Environmental Justice: Everything You Need to Know – EcoWatch

Source: Environmental Justice: Everything You Need to Know – EcoWatch

Quick Key Facts

• Environmental justice movements work to end or stop disproportionate amounts of environmentally negative practices in vulnerable communities.
• Types of environmental injustice aren’t limited to a few specific types of activities but instead can look like many different things that share several key themes.
• One of the first environmental justice lawsuits was an eight-year-long case related to a landfill being developed in a Black community in Texas.
• Protests against a planned toxic landfill in Warren County, North Carolina, are cited as the first well-known activities in support of environmental justice in the U.S.
• Land grabs are among the most common types of environmental conflicts, according to an international inventory of environmental injustices.
• Although the first federal executive order on environmental justice was in the 1990s, it reportedly had little impact on agency actions.
• President Joe Biden signed an executive order in April seeking to address environmental injustices in low-income and racial minority communities.
• Roughly a dozen states have at least one office of environmental justice, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

What Is Environmental Justice?

Environmental justice is a facet of broader social justice movements. It considers how individual communities can be overburdened with a disproportionate amount of environmentally negative facilities or activities in their area compared to other, less vulnerable communities. Achieving environmental justice looks like “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.