A Just Transition
12 minute read
Environmental what…?
Now this is a phrase you’re going to start to hear an awful lot more of and not least because Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has started talking about it. The idea of “Environmental Justice” has been catapulted into the mainstream in recent months along-side the global Black Lives Matter protests with commentators quickly (and correctly) linking the racism pandemic with the climate crisis.
Environmental Justice is the answer to Environmental Racism. It is well established that the impacts of climate change and pollution disproportionally impact BIPOC communities and those already struggling in poverty. Examples include the Flint Water Crisis, low-income housing being built on floodplains, putting residents at risk of severe weather events and curtailing their property values and the fact that black Americans are three times more likely to die from exposure to air pollutants than their white counterparts.
The 17 guiding principles of Environmental Justice were first drafted at the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in Washington DC... in 1991! (There’s an interesting debate around number 9 which is something I hope to explore further in a future blog post). 2007 work by Dr Robert Bullard a.k.a. “The Father of Environmental Justice” shows that race is a stronger determining factor than socio-economic status in predicting the location of commercial hazardous waste facilities in the US; and that after controlling for income, black children were five times more likely than white children to the suffer from lead poisoning caused by proximity to waste.
Environmental Justice advocates use the word “Climate” in the widest possible sense - it’s not just the warming atmosphere, it’s everything around you; it’s the neighbourhood you live in, the quality of air you breath and the water you drink, it’s the natural world around you, your economic opportunities, the police brutality you suffer, the list goes on.
Environmental Justice is essentially about the right of all people to live in an environment that provides all the resources needed to live a safe and healthy life.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (which itself has come under fire for watering-down the topic) defines Environmental Justice 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”
The pandemic has shown us how far away we are from this. As a result of decades of discrimination BIPOC communities have been forced to live in areas that are quite literally poisoning them, creating underlying health conditions like asthma, heart disease, heavy metal poisoning, diabetes and some cancers. This is why the elevated COVID death rates amongst BIPOC communities versus white people is an Environmental Justice issue. Staggeringly, Public Health England failed to consider this in their report.
The catch 22 is that the marginalised communities most in need of Environmental Justice are not sufficiently empowered to fight for it. They often don’t have direct control over the land on which they live, nor a loud enough voice to make the world aware of their plight. A history of excluding people of colour from leadership in environmental movements has led to racial discrimination in environmental policy-making and the enforcement of regulations and laws.
A problem perpetuated
Environmentalism has a diversity problem. This is despite people of colour being disproportionately impacted by environmental hazards and the fact that, according to National Geographic, indigenous communities are the primary protectors of around 80% of the worlds biodiversity.
Large organisations such as Greenpeace, WWF and even Extinction Rebellion are all overwhelmingly white and middle class. There have been lots of studies into this, the best hard data comes from the US where an analysis of voluntary diversity data from 2,057 environmental non-profits found that roughly 80-85% of employees were white. This figure moves in to the mid-90s at senior manager and board level. Another US study found that people of colour comprised of just 10% experts interviewed for media coverage of environmental issues.
There are different theories as to reasons behind this, perhaps the most logical is that privileged people will have the means, resources and opportunities to engage with nature and the environment from an early age, they don’t have to worry about working low-paid jobs after school to help support their families, nor are they fighting a constant battle against discrimination or being racially profiled and harassed by police. It’s hard to focus on climate change when you have these barriers to overcome in your everyday life. Consequently, low-income people and marginalised communities tend not to have the extra-curricular CV padding required to secure relevant university places, internships and eventually environmental careers. This is a socio-economic problem, not race one explicitly. But as we are all too aware, low-income people are more likely to be people of colour. Unconscious bias undoubtedly plays a part too, with the cultural norms, network structures and recruitment practices of white affluent environmentalists perpetuating homogenous organisations.
As for indigenous people, it’s a triple blow. A meta-study from the University of Helsinki reviewed 700 other studies, covering 141 indigenous groups and showed that:
Indigenous people are “among the populations at highest risk of impact by environmental pollution of water, land, and biota through both exposure and vulnerability”
Due to their way of life and customs often being highly dependent on local natural resources, they are uniquely vulnerable to the environmental contaminants and toxins they (mostly) did not create. This has had a stark impact on their health - Diabetes, hypertension, childhood leukaemia, autism, cardiovascular disease, neurological impacts, anemia, cancer, changes in age of menstruation, contaminants in breast milk and anxiety all have been associated with polluting practices on Indigenous land.
Finally, much of their leadership of conservation topics and resistance to polluting industries is being undermined. The researchers recommend bringing Indigenous people and their perspectives front and centre in conversations, environmental action.
A history lesson
To really understand the deep rooted links between racism and climate change we must go waaay back. This example focuses on the US but parallels can easily be drawn to any colonial nation really.
When white European colonists came to North America in the mid-1600s, they displaced the (the initially helpful) indigenous people and by the early 1700s had brought over a significant number of enslaved Africans. Native Americans were forced to give up their land; trees were felled, rivers diverted and ecological systems disrupted, all using the bodies of black people.
The rapid growth of what was to become the United States of America followed this pattern of displacing indigenous people, claiming land to ransack (initially for livestock, then gold and later for oil) and forcing black people to live in the worst places with the worst food, healthcare, education and opportunities. Entrenched behaviours that exploit nature, the planet and fellow humans for commercial gain. We are very obviously living with the fallout of this today.
The University of Helsinki meta-study we just mentioned also shows that colonialism directly led to the development of environment-polluting infrastructure built without the consent of - and differentially affecting - indigenous communities.
An unwelcome legacy
Alas, this is not a problem confined to history either, the Dakota Access Pipeline springs to mind, and just look at what Bolsonaro is doing right now to the indigenous tribes and wildlife of the Amazon; all for the benefit of oil, mining and logging profits.
Environmental Justice advocates (and activists), such as the Climate Justice Alliance argue that the means are just as important and the ends. Our transition to a low-carbon future must also alleviate poverty, safeguard worker’s rights and ensure responsible land use - for example, a hydroelectric dam that provides clean energy to tens of thousands of people is great, but not if the resulting lake displaces local communities or if the reduced river flow destroys wildlife habitat or wrecks the livelihoods of local fishing villages.
Put plainly, an environmentalist would want a solar farm - the bigger the better as more CO2 emissions would be mitigated. The past is the past and we must do everything we can to reduce emissions and avert catastrophic climate change. An Environmental Justice campaigner would want a community owned solar cooperative, that provides clean energy for deprived locals along with jobs to install and run it, and a collective income for the community that can be recycled into local businesses and social projects.
A slight segway, but while we’re on the topic of entrenched behaviours, we must stop using the term “Brown Finance” to mean the opposite of “Green” (good, clean) finance. It’s racist. Not deliberately, but that’s the problem. The language extenuates the preposterous notion that brown = bad. Ignorant phrases like this are symptomatic of who is (and isn’t) in the room having the climate change conversation. Changing our language won’t bring about meaningful change by itself, but it would be a good first step. If policymakers and investors are unable to recognise the harm their choice of words can amplify, how can we expect them to bring about Environmental Justice?
Ambitious plans
Mr Biden’s plan aims to address climate change, racism, inequality and the COVID recovery by spending $2tr over four years; focusing on transportation, clean energy and construction with the key overlay that all of it will create jobs for Americans. His targets are ambitious and include an emissions-free US energy sector by 2035 and upgrading four million buildings in four years to the the highest energy efficiency standards.
The plan became interesting though when Mr Biden pressed the need to link environmental advocacy to racial justice, citing pollution and other toxic harms that disproportionately affect communities of colour. He has set a goal for disadvantaged communities to receive 40% of all the clean energy and infrastructure benefits he was proposing. He also made explicit references to indigenous communities and called for expanding broadband access to tribal lands.
The plan also calls for establishing an office of environmental and climate justice at the Justice Department and developing a broad set of tools to address how “environmental policy decisions of the past have failed communities of color.”
Fingers crossed then...
Regular readers of the blog will know how much I love the UN Sustainable Development Goals (and I do), but dividing up humanity’s greatest challenges into distinct (albeit slightly fungible) categories isn’t always helpful when it comes to dealing with them as a whole. We’ve talked a lot about inequality and discrimination in recent months and it is the very same social structures and institutions, littered with systemic racism, that are responsible for creating and exacerbating the climate crisis.
Climate change, the COVID pandemic and the global anti-racism protests have demonstrated just how interlinked and interdependent the SDGs are and we must look at them all together, through a “justice” lens if we want to deal with them once and for all.