The environmental justice movement emerged in the American context as a combination o f environmental activism and civil rights advocacy that links environment and race, class, gender, and social justice concerns in an explicit framework (Taylor, 2000). The 1980s struggle o f Warren County, North Carolina, to resist the construction o f a PCB landfill in the rural predominantly African-American community is commonly regarded as the catalyst for the environmental justice movement (Sandweiss, 1998: 31). Although similar struggles against the uneven exposure to environmental hazards in communities made up o f people o f colour and poorer areas can be found before 1980s, the event in Warren County has led to the increase o f research on environmental justice and an upsurge in environmental activism in the minority communities.
The environmental justice movement formed by the alliance o f grassroots and national environmental and civil rights activists challenges the dominant environmental movement primarily led by white upper- or middle-class people that often focuses on action to protect threatened forest and species, not human beings. Activists o f environmental justice recognizes that society’s most vulnerable groups have been damaged by environmental threats, such as farm-worker communities victimized by pesticides and Native-American tribes devastated by radioactive waste (Shrader-Frechette, 2002: 6). Environmental justice activists provide a broader concept o f environment, and challenge the view o f mainstream environmentalists and deep ecologists that nature is to be found only in areas remote from human activities, such as national parks and reserves, and endangered species and habitats. They redefine the conception o f environment or nature to include ‘where people live, work,
play, go to school, as well as how these things interact with the physical and natural world’ (Bullard, n.d.).
The environmental justice movement reflects the broader view o f the environment as the place where human activities occur. For Turner and Wu (2002: 4), the view o f nature and environment as something pristine and separate from everyday life would produce privileges such that only those with money or rural people will have access to it. Furthermore, it places negative burdens on indigenous or rural people if the pristine nature or environment needs to be protected behind the borders o f a national park. Geisler and Letsoalo (2000) point out that millions o f rural people inhabiting marginal lands worldwide have been evicted from their homes in the name o f conservation. Similar criticism was made by O’Neill (1997a: 50, 55) o f authoritarian forms o f environmentalism, especially the alliance o f certain conservation groups, third world politics and corporations that has led to the exclusion o f indigenous people in the name o f wilderness.
According to Sandweiss (1998: 39), the environmental justice movement integrates environmental concerns into the civil rights frame by framing the problem o f disproportionate exposure to environmental risks as a violation o f civil rights. Activists in the movement claim the opportunity to live in a healthy environment as part as their basic rights, parallel to their fighting for solving poverty, equal education and employment. In order to transform the way mainstream environmentalists think about the environment that often ignores the social justice implications o f the problem, activists in the movement connect environmental concerns with claims for justice.
For some activists or academics, the term environmental racism, environmental equity or environment justice are linked terms for the problems or circumstances that minorities and low-income communities face because o f their disproportionate
exposure to environmental hazards and burdens. It stimulates debates over the use o f these terms and different definitions o f the same term. The term environmental racism was introduced in the mid 1980s, and racism is seen as an independent or crucial cause o f environmental injustice in the earlier research. The Commission for Racial Justice o f the United Church o f Christ (1987) in their report Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States argues that race is the central determining factor in the distribution o f environmental hazard exposure in the United States. It prompted a series o f publications that launches attacks on racial discrimination in hazardous waste siting decisions (e.g. Bryant and Mohai, 1992; Bullard, 1993; Westra and Lawson, 2001). Bryant (1995: 5) regards environmental racism as ‘an extension o f racism’ and defines it as follows:
[Environmental racism] refers to those institutional rules, regulations, and policies or government or corporate decisions that deliberately target certain communities for least desirable land uses, resulting in the disproportionate exposure of toxic and hazardous waste on communities based upon certain prescribed biological characteristics.
Environmental racism reflects a very narrow concept as it focuses on the disproportionate environmental bads imposed on communities as a result o f their racial characteristics. For Rhodes (2003: 17), the term environmental equity carries less baggage than environmental racism and has been in use to describe ‘an ideal or object toward which groups were striving’. Environmental equity tends to focus on the job needed be done in terms o f regulation policy and environmental laws (Bryant, 1995: 5). According to the U.S Environmental Protection Agency’s definition, environmental equity ‘is the equal protection from environmental hazards o f individuals, groups, or communities regardless o f race, ethnicity, or economic status.’ However, this definition o f environmental equity simply focuses on negative
environmental impacts without addressing the distribution o f environmental benefits, public participation in the environmental policy making process or the remedy for inequities (Rhodes, 2003: 17).
As the movement evolved, activists, academics and the federal agencies have replaced the term equity with justice because environmental justice is seen as broader in scope (Bryant, 1995: 6). Discussion on environmental justice covers a wide range o f issues. For Hoffichter (1993: 4), environmental problems are inseparable from other social injustices. Environmental justice is about ‘social transformation directed toward meeting human need and enhancing the quality o f life - economic equality, healthy care, shelter, human rights, species preservation and democracy - using resources sustainably’. Demands for environmental justice stress ‘equal access to natural resources and the right to clean air and water, adequate health care, affordable shelter and a safe workplace.’ Bryant (1995: 6) argues that environmental justice coalitions ‘make political social change possible for a more equitable and environmentally just society.’ He states:
[Environmental justice] refers to those cultural norms and values, rules, regulations, behaviors, policies, and decisions to support sustainable communities, where people can interact with confidence that their environment is safe, nurturing, and productive (p. 6).
Bullard’s (1993) discussion on environmental justice reflects the connections between environmental and social problems. As he puts it, the ‘focus o f activists o f color and their constituents reflects their life experiences o f social, economic, and political disenfranchisement’, and their demand for environmental justice ‘are embedded in the larger struggle against oppression and dehumanization that exists in the larger society’ (pp. 7-8). Furthermore, environmental justice is not limited to
events o f injustice in localized geographical areas but evolves injustice over greater regions and transcends the present generation. For example, environmental injustice can happen between countries as one country overuses scarce global resources, and damages other people’s environments. The uncontrolled use o f persistent chemicals and inappropriate disposal o f nuclear waste would cause adverse impacts on the health o f children and future generations (ESRC Global Environmental Change Program,
2001).
It shows the complexity o f environmental justice as the term covers a wide range o f issues and has many meanings to environmental groups, activists and academics. In this thesis environmental justice is used in a broad sense, which includes concern with distributional equity o f environmental risks or goods, cultural and radical recognition, democratic participation in decision-making, as well as other complex related issues. The following sections explore how claims for justice in the environmental justice movement have been theorized and the links between the theory and issues raised in the movement.