The Global Dynamics of Environmental Change 2: Race, Class and the Politics of Environmental Justice Alf Gunvald Nilsen

SOS110/Autumn 2011

ORIENTATIONS

Summer 1978: Robert Burns and his sons drive tanker trucks along rural roads in 13 counties in North Carolina, discharging liquids contaminated with PCBs that had been removed from Ward Transformer Agency, Raleigh 240 miles of road shoulder were contaminated over the course of 2 weeks As the state of NC was responsible for the clean-up, it was decided to build a landfill for the soil in Warren County, a rural area in NC with a majority population (62.5%) of poor African Americans This was not a random choice rather, the choice is symptomatic of a structural pattern in which racial minorities and low-income groups are systematically more exposed to environmental hazards than white majority communities and well-off groups In the US context, this means that poor and working class African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans are more exposed to environmental risk than the rest of society

Greenpeace/Playing with Fire (1990): UCC-CRJ: Toxic Wastes and Race (1987): 60% of AAs live in communities with at least one abandoned toxic waste site Out of the 5 largest hazardous waste landfills in the US, 3 are placed in predominantly AA/Latino communities AAs are overrepresented in the populations of those cities with the largest number of abandoned waste-sites The minority portion of the population in communities with existing incinerators is 89% higher than the national average Communities where incinerators are proposed have minority populations 60% higher then the national average Average income in communities with existing incinerators is 15% below the national average Communities of color have been systematically targeted for the siting of noxious facilities such as sewer treatment plants, garbage dumps, landfills, incinerators, hazardous waste disposal sites, lead smelters, and other risky technologies, thereby exacerbating existing inequities
Robert Bullard

The community was politically and economically unempowered; that was the reason for the siting. They took advantage of poor people and people of color
WC Activist

The announcement of the toxic waste site triggered resistance from the affected WC communities, who were concerned about the health and economic impacts of the site Three years of unsuccessful legal struggle ended in 1982, when the state obtained permission to build the site the Concerned Citizens turned to non-violent direct action Ultimately, the waste site was not stopped, but in 1994 it was declared a failure, and community activists were able to influence and control the detoxification process from 1994 to 2004 The WC struggle signalled the onset of the environmental justice movement an environmentalism that joins issues of social justice and ecological concerns

CONCEPTUALIZING ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM

Unfortunately, scholars of environmental racism have not seriously problematized racism, opting instead for a de facto conception based on malicious, individual acts
Laura Pulido Rethinking Environmental Racism

Why is this a problem? The focus on an individual act lead us to miss the role of structural/hegemonic forms of racism Racism is not conceptualized as the dynamic socio-spatial process that it is Political limitations racial inequality can only be attributed directly to individual, hostile act, not social structures

A narrow/restricted understanding of environmental racism Focus on individual facility siting Focus on intentionality and indivual acts An uncritical understanding of scale

Environmental racism is only conceded if malicious intent on the part of the decision-maker can be proven

Given the pervasive nature of race, the belief that racism can be reduced to hostile, discriminatory acts strains logic There is a need to understand racial formations the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed and destroyed
Omi/Winant Racial Formation in the United States

Racial formation A process of historically situated projects in which human bodies and social structures are represented and organized Structures Representations

A racial project is simultaneously an interpretation, representation, or explanation of racial dynamics, and an effort to reorganize and redistribute resources along particular racial lines Racial projects connect what race means in a particular discursive practice and the ways in which both social structures and everyday experiences are racially organized, based upon that meaning
Omi/Winant Racial Formation in the United States

All places are racialized and race informs all places This is reflected in the social organization of white privilege the privileges and benefits that accrue to white people by virtue of their whiteness
Laura Pulido Rethinking Environmental Racism

Why are white people not burdened with pollution and environmental hazards to the same extent as communities of colour? In this perspective, white racism is understood as those practices and ideologies carried out by structures, institutions and individuals, that reproduce inequality and undermine the well-being of racially subordinate populations The question of scale: Racism can exist at individual, group, institutional, societal and global scales in distinct but interrelated ways. The question of intention: WP both underlies/is distinct from institutional/overt racism refers to hegemonic structures, practices and ideologies that reproduce the privileged status of white groups

Extant research on environmental racism Siting: 1) Reproduces flawed understanding of urban dynamics as it separates environmental inequalities from larger socio-spatial processes 2) Makes siting the only mechanism considered in terms of racial discrimination Intentionality: 1) Reduces likelihood of viewing collective actions as racist 2) Allows for continual contraction of the definition of racism 3) Exonerates large social arenas from contributing to racial inequality

In this perspective, racism is seen as an aberration, rather than a structural feature of a social formation NB! The issue of scale and racism: The social relations that are relevant to understanding racism do not solely reside within the spatial unit under consideration A specific place is constructed through their links to other places and the scale where racist outcomes are observed may not coincide with the scale where these outcomes are produced

ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM: THE CASE OF LOS ANGELES

In Los Angeles, non-whites in particular working class Latinos and African Americans are disproportionately exposed to (i) uncontrolled toxic waste sites, (ii) TSDFs, and (iii) air toxins

Environmental racism in LA has to be understood in terms of the production of a historical geography of white privilege 1848-1920s 1) Early suburbanization reflected WMC refusal to live near immigrants communities of colour a choice based on WP 2) WWC provided with suburban housing developments to prevent social unrest 1920s zoning laws concentrated industry in non-white areas Created an industrial/residential geography where industry developed in non-white spaces WWII Era GD/WWII intensified suburbanization, on the basis of state subsidies New white arrivals went to suburbs; AAs/Latinos to ghettos/barrios in central/eastern LA Residential segregation entrenched through red-lining/targeting of public funds 1960: Av. Income in C/E LA = $5916 Suburban LA = $8575 Well-paid jobs to the suburban areas Contemporary LA Persistence of residential segregation: Immigration Residential mobility Economic restructuring Increase of Asian and Latino population C/S/E LA Industrial/land use associated with environmental hazars C LA AAs/Latinos more exposed to hazards

THE ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT

Initial opposition in Warren County: NIMBY residents concerned with pulbic health issues and economic impact of the waste site Concerned Citizens opposed the site through counter-expertise and suggested alternative waste sites WC took NC/EPA to court This created a situation where the argument against the site had to be made on technical grounds The court approved design changes and allowed the project to proceed (S-82) CC enlists support of civil rights activists with substantial activist skills and experience Turn to disruptive collective action The key issue came to be the lack of transparency and participation in decision making process This was linked to the AA communitys efforts to mobilize voter registration campaigns since 1965 Landfill opposition linked to black political power

September October 1982: Direct action at the project site Non-violent collective action that was familiar to an AA community that had participated in the civil rights struggle This signalled the emergence of the environmental justice movement as a form of subaltern environmentalism At the heart of this movement has been a concern with public health and environmental threats to the places where people live, work, and play E.g. WC the concept of contamination by synthetic materials enabled civil rights activist to extend their criticism of the ways in which state policies and public decision-making discriminates against African Americans Not only was Warren County predominantly black and predominantly poor, but it was politically impotent. And that was just the recipe for dumping
Dollie Burwell, WC Activist

They use black people as guinea pigs. Anytime there is something that is going to kill, well put it in the black area to find out if it kills and how many. They dont care. They dont value a black persons life
M. G. Harris, WC Activist

Subaltern environmentalism Grassroots environmental activism conducted by marginalized groups that are faced with both social inequalities and environmental inequalities The latter is evident in the disproportional exposure of minorities and poor people to environmental hazards and/or the inequitable distribution of natural resources The aim of subaltern environmentalism is to empower marginalized groups and to challenge their exclusion from environmental decision-making Summer 1982: Local chapter of NAACP brought lawsuit against NC state, on the grounds that the high percentage of minority residents was one factor influencing the siting decision Court ruling: There is not a single shred of evidence that race has at any time been a motivating factor for any decision taken by any official State, federal or local in this long saga

This raises the issue of conceptualizing environmental racism in terms of intentionality as a problem for activism EJ mobilization often starts as a reaction to a specific siting decision or increasing numbers of waste facilities in an area

This strategic focus links activism to a distributional paradigm of justice: Is there a morally proper distribution of social benefits and burdens among societys members?

An analysis of agency and causation in institutional and social processes that lead to observable distributive outcomes

A monolithic focus on outcomes obscures the way in which environmental injustice manifests itself for different groups

This is problematic given that distributional inequalities are symptoms of a wider matrix of social structures and power relations The role of social structures and power relations is obscured when the focus is on the relationship between (i) an identifiable responsible agent and (ii) an observed undesirable outcome An alternative strategic focus would be (i) the structural forces that influence discriminatory outcomes and (ii) the aspects of environmental decisionmaking that compound structural injustice through environmental inequality A shift from critique of outcome of siting decisions to a critique of the legitimacy of decision-making WC detoxification

GLOBALIZING ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

The ideas of environmental racism and environmental justice can also be used to understand and to challenge unequal environmental exposures on a global scale Two levels of inequality can be cited Extraction-based corporations are expanding their operations into eco-systems across the global South, often dispossessing populations in the process Environmental exposure triple threat: From TNCs in the global South From global toxics trade From global emissions

The restructuring of the world economy in the current phase of increasingly global production is leading to an increasingly global pattern of environmental injustice
J. Timmons Roberts Globalizing Environmental Justice

Climate debt Climate Justice

At a global environmental level ecological imperialism has resulted in the appropriation of the global commons (i.e. the atmosphere and oceans, which are used as sinks for waste) and the carbon absorption capacity of the biosphere, primarily to the benefit of a small number of countries at the centre of the capitalist economy. The core nations rose to wealth and power in part through high fossil fuel consumption and exploitation of the global South.
B. Clark/R. York

The richest 20% of the worlds population contribute 60% of current GHG emissions if past contributions are taken into account: 80%

However, the consequences of carbon emissions are global in scale Changes that ultimately flow from local patterns of resource use are global in terms to the degradation of the atmosphere and the alteration of the biosphere The global South is far more vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change This is so both in terms of (i) large-scale natural disasters and (ii) gradual processes of environmental degradation

Climate debt Poor countries, communities and people have contributed least to the causes of climate change, yet are its first and worst victims. Adaptation debt: The global North should finance the cost of adaptation to climate change in the global South Developed countries have consumed more than their fair share of the earths atmospheric space

Emissions debt: a) The global North must reduce its levels of carbon emission

b) The global North must provide the finance and technology needed for the global South to meet energy needs without Together the sum of these debts using fossil fuels emissions debt and adaptation debt constitutes their climate debt, which is part of a larger ecological, social and The Other Debt Bolivia and economic debt owed by the rich the Climate Justice industrialised world to the poor Movement majority