The State of Environmental Justice in America 2008 Howard University School of Law May 21-24, 2008 Building Community Capacity Through Education and … (original) (raw)
Related papers
Environmental justice mainly emerged as a result of disparity of polluting industries and facilities such as landfills and power plants are often located near low-income communities and African American, Hispanic and indigenous communities in the United States. The main idea is that certain communities, particularly low-income, are disproportionately burdened by pollution and insufficient access to environmental resources. Increasing public concern about the impact that human activity could have on the environment led the US government to take action against this issue by ratifying the National Environmental Policy Act (later turned into new Environmental Protection Agency).
Emerging State-Level Environmental Justice Laws
2021
Environmental justice (EJ) has grown in prominence in the political discourse in the last several years While most of the attention has gone to federal actions, several states have just adopted their own laws to advance EJ. The basic idea behind EJ is that disadvantaged communities should not be disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards, that these communities should have a say in the actions that affect their environment, and that the environmental laws should be vigorously enforced there
Environmental Justice, 2012
Despite almost two decades of effort, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues struggling to define “environmental justice areas” or “EJ communities” for the purpose of administering its programs and measuring its progress. One cause for the long delay is the lingering technical problem of determining disproportionate impact; another is the political and administrative challenge posed by changes in environmental justice policy. In this historical overview, I argue that the EPA's efforts to establish nationally standardized guidelines for identifying EJ areas have corresponded to three overlapping but distinct “waves” of environmental justice policy. Although the third wave of EJ policy has restored the program's original focus on low-income and minority populations, it will remain difficult to institute a consistent definition in the face of place-specific differences among communities experiencing environmental injustice.
Not So Much: A Policy Brief on Recent Research on Environmental Justice in the Phoenix Area
2008
Introduction he study of environmental justice (EJ) is about 40 years old; during its history it has been dogged by controversy. Though few would deny that, on average, in the United States racial and ethnic minority groups are more impacted by human-caused pollutants than are dominant-group Whites, controversy surrounds why this is so. Some have argued “the deliberate targeting of people of color communities for toxic waste facilities and the official sanctioning of a life-threatening presence of poisons and pollutants in people of color communities” (Chavas 1993, p. 4). Others have argued simple correlation due to other factors that are disproportionately attributes of minority communities. For example, if poor people are more likely to live near pollution-generating facilities and minorities are disproportionately poor, then apparent racial disparities could be caused by economic disparities rather than any type of racism (other than, perhaps, systemic). In this vein, many schola...
Environmental Justice: 2023 Year in Review
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2024
Environmental Justice” (EJ) acknowledges the right of every individual to dignity and a clean, healthy environment and that overburdened communities should have their voices heard. This chapter summarizes EJ developments at the federal and state levels, in the courts, and within the ABA during 2023. These developments include issuance of a comprehensive Presidential Executive Order on EJ; implementation of the EJ aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act; EPA’s issuance of guidance to distribute billions to support EJ; New York State’s adoption of a groundbreaking environmental justice law; New Jersey’s issuance of first-of-a-kind EJ regulations; judicial rejection of EJ-based claims; and the ABA’s issuance of a “Blueprint to Advance Environmental Justice. …
Coming to terms with environmental justice
Corporate Environmental Strategy, 1999
The momentum of environmental justice has grown over the last decade, fueled by a passionate, sometimes inflammatory rhetoric. Confronting businesses with a series of distinctly different policy challenges, environmental justice advocates generally feel that economically disadvantaged populations are often exposed to more than their fair share of industrial pollutants and are thus suffering a "disparate risk, " a term now incorporated in permitting guidance adopted by EPA. Business generally has had less than a coherent response. At a policy level it is challenging to address an issue with so many different aspects, from relocation of low income communities to the sovereign rights of Native Americans; from noisy transportation routes to property devaluation. But, where businesses are responding ejjktively. they seem to be creating public participation mechanisms which allow fo? authentic representation and place an emphasis on listening to a community's real needs. F rom a business perspective, environmental justice is an objective-not an issue. But from a public perspective, this may still be in question. It may be argued that most companies comply or exceed environmental regulations and have polices that state their commitment to the protection of Jerry Prout is Director of Regulatory Affairs for FMC Corporation in Washington D.C. He has been with FMC for the past twenty years, engaged on environmental policy issues providing both strategic counsel and advocacy before federal and state regulatory and legislative bodies. He has an M.A. from both Duke and American Universities and a B.A. from Westminster College in Missouri. Previous articles have appeared in Rqulation and the Conference Board Record.
A Scoping Review of Capacity-Building Efforts to Address Environmental Justice Concerns
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Environmental justice (EJ) efforts aimed at capacity building are essential to addressing environmental health disparities; however, limited attention has been given to describing these efforts. This study reports findings from a scoping review of community–academic partnerships and community-led efforts to address environmental inequities related to air, water, and land pollution in the United States. Literature published in peer-reviewed journals from January 1986 through March 2018 were included, and community capacity theory was applied as a framework for understanding the scope of capacity-building and community change strategies to address EJ concerns. Paired teams of independent analysts conducted a search for relevant articles (n = 8452 citations identified), filtered records for content abstraction and possible inclusion (n = 163) and characterized selected studies (n = 58). Most articles implemented activities that were aligned with community capacity dimensions of citizen...