Environmental Justice for the 21st Century
The EJ frame has expanded greatly since I first wrote about it. Consider the sheer number of contemporary EJ issues. More recent technologies like hydraulic fracking create new inequities, health risks, and environmental destruction. Unequal global “mobilities” with ecological consequences include both elite tourists inhabiting mostly white, privileged spaces, and immigrants driven from their homes by deadly violence, climate change, and global “free-trade” agreements that undercut their livelihoods (Urry & Larsen, 2011). As Pat Bryant presciently stated in Carver Terrace, many people have become climate refugees in their own communities, whether in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, or in Shishmaref, Alaska, one of a growing number of vulnerable coastal communities literally going underwater due to climate impacts disproportionately caused by others. Indigenous resistance is more visible, as reflected in the Standing Rock encampments supporting the Standing Rock Sioux protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), focusing on toxic pollution but also affirming Indigenous cultural values and treaty rights. Globally, Indigenous EJ activism networks have grown, although the risks are often high. For example, human rights activist Berta Cáceres in Honduras was tragically assassinated in 2016 after organizing effective opposition to destructive dams, mining, and logging on Indigenous Lenca lands. Her daughter has carried on her work. The list of other EJ issues is long: the “dumping” of toxic electronic waste from the Global North into the Global South; EJ debates about siting national parks and nature preserves (who gets access? who/what is protected or displaced?); food justice activism (for example, “food deserts,” food sovereignty, food politics, farmworkers’ rights, genetically modified organisms, and agricultural chemicals); sustainability and green design (sustainability for whom?); and much more. Destruction of scientific data joined the list during the Trump administration, as federal agencies were directed to delete information and websites about climate change.
Given the growing list of EJ issues, what can we say about the EJ frame? The frame continues to highlight what is wrong, who is responsible, and how to fix it. Contemporary EJ research helps to explain how the framing has changed. Let’s consider sustainability. EJ scholars and activists have critiqued sustainability initiatives that unwittingly create bubbles of privilege. For instance, many U.S. urban planners, including those in my city, have been enthusiastic about the so-called complete street concept, which, instead of focusing on cars, includes spaces for pedestrian strolling, bicycle lanes, traffic calming elements, and green spaces. They frame this as good for small businesses and beneficial to everyone. However, some minority communities have protested because funding these projects attracts gentrification, where higher-priced retail businesses, restaurants, and housing drive up property tax and rents, pricing lower-income residents out of their own communities. A good idea in principle becomes a bad idea in practice if it contributes even unintentionally to segregation, displacement, and distrust. In the United States, green design (a good idea) is often pitched to a higher-income clientele (exclusionary), prompting EJ critiques of “green gentrification” (Checker, 2011; Gould & Lewis, 2017). For a full discussion of this phenomenon, please see Chapter 17 in this volume. Likewise, local food movements have been critiqued for being insular and supporting “white space” while ignoring a deeper history and diverse cultural perspectives (Mares & Peña, 2014; see also Chapter 12 in this volume). A growing body of research on “just sustainabilities” (Alkon & Agyeman, 2014; Agyeman et al., 2016) is contributing significantly to an expanding EJ frame.
Framing theory also reminds us that the EJ frame will look different depending on the depth of the diagnostic and prognostic process that produces it. A range of EJ scholars point out that today the EJ frame is more likely to reach deep into the systemic roots of inequalities like racism and sexism. As environmental racism became more prominent in the EJ frame, the frame expanded beyond seeking a remedy for a particular situation and targeted the racist logic prevalent in the U.S social structure and elsewhere—a deeper diagnosis, and a message that many white people either do not want to hear, or of which they are naïvely unaware. A highly visible example is how white bodies and bodies of people of color in particular spaces are treated differently (think Flint, Michigan, and the BLM movement). Who is privileged? Who is erased? Who is put under surveillance? Who is injured or killed? A deeper EJ frame also spotlights inequalities built into the global capitalist system and its political power; Laura Pulido and her co-authors question the effectiveness of merely “tinkering with policies” (Pulido, Kohl & Cotton, 2016, p. 12). The problem is multifaceted and includes the need for stronger democracy and confronting the deep roots of inequality embedded in the economic system. By understanding the framing process, we can discover who constructed a particular set of meanings, how this relates to social power, and how framing can support or undermine social justice. For example, “counterframes” spring up to challenge successful frames like EJ, targeting minorities and poor people as the problem, rather than the system that does violence to them.
Weaving Together Past, Present, and Future
The residents of Carver Terrace endured many institutional failures, made worse by systemic racism: the way land use was(n’t) regulated, racialized housing markets, the way science and law was practiced, and encounters with outside agencies and other interactions that framed people of color as problematic and undeserving (Čapek, 1999). What about the five EJ frame dimensions that I identified earlier—Are they still relevant? Yes, but they are part of a bigger picture (and EJ frame) with many more dimensions.
Communities continue to struggle to get accurate information (dimension 1) about the safety of their land and homes, whether the problem is fracking, tar sands oil pipelines, urban air and water pollution, runoff from massive poultry or hog operations, pesticide drift, Indigenous sovereignty rights, and much more. Due to the hostility to regulation built into capitalism, citizens often don’t get information without a fight. They hold agencies, politicians, and corporations accountable through protests, legal suits, and political action, as well as by creating alternative resources. When FUSE/CTCAG discovered that an important federal health assessment was withheld from the community, they held a press conference but also worked with the grassroots Environmental Health Network to collect their own data—a good example of what Phil Brown (1992) calls popular epidemiology (see Chapter 5 in this volume). Today, various nonprofit organizations continue to sidestep reluctant government agencies to study environmental health impacts and to share the information. Recently, researchers at the Silent Spring Institute, a public-interest nonprofit research organization, found that black hair products contain “multiple chemicals linked to cancer, asthma, infertility, and more” (Helm, Nishioka, Brody, Rudel, & Dodson, 2018). Researchers focusing on the “environmental injustice of beauty” found that employees of nail salons (predominantly Asian American and African American women) are disproportionately exposed to toxins from the products they work with (Zota & Shamasunder, 2017). EJ enters the most intimate spheres of our