Environmental law has come a long way from its origins. What was once considered a fringe movement has now become mainstream as our world experiences climate change. However, environmentalism wouldn’t be where it is today without the advocates of the environmental justice movement. The environmental justice movement fights to address the adverse environmental impacts among the low-income and minority communities.
Foundational Laws
In the 1970s, Congress passed the suite of broad environmental laws: the National Environmental Policy Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. This was a major victory and step toward improving and protecting the American environment. Yet, despite these improvements, many communities of color and low-income communities suffered the brunt of environmental impacts. These communities were subject to pollution and contamination, despite the increased standards set by the largescale environmental laws.
Identifying Harmed Communities
Thus, the environmental justice movement was born. In 1982, African-Americans protested the Warren County, North Carolina PCB landfill. Coming in on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement, this protest caused the Congressional General Accounting Office to take notice of the claims of environmental harm. In 1983, the GAO conducted a study that confirmed three out of four hazardous waste sites were located in low-income African American communities. A larger study conducted by the United Church of Christ Commission on Racial Justice conducted a national study, “Toxic Waste and Race.” This study found that over 15 million African Americans, 8 million Hispanics, and half of all Asian/Pacific Islanders and Native Americans lived in communities with at least one toxic waste site.
Confronting the Status Quo
Progressing into the 1990s, environmental justice leaders coordinated and confronted “traditional” environmentalists to consider and fight discrimination within the environmental movement. Environmental justice leaders, people of color and representatives of low-income communities, signed on to a letter addressed to the “Big Ten” environmental groups of the time. This letter accused the groups of contributing to the growing problem of racist and classist treatment of American citizens through narrowly-scoped environmentalism, inadvertently or otherwise. Environmental justice leaders encouraged partnership and teamwork in fighting for a better environment.
Evaluating Environmental Disparity
In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12898, Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations. This Executive Order created an Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice and required federal agencies to study and consider adverse environmental effects on minority and low-income communities.
While the federal government conducted studies and analyzed how to combat the problem utilizing laws on the books, the reality only got bleaker. In 2007, the 20th-anniversary study “Toxic Waste and Race at Twenty” found that minority communities were in even higher concentrations around hazardous waste facilities than in the 1987 study. Since the publication of that study, the Environmental Protection Agency has begun exploring how Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 intersects with environmental justice initiatives. The agency has also made environmental justice a priority in its permitting and regulatory decision-making process.
Grassroots Advocacy
However, there is still no federal environmental justice law. Citizens are pressed to use creative advocacy methods utilizing current laws, which don’t directly speak to environmental justice and equality. Minority and low-income communities are still subject to higher rates of environmental harm than wealthier, Caucasian communities. Since its inception, a federal environmental justice bill has never been considered for passage into law.
Despite this apparent stagnation, the environmental justice movement continues to push forward at a grassroots level with state and local advocacy. Whether it is through the court system, ballot initiatives, or the legislative process, the environmental justice movement carries on in combatting the disparate effects of environmental pollution and harm on minority and low-income communities.