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EJ TALK FOR SEJ CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION

December 1, 2007

Flora Lu, Assistant Professor, Anthropology and Ecology, UNC-CH

 

In the United States and across the globe, people of color are subjected to a disproportionately large number of health and environmental risks in their neighborhoods and on their jobs.  African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans must contend with dirty air and drinking water—the byproducts of municipal landfills, incinerators, polluting industries, and hazardous waste facilities.  Some examples:

 

  • 75% of the South’s worst toxic dumps are in black communities;
  • penalties applied under hazardous waste laws at sites having the greatest white population are 500% higher than penalties at sites with the greatest minority population;
  • three out of every five African Americans and Latino Americans live in communities with uncontrolled toxic waste sites;
  • approximately half of all Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans live in communities with uncontrolled toxic waste sites;
  • under the Superfund cleanup program, abandoned hazardous waste sites in minority areas take 20% longer to be placed on the National Priority list than do those in white areas;
  • 44% of urban African American children are at risk from lead poisoning—four times the rate of white children;
  • the Navajo Nation (covering 16 million acres in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah) is home to more than 1,000 abandoned uranium mines and four former uranium mills;

·        African-American farmers owned 16-19 million acres in 1910 and only 1.5 million acres as of 1997, representing a 91-92% loss.  African-American land ownership decreased drastically during the last century, a time period in which the farmland acreage owned by whites increased.

 

The pivotal 1987 report, Toxic Waste and Race in the United States, found that nationally, race is the leading factor in the location of hazardous waste facilities. Even when controlling for class, race is still a predictor of environmental problems—this has been called “environmental racism” or the unequal protection against hazardous and toxic waste exposure and the systematic exclusion of people of color from environmental decisions affecting their communities. Environmental injustice is the disproportionate burden of environmental degradation on people of color, poor people, and the politically disenfranchised.

 

These critical issues—from lead poisoning in substandard housing to toxic waste incineration and dumping—have generally been considered by mainstream organizations as outside the domain of “environment.” But there is a movement that brings together social justice and environmental interests, and for them the environment includes “the place you work, the place you live, and the place you play.”

Environmental justice seeks fair treatment of all people regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, economic capacity, national origin, and education level with respect to environmental politics and their implementations.  EJ offers a framework for examining issues of human rights and ecological health in the contemporary world, making connections between race, ethnicity, poverty, power, access, and environmental problems. The environmental justice movement draws together insights from both the civil rights and environmental movements to mobilize grassroots organizations in demanding a safe and healthy environment as a basic human right. 

 

Which EJ rights should be included in the Constitution? Let me draw from some of the Principles of EJ drafted at the 1991 People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit:

 

·        EJ demands that public policy be based on mutual respect and justice for all peoples, free from any form of discrimination or bias.

·        EJ mandates the right to ethical, balanced, and responsible uses of land and renewable resources in the interests of a sustainable planet for humans and other living things.

·        EJ calls for the universal protection from nuclear testing, extraction, production and disposal of toxic/hazardous wastes and poisons that threaten the fundamental right to clean air, land, water, and food. It demands that the past and current producers of these toxins and wastes be held strictly accountable to the people for detoxification and the containment at the point of production.

·        EJ affirms the right of all workers to a safe and healthy work environment without being forced to choose between an unsafe livelihood and unemployment. It also affirms the right of those who work at home to be free from environmental hazards.

·        EJ affirms the need for urban and rural ecological policies to clean up and rebuild our cities and rural areas in balance with nature, honoring the cultural integrity of all our communities.