in the most polluted areas, and how the separate-facilities criterion determines, de facto, the selection of the areas where black populations live as the location of polluting sites, thus increasing environmental inequality.

More generally speaking, denunciation of environmental inequalities shows how the reigning environmental-protection paradigm functions thanks to the exclusion of a part of the population that bears the costs of pollution without sharing the benefits of the wealth produced by it - in the sameway that the present model of development, based on the idea of continuous growth, functions as it gradually reduces the number of its beneficiaries. To be credible, the concept of environmental sustainability as proclaimed by international bodies and adopted by the international community must be linked to rights that can be argued in court by any individual, without distinction: this would both truly defend individuals and introduce political reflection on the changes that need to be made in order to tackle the environmental crisis.

The debate on environmental inequalities is typical of the United States, as is the model of environmental protection, based on the idea of separate facilities, that produced the system of negotiable pollution permits. With the spread of these models to Europe, as occurred with the directive that enforces the Kyoto Protocol (19), it has become necessary to create theoretical instruments able to cope with this change. The environmental inequalities perspective has been recently taken up in British studies which confirm how in the European context, too, there is a correlation between pollution, poverty and non-white populations (20).

5. The inequality of equals and the equality of those who are different

Critical race theorists have argued the necessity of drafting affirmative action policies in order to bring about substantive equality between blacks and whites. Neil Gotanda (21) has stressed how such actions are legitimate and appropriate, since they tend to compensate for a historically-rooted subordination: only by using a historical notion of race, he argues, is it possible to explain the rationale of affirmative action policies from a legal viewpoint, whereas applying the formal notion of race instead makes it possible to consider the same policies discriminatory (so-called reverse discrimination). Gotanda has also argued that considering race in a cultural sense makes it possible to see in affirmative action policies the rationale for the defense of a collective interest with regard to cultural diversity. In the views of Charles Luke Harris and Uma Narayan, affirmative action is more than just a mere compensatory policy, as defined by the crutches metaphor; it offers the possibility of eliminating the obstacles encountered by some due to their sex or race so that they can walk on their own (22).

In order to understand how the equality issue is not juxtaposed with the environmental question that it somehow approaches from outside, but rather an intrinsic dimension of the latter, it is interesting to recall the distinction proposed by the social-ecology theorist Murray Bookchin between two conceptions of equality, and to see how these relate to the organization of what he defines as an "ecological society".

Alongside the "inequality of equals", according to which individuals are conceived of as abstractly equal and must therefore take upon themselves the burden of the unequal conditions in which they live - a model that reflects the liberal notion of formal equality, Bookchin identifies and champions the "equality of those who are different", a model where the diversity of individuals is situated within ties of cooperation and collaboration that tend to compensate for individual shortcomings and to create a society of equals. This equalizing relationship is based upon "mutual support", i.e. the disposition to cooperation and solidarity that Bookchin identifies as the engine of human evolution.

According to the social ecology approach, the destruction of nature is not caused by human beings' domination of nature but by human beings' domination over themselves: social ecology means both overthrowing the latter and building an ecological society in harmony with nature. From this perspective, the tasks to be carried out in order to achieve substantive equality and a society in harmony with nature go in the same direction, since they involve two aspects of the same struggle against relationships of domination.

Public policies willing to take on the issue of environmental inequality should take into account the historical meaning of race and the fact that black communities suffer a disproportionate amount of pollution compared to the white population. In this context, one form of "affirmative action" could be that of reversing the principle that guides environmental policies: already-polluted areas should be excluded as possible locations for polluting sites in order not to add pollution to pollution. It would then be possible to undertake actions of environmental and urban renewal and re-qualification which would have not only obvious environmental ramifications but also broader social ones. Health care plans for the black population could also be included.

This suggestion could also be valid in the European context, which is not alien to the practice of environmental inequality: the outskirts of large European cities are in fact inhabited by marginalized populations (immigrants, the Roma population, natives with very low incomes) and are also the locations that public administration prefer for the location of polluting sites. A reversal in trend of these policies would benefit the polluted population, already the victim of inequalities, and help the greater community to enter into a more serious debate on the urgent environmental problems to which all of society is exposed.

(Translated by Maria Carla Bellucci and Sara Benjamin)


Notes

1. Among his most well-known texts, it's worth to mention at least these: Bullard, R.D., Dumping in Dixie. Race, Class and Environmental Quality, Westview Press, Boulder-Oxford, 1990; Bullard, R.D. (ed.), Unequal Protection. Environmental Justice and Communities of Color, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco 1994; Bullard, R.D. (ed.), Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots, South End Press, Boston 1993. Among his most recent texts, it's worth to mention these: Agyeman, J., Bullard, R.D., Evans, B., Just Sustainabilities. Development in an Unequal World, The MIT Press, 2003 e Bullard, R.D.(ed.), The Quest for Environmental Justice. Human Rights and the Politics of Pollution, Sierra Club Books 2005.

2. See Mohai, P., Bryant, B., Is There a "Race" Effect on Concern for Environmental Quality?, "The Public Opinion Quarterly", vol. 62, n. 4, 1998, pp. 475-505.

3. Source: U.S. General Accounting Office, Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities, Washington D.C., General Accounting Office, 1983, p. 4, quoted in Bullard, R.D., Dumping in Dixie. Race, Class and Environmental Quality, cit., pp. 38 ss.

4. Commission for Racial Justice; Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and socioeconomic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Wastes Sites, United Church of Christ, New York 1987

5. Benjamin Chavis so defined this concept: "Environmental racism is racial discrimination in environmental policymaking and the enforcement of regulations and laws, the deliberate targeting of communities of color for toxic waste facilities, the official sanctioning of the presence of life-threatening poisons and pollutants in communities of color, and the history of excluding people of color of the leadership of the environmental movement", see Chavis, B., Preface, in Bullard, R.D (ed.), Unequal protection. Environmental Justice and Communities of Color, cit., p. XI.

6. See Austin, R., Schill, M., Black, Brown, Red and Poisoned, in Bullard, R.D. (ed.), Unequal protection. Environmental Justice and Communities of Color, cit., pp. 53 ss.

7. About the movement's fighting practices see Ferris, D., Promoting Community Building Through Collaborative Environmental Justice Legal Strategies and Funding Approaches, paper presented to the Second National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit - Summit II, 23 october 2002.

8. About the notion of "political race" see Torres, G., Guinier, L., The Miner's Canary. Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming Democracy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2002.

9. See Gotanda, N., A Critique of "Our Constitution is Color-Blind", in "Stanford Law Review", 44, 1991, pp. 1-69.

10. Stated in the sentence Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537,599 (1896) (Harlan, J., dissenting).

11. Used in the sentence Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).

12. See Bullard, R.D., Growing Smarter: Building Equity into a Fair Growth Agenda, paper presented to the Second National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit - Summit II, 23 october 2002.

13. See Ferris, D., op. cit., pp. 6 ss.

14. See Gotanda, N., op. cit., p. 47.

15. 532 U.S. 275 (2001).

16. See Flagg, B., Was Blind But Now I See. White Race Consciousness and the Law, New York University Press, New York 1998.

17. According to Ulrich Beck environmental pollution has an equalizing effect, because put all individuals, apart from their personal or social condition, in a state of risk due to ecological crisis. See Beck, U., World risk society, 1999.

18. J.H. Dales, Pollution, Property and Prices. An Essay in Policy making and Economics, University of Toronto Press, 1968.

19. Directive 2003/87/CE.

20. Health Protection Agency, Burden of Disease: Environmental Inequalities.

21. See Gotanda, N., op. cit., pp. 52 ss.

22. See Harris, C.L., Narayan, U., Affirmative Action and the Myth of Preferential Treatment: A Transformative Critique of the Terms of Affirmative Action Debate, in "Harvard Blackletter Journal", 11, 1994, pp. 1-35.