David E. Camacho

THE ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT

A Political Framework

Individuals and groups in the United States have promoted protection of the environment since at least the 1830s. Two often conflicting concerns dominated the early environmental movement: (1) natural resources conservation, and (2) wilderness and wildlife preservation. One allowed for resource extraction and consumption; the other attempted to prevent such practices. At the same time, both concerns converged in their interest in the management of large, sparsely populated, public wetlands. From the 1950s onward, a third concern has influenced the modern environmental movement: human welfare ecology. Today, human safety and, in fact, survival are threatened by the dangers of nuclear plants, the growth in the nuclear arsenal, and nuclear wastes; by global warming and the thinning of the ozone layer; and generally, by ground, air, and water pollution. This threat to human survival is of a global dimension. It was on the basis of these concerns that the environmental movement emerged as a significant mass movement in the 1970s. This modern, mainstream environmental movement has tended to exclude substantive participation by people of color, although people of color have organized around environmental issues at an unprecedented rate since the late 1980s.

Like many individuals and groups attracted to the contemporary environmental movement, people of color and low-income groups were horrified when they learned of the dangers to their communities caused by acute and chronic exposures to toxins and other environmental hazards. As noted by Peter J. Longo (this volume), however, mainstream environmental groups have still been slow in broadening their base to include people of color as well as poor and working-class whites. Like Longo, Stephen Sandweiss suggests that mainstream groups are ill equipped to deal with the environmental, economic, and social concerns of minority communities. For example, during the 1960s and 1970s, while mainstream environmental groups focused on wilderness preservation and conservation through litigation, political lobbying, and technical evaluation, people of color were engaged in collective action mobilizations for basic civil rights in the areas of employment, housing, education, and health care. Thus, two often conflicting movements emerged, and it has taken nearly two decades for any significant convergence to occur. While there are now efforts at coalition building, differences remain over how the two groups should balance economic development, social justice, and environmental protection. The crux of the problem is that the mainstream environmental movement has not fully recognized the fact that social inequality and imbalances of power contribute to the environmental degradation, resource depletion, pollution, and environmental hazards that disproportionately impact people of color along with poor and working-class whites. There is generally a lack of concern over "justice" in the mainstream environmental movement.

The environmental justice movement, then, is an attempt to unite the concerns of both the environmental and civil rights movements. Mainstream environmental organizations are beginning to understand the need for environmental justice and are increasingly supporting grassroots groups in the form of technical advice, expert testimony, direct financial assistance, fund-raising, research, and legal assistance. John G. Bretting and Diane-Michele Prindeville (this volume) point out that environmental justice advocates are not saying, "Take the poisons out of our community and put them in another community." They are saying that no community should have to live with these poisons. Bretting and Prindeville suggest that environmental advocates have taken the moral high road and that they are building a multiracial and inclusive movement that has the potential to transform the political landscape of this nation if we learn from its leadership style and organizational structure. The environmental justice movement is an inclusive one in that environmental concerns are not treated as separate and apart from health, employment, housing, and education issues. Indeed, Linda Robyn suggests that environmental justice cannot be separated from one's cultural lifestyle.

But what is to be done? Harvey L. White provides ample evidence that the record of environmental policy is not encouraging. The federal government has traditionally accepted major responsibility for protecting the health and wellbeing of U.S. society. During the 1980s, an extreme shift in governmental responsibilities emerged. This "New federalism," ushered in by the Reagan administration, signaled a reduction in domestic programs to monitor the environment and protect public health. The shifting of environmental protection away from the federal government to subnational governments continues today. Actions by states are viewed as preferable and more effective. But the policy of delegating more responsibility for environmental protection and management to state agencies has serious implications. States generally do not have the expertise to handle this responsibility, and there has been no corresponding increase in financial resources to assist them in meeting these new responsibilities. The federal policy to continue with "New Federalism" has resulted in an abdication, rather than a shifting, of environmental protection and management.

Robert Bullard has provided "a glimpse of several representative struggles within the grassroots environmental justice movement." Bullard offers insights into the coalescing of mainstream and grassroots environmental efforts, wherein he suggests that the situation is changing for the better. In addition, local governments have been moved to action and, in some cases, have also elicited the cooperation of environmental industries. But numerous challenges still face the environmental justice movement and its efforts to confront environmental problems. Sustaining a coalition based on racial, gender, and class differences is a formidable task; limited resources impede organizing; lack of information can block mobilization efforts; determining accountability and responsibility for environmental hazards can be impossible–these are some of the difficulties confronting the movement. In the...