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Teaching critical waste studies in higher education
Published in Zsuzsa Gille, Josh Lepawsky, The Routledge Handbook of Waste Studies, 2021
A critical approach to waste studies implies that we must understand power dynamics in order to understand waste systems, behaviors, and cultural values. Scholars and activists in the environmental justice movement have made important contributions to this field, underscoring the inequitable distribution of environmental harms and environmental benefits across societies. In particular, Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color are more likely to experience the negative environmental impacts of waste. Bullard (1994) defines environmental racism as “any policy, practice, or directive that differentially affects or disadvantages (whether intended or unintended) individuals, groups, or communities based on race or color” (451). In a Discard Studies blog post on “Waste colonialism”, Liboiron (2018) articulates how colonial power relations are about access to land: “The assumed entitlement to use Land as a sink [for pollution and waste], no matter where it is, is rooted in colonialism…Exporting these [extractivist] models to other places and then blaming the local people for not properly managing colonial sinks is colonialism”. Liboiron's (2021) forthcoming book (Pollution is Colonialism) promises to be an important volume on this topic, exploring not only the unequal distribution of pollution's harm through colonial systems, but also the colonial nature of the science that undergirds predominant epistemologies of pollution and waste.
Ethical Considerations
Published in Mary K. Theodore, Louis Theodore, Introduction to Environmental Management, 2021
Mary K. Theodore, Louis Theodore
Consider, for example, a town such as many in the mountains of Appalachia where one industry—coal mining—provides all of the town’s employment and generates most of the taxes used by the town in running schools and other municipal operations. When the coal mining company turns to strip mining—a process that essentially rips the mountains to shreds and contaminates groundwater with the heavy metals released—can the miners be expected to jeopardize the welfare of their entire families by protesting because the methods of their employer are environmentally negligent? Their survival needs for food and shelter supersede any idealistic desire they have to preserve the environment. Abuse of this natural hierarchy has been defined as environmental racism (see Chapter 50) and is epitomized by the disproportionately large number of landfills, chemical plants, and toxic dumps in the poorer communities and countries.
(Re)Claiming Home and Homelands
Published in Theresa J. May, Earth Matters on Stage, 2020
Defined as the disproportional burden of impact of environmental degradation on people and communities of color, environmental racism deprives individuals of the very foundations of life – clean air, water, healthy foods, and shelter adequate to support healthful families.7 Poverty caused by a system of privilege by which generation after generation of African Americans has been shut out of the opportunities considered the birthright of those who pass as white in a given sociohistorical period is a form of environmental racism. A lack of access to healthy food, clean air, and clean water in impoverished urban neighborhoods results in higher incidences of asthma and other childhood diseases (see, e.g., Bullard [1993, 2005]; Jaynes [2014]; and Sampson [2012]). Structures of exclusion in housing, for example, have been built and maintained through unscrupulous yet legal lending practices and policed by social and institutional expressions of white supremacy, as well as violence and the threat of violence against families and individuals challenging that system. Throughout the play, Hansberry maps the ways those impacts land heavily on the bodies of women and children, determining longevity, childbearing, and mental health – all of which are now recognized as impacts of environmental injustice.
Principles of risk decision-making
Published in Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part B, 2022
Daniel Krewski, Patrick Saunders-Hastings, Patricia Larkin, Margit Westphal, Michael G. Tyshenko, William Leiss, Maurice Dusseault, Michael Jerrett, Doug Coyle
The environmental justice movement that started in the 1960ʹs, partially driven by increasing awareness of environmental inequity of minority and low-income populations, provides useful context for the principle of risk equity. The term ‘environmental racism’ was used to point out that these groups were being exposed to higher levels of pollutants and toxins, increasing their risk burden compared to the general population. In 1994, President Clinton signed the executive order named, “Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations,” which legislated environmental protection for all communities (Bowen et al. 1995; Ewall 2012). The U.S. EPA: Environmental Protection Agency (2017) defines environmental justice as:
Social impacts of a large-dam construction: the case of Castanhão, Brazil
Published in Water International, 2019
Carlos Enrique Tupiño Salinas, Vládia Pinto Vidal de Oliveira, Liana Brito, André V. Ferreira, José Carlos de Araújo
Harvey (2010) considered the social dynamics under capitalism and highlighted the contradiction between social demands and economic interest (see also Boelens et al., 2019; Khagram, 2004). The economy tends to answer to corporate interests more than to people’s needs. Harvey noted that the main function of mega-infrastructure projects is to amplify the reproduction of capital and not to improve the well-being of the population, as also observed by Crow-Miller, Webber, and Molle (2017) concerning the recent return to capital-intensive water infrastructure. This logic is visible in the case of the Castanhão, where funds were made available for infrastructure, but not for operation, maintenance or personnel, resulting in poor performance at expensive construction sites. In the present phase of capital reproduction, which started in the 1970s, large financial corporations (resulting from the fusion of bank and productive capital: Hilferding, 2006) command the use of territory at a global scale (Boelens et al., 2019; de Brunhoff & Chesnais, 1999). Santos (2002) characterizes the actions of these corporations as verticality: actions moved by private interests that focus on territory, generating fragmentation, such as social, economic and environmental inequalities. This situation generates environmental racism because large engineering works disproportionately harm vulnerable ethnic groups (Boelens et al., 2019; Pacheco, 2008). This concept applies adequately to the Brazilian semi-arid region, where economic and financial vulnerability prevails. The cultural dependency of the population in this area of the country amplifies the power of the big corporations over the local communities. One way to give more autonomy to the local population in relation to verticality would be to construct horizontalities. According to Santos (2002), horizontality is an action moved by collective interests, such as the Movement of the People Affected by Dams, which greatly contributed to the resistance of the people affected by the Castanhão Dam. Santos affirms that, in the present period of capitalist globalization, verticalities act with increasing intensity in the territories. However, horizontalities can promote changes in the territories of different spatial scales, even affecting the globalization process.
Race/ethnicity, built environment in neighborhood, and children’s mental health in the US
Published in International Journal of Environmental Health Research, 2022
Studies in social ecology tend to indicate that the neighborhood environment can vary by residents’ socioeconomic status (Jennings et al. 2017). Previous research has documented the socioeconomic disparities in access to neighborhood facilities, emphasizing the limited access to parks and public green space for groups with lower socioeconomic status in the United States (Gordon-Larsen et al. 2006). As one of the most important social categories which has captured economic exploitation, political marginalization, and social stigmatization, both historically and presently, race/ethnicity has made it consequential for virtually every aspect of social life in the United States (Williams et al. 2010). Arguably, most consequential effects of socioeconomic disparities in the United States are related to race/ethnicity (Williams and Collins 2001). Most racial and ethnic minorities in the United States live in segregated neighborhoods with a dearth of resources and opportunities (Northridge and Shepard 1997; Brulle and Pellow 2006). Such environmental inequality based on race/ethnicity has given rise to environmental racism, which ‘refers to any policy, practice, or directive that differentially affects or disadvantages (whether intended or unintended) individuals, groups, or communities based on race or color’ (Bullard 1996, p. 497). Environmental racism restricts socioeconomic attainment for minority groups but also leads to group disparities in health and well-being (Williams and Collins 2001; Brulle and Pellow 2006; Logan 2011). It further creates pathogenic neighborhood conditions, with most racial/ethnic minorities living in markedly more health-damaging environments and facing higher levels of acute and chronic stressors. Such racial/ethnic segregation works as the primary cause of racial disparities in health by further creating racial/ethnic differences in socioeconomic status and in conditions inimical to health (Collins & Williams, 1999; Brulle and Pellow 2006; Northridge and Shepard 1997; Jennings et al. 2019; Williams, Priest, & Anderson, 2016). However, inadequate attention has been given in prior research to assess whether the differential residential environments of racial/ethnic minorities lead to elevated exposure to environmental disadvantages that interact with other psychological stresses to induce mental health risks (Srinivasan et al. 2003; Gee and Payne-Sturges 2004; Brulle and Pellow 2006).