Environmental Justice Guide
Introduction
In 1982, residents of Warren County, North Carolina, lay down in the road to block trucks carrying soil contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls — PCBs — to a landfill in their community. Warren County was one of the poorest counties in the state, and its population was 65 percent African American. The landfill had been sited there despite the fact that the soil was too permeable to contain the toxins safely. The protests did not stop the dump, but they launched a national movement. Environmental justice was born as a recognition that environmental burdens — toxic waste, air pollution, contaminated water — are not distributed equally. Race and income are the strongest predictors of exposure to environmental hazards in the United States and around the world.
Environmental justice is the principle that all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin, or income, have the right to equal protection from environmental hazards and equal access to environmental benefits. It challenges the assumption that environmentalism is about saving whales and rainforests — it is also about saving people. This guide explores the history of the environmental justice movement, the evidence for environmental racism, the legal frameworks for pursuing environmental equity, and the community organizing strategies that have won victories for justice.
The Roots of Environmental Justice
The environmental justice movement has its roots in the civil rights movement and the environmental movement, but it emerged because neither adequately addressed the environmental concerns of low-income communities and communities of color.
The Civil Rights Connection
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis in 1968 supporting striking sanitation workers who were demanding better pay and safer working conditions — an environmental justice issue that involved occupational exposure to toxic waste. The Memphis sanitation workers strike is one of the earliest examples of environmental justice organizing in the United States. After King’s assassination, the intersection of civil rights and environmentalism was carried forward by activists in communities affected by toxic contamination.
Landmark Studies
Two studies provided the statistical evidence that launched environmental justice as a field of academic inquiry and policy action. In 1983, the U.S. General Accounting Office found that three out of four off-site hazardous waste landfills in the Southeast were located in predominantly African American communities. In 1987, the United Church of Christ’s Commission for Racial Justice published “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States,” the first national study to demonstrate a statistically significant relationship between race and the location of hazardous waste facilities. The study found that race was the most significant variable in predicting where toxic waste facilities were located — more significant than income, property values, or home ownership.
The Principles of Environmental Justice
In 1991, delegates from across the United States gathered in Washington, D.C., for the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit. They drafted 17 Principles of Environmental Justice, which remain the movement’s foundational document. The principles affirm the sacredness of the Earth, the right to freedom from toxic contamination, the right to participate as equal partners at every level of decision-making, and the need for economic alternatives to extractive industries. The Summit transformed environmental justice from a collection of local struggles into a national and international movement.
Environmental Racism: The Evidence
Environmental racism refers to the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people of color. The evidence is extensive and conclusive.
Air Pollution
Multiple studies have shown that people of color in the United States breathe more polluted air than white people. A landmark 2021 study in Science Advances found that Black, Hispanic, Asian, and low-income Americans are exposed to higher levels of fine particulate matter than non-Hispanic white Americans, regardless of income level. The disparities are driven by the siting of highways, power plants, factories, and ports in or near communities of color. The construction of the interstate highway system in the 1950s and 1960s deliberately routed highways through Black neighborhoods in cities across the United States — a practice known as “urban renewal” that the writer James Baldwin called “Negro removal.”
Water Contamination
The Flint water crisis — where lead contamination of drinking water exposed more than 100,000 residents, two-thirds of whom are Black — is the most notorious recent example of environmental racism in the water sector. But Flint is not unique. A 2021 study by the Natural Resources Defense Council found that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s enforcement of the Safe Drinking Water Act is significantly weaker in communities of color. A 2019 investigation by USA Today and the Guardian revealed that Native American communities are 20 times more likely to lack indoor plumbing than white households.
Toxic Waste
The location of hazardous waste facilities, industrial farms, incinerators, and landfills follows racial patterns. A 2018 update to the original United Church of Christ study found that communities with hazardous waste facilities have significantly higher percentages of people of color than non-host communities. The disparities are worsening: facilities are increasingly located in already overburdened communities, concentrating environmental hazards in the same neighborhoods decade after decade. In Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” — an 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans lined with petrochemical plants and refineries — the population is predominantly Black and low-income, and the cancer risk is 50 times the national average.
Climate Change
Climate change is an environmental justice issue. Low-income countries and communities of color are the most vulnerable to climate impacts — heat waves, floods, hurricanes, and food insecurity — while having contributed the least to the emissions that cause them. Globally, the richest 10 percent of the population accounts for nearly half of all carbon emissions, while the poorest 50 percent accounts for just 12 percent. Climate justice advocates demand that climate policies address this inequity through mechanisms such as loss and damage compensation, just transition programs for fossil fuel workers, and investments in climate resilience for vulnerable communities.
Legal and Policy Frameworks
Environmental justice advocates use multiple legal and policy tools to hold governments and corporations accountable.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act
Title VI prohibits discrimination by any entity receiving federal funding. Environmental justice advocates have used Title VI to challenge the siting of pollution sources and the failure of government agencies to enforce environmental laws in communities of color. In 2015, the U.S. EPA’s Office of Civil Rights found that the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality had discriminated against Flint residents by failing to ensure safe drinking water. However, Title VI complaints are slow, resource-intensive, and often unsuccessful.
Executive Orders
In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12898, which directed federal agencies to identify and address disproportionately high environmental and health effects of their actions on minority and low-income populations. The order established environmental justice as a federal priority, but implementation has been inconsistent. President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14008, signed in 2021, established the Justice40 Initiative, which commits 40 percent of the benefits of federal climate and clean energy investments to disadvantaged communities.
State-level Environmental Justice Laws
Several states have enacted environmental justice laws that go beyond federal requirements. New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, passed in 2019, requires that disadvantaged communities receive at least 35 percent of the benefits of clean energy and energy efficiency investments. New Jersey’s Environmental Justice Law, passed in 2020, requires the state Department of Environmental Protection to evaluate the cumulative environmental impacts of new facilities on overburdened communities. California’s AB 617, passed in 2017, requires community air monitoring in communities most affected by air pollution.
Community Organizing and Success Stories
The environmental justice movement is fundamentally a grassroots movement. Communities organize to protect themselves from environmental harm, and they often win.
The Love Canal Story
In the 1970s, residents of Love Canal, a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, discovered that their homes had been built on a toxic waste dump buried by Hooker Chemical Company. Rates of birth defects, miscarriages, and cancer were alarmingly high. Led by resident Lois Gibbs, the Love Canal Homeowners Association organized protests, demanded government action, and eventually secured federal relocation assistance. The Love Canal crisis led directly to the creation of the Superfund program for cleaning up the nation’s most contaminated sites.
The Struggle in Cancer Alley
In 2021, residents of St. John the Baptist Parish in Louisiana, led by the group Rise St. James, defeated a proposed $9.4 billion plastics complex owned by Formosa Plastics. The campaign combined community organizing, legal challenges, media advocacy, and political pressure. The victory was a turning point in the fight against petrochemical expansion in Cancer Alley. Another Louisiana community, St. James Parish, successfully blocked the construction of a grain export terminal that would have increased truck traffic, diesel emissions, and dust in an already overburdened community.
The Global Environmental Justice Movement
Environmental justice is a global movement. In Nigeria, the Ogoni people led by Ken Saro-Wiwa protested Shell’s oil extraction in the Niger Delta, which had devastated the local environment and economy. In Brazil, the Movement of People Affected by Dams organizes communities displaced by hydroelectric projects. In South Africa, the Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance fights air pollution in the coal-dependent industrial corridor south of Johannesburg. These movements are connected through networks like the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives and the Environmental Justice Atlas, which documents more than 3,000 environmental conflicts worldwide.
FAQ
What is environmental racism? Environmental racism is the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards — toxic waste, air pollution, contaminated water — on people of color, driven by discriminatory siting decisions, unequal enforcement of environmental laws, and exclusion of communities of color from decision-making.
Can I file a complaint about environmental injustice? Yes. The EPA’s Office of Civil Rights accepts Title VI complaints alleging discrimination in environmental programs. State environmental agencies and local zoning boards also accept complaints. Community legal aid organizations and environmental justice law clinics can help.
What is the Justice40 Initiative? Justice40 is a Biden administration policy that commits 40 percent of the benefits of federal climate and clean energy investments to disadvantaged communities. It covers programs in housing, transportation, clean energy, water infrastructure, and pollution remediation.
Is environmental justice only about race? Race is the strongest predictor of environmental inequity, but class, indigeneity, gender, and geographic isolation also matter. Environmental justice addresses all forms of environmental inequality.