Chapter 1: Introduction to Environmental Issues
1.5 Environmental Justice & Indigenous Rights
Environmental Justice
Environmental Justice is defined as 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. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.
Whenever a community is faced with the potential of an environmentally undesirable facility, such as the placement of a hazardous waste dump in its midst, the usual response from residents is: “Not in my back yard!” Such a response is known as the NIMBY principle. Such reactions are usually reactions to visions of previous environmental irresponsibility: uncontrolled dumping of noxious industrial wastes and rusty steel drums oozing hazardous chemicals into the environment. Such occurrences were all too real in the past and some are still taking place. It is now possible – and much more common – to build environmentally sound, state-of-the-art disposal facilities. However, the NIMBY principle usually prevents the construction of such new facilities. Instead, hazardous waste facilities tend to be built upon pre-existing, already contaminated sites, even though the geology of such locations may be less favorable for containment than potential new sites.
Environmental Racism
During the 1980’s minority groups protested that hazardous waste sites were preferentially sited in minority neighborhoods. Dr. Benjamin Franklin Chavis, the Executive Director of the United Church of Christ is credited with coining the term environmental racism, and in 1987, his church’s Commission for Racial Justice released a landmark report titled, “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A national report on the racial socio-economic characteristics of communities with hazardous waste sites.” Among its findings, the report found that “Race proved to be the most significant among variables tested in association with the location of commercial hazardous waste facilities,” representing a consistent national pattern. More recently, peer-reviewed research by the EPA’s National Center for Public Health has confirmed a similar pattern, finding that disparities in the distribution of air pollution sources for particulate matter are more pronounced based on race (particularly for African Americans) than they are based on poverty status.
While there are fewer and less well developed studies documenting environmental racism in Canada, there is ample evidence that similar patterns apply. Mitchell and D’Onofrio note that “Numerous Aboriginal communities, including Aamjiwnaang First Nation and Grassy Narrows First Nation in Ontario, Fort Chipewyan in Alberta, and Mi’kmaw communities in Nova Sc