Environmental Inequality: Unequal Exposures to Harm across Communities
Article by: Olivia Carling, Open Dialogues International Foundation
Effective environmental policy is essential for achieving equitable social outcomes, as environmental harms disproportionately affect marginalized communities, hence making environmental policies and social justice fundamentally linked. A key aim of environmental policy is to ensure a fair distribution of environmental benefits and protect vulnerable communities. Unfortunately, it is increasingly apparent that environmental degradation exacerbates inequality by disproportionately impacting vulnerable communities who rely on natural resources, pushing a poverty cycle of suffering with limited chances for development. Furthermore, environmental policies have the power to worsen social inequalities and further both class and race divides within an area, as well as globally. The distribution between who emits more and who feels the impacts of climate change is also an issue of social justice, seen in how the Global North, more affluent and industrialized, emits significantly more than the Global South, who bear the brunt of climate change and environmental issues.
Part 1: Environmental Justice
Environmental justice aims for the fair treatment of all people through developing and enforcing environmental laws. By addressing the disproportionate burden of pollution and waste faced by marginalized communities, theoretically policies would aim to target both environmental quality and social welfare, benefiting multiple areas simultaneously.
The Environmental Justice movement was primarily led by Black people, Latines, Pacific Islanders, Asian Americans and Indigenous people due to a key reason; those who live in the United States’ most polluted environments are overwhelmingly people of color and people living in poverty. This is due to environmental racism, affecting minorities’ health and living conditions, and rooted in historical discrimination and segregation, with the effects still present in modern societies.
For example, to this day, majority-white and wealthy communities are where investments into infrastructure are more likely to be made, where environmental laws are more likely to be properly enforced, and where polluters are more likely to be held accountable or kept away entirely. By comparison, the most marginalized communities are routinely treated as the areas where highways can be built, waste can be stored, industrial warehouses and facilities can be concentrated, and where natural resources can be readily exploited or destroyed.
Evidence of this can be seen in Hurricane Katrina of 2005 in New Orleans, when the city’s black neighbourhoods were predominantly affected by the storm. Then, the black areas of Houston were largely destroyed twelve years after by Hurricane Harvey. Racism and climate change are two of the most pressing challenges of the 21st Century, and through examining how they are linked it is evident that environmental policies are created with social justice in mind, considering poorer and minority communities are significantly more affected by environmental degradation and the climate crisis.
Aerial view of suburbs in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina
Robert Bullard is accredited with forming environmental justice as a theory and increasing its relevance, starting with an investigation into landfills and their strategic placements.
“..we found that from the ‘30s up until 1978, five out of five city-owned landfills were located in predominantly black communities. Six out of eight of the city-owned incinerators were located in predominantly black neighborhoods. Three out of the four privately owned landfills were located in black neighborhoods.” (Bullard, 2019).
At the time, Black people made up only 25% of the population, but somehow 82% of all the garbage was disposed of in landfills and waste systems in black neighbourhoods. A systemic imbalance that has been perpetuated throughout history shows how and why climate change and environmental concerns are inherently tied to social justice, particularly raising a concern of deep rooted, systemic racism. The two issues that can appear unrelated or separate, actually have deep ties in inequality, hence why countries have started to purposefully create environmental policies targeting low-income or minority areas in order to recognize the disadvantaged harms they face.
Part 2: Environmental Inequality and Gentrification
The impacts of climate change, such as flooding and heatwaves, can have severe impacts on livelihoods, such as the millions of reported premature deaths from air pollution, which are concentrated in lower-income regions. The fact that people of color across the Global South are those who are most affected by the climate crisis, despite their carbon footprints being generally very low is further evidence in support of how environmental consequences are unequally distributed according to who caused them, and innocent people continue to suffer because of power dynamics and inequality.
According to the World Inequality Database, since the Industrial Revolution, the most affluent countries of the world (the ‘Global North’) have been responsible for approximately half of all emissions. In 2019, the top 10% of emitters were responsible for circa 48% of global CO2 emissions, whereas the bottom 50% emitted 12% (Generation Climate Europe, 2022). This shows the unequal exposure to harm, proving why environmental policies are increasingly being targeted at lower income areas. Social justice is based on the principle that everyone deserves equal rights and opportunities. However, when minorities and poorer individuals continuously become disadvantaged, like black Americans being exposed to 54% more particulate matter than their white counterparts, this becomes a serious social issue (Josey et al. 2023).
A core fight for early environmental justice activists was to bring long-term environmental changes to benefit struggling neighbourhoods. They fought for green spaces, parks, fresh produce stores, playgrounds. However, activism today faces an unprecedented obstacle, presented by new forms of gentrification and unequal benefits of sustainable city planning and improvement. Neighbourhoods that were once undesirable become valued by outside private investors, as well as attract more privileged residents that have a higher purchasing power. Due to this process, previous lower-income residents, and often minorities, are unable to enjoy the new green amenities which they have been historically deprived of, and fought for through environmental justice movements.
The High Line aerial park in New York City, a former elevated railroad, was restored and then transformed into a large green space.
Along with tourists, the green space came with high increases in area property values, squeezing out local businesses and the working-class residents that were once present around the old tracks. In fact, between 2003 and 2011, the property values near the High Line increased by an average of 103%.
With naive environmental policies that have good intentions come large risks for displacement and further inequality drivers, highlighting the deep need for social justice and environmentalism to be considered as a whole issue, rather than two separate concepts. The combination of land revaluation and improvement projects followed by displacement illustrates the process of “green gentrification” or “ecological gentrification”. This is a newer focus of environmental justice activism, demonstrating how complex the issue of bringing sustainable living opportunities to marginalized communities truly is, as there are many unintended outcomes.
Part 3: Successful Intervention
Well-designed environmental policies can reduce both environmental issues and target inequality at the same time. Regulations regarding pollution would improve public health. The Bradford clean zone in West Yorkshire, England is a government-mandated Class C+ zone aimed at improving air quality through reducing Nitrogen Dioxide levels, implemented in 2022. Bradford is a reportedly low-income area, ranked as the UK’s 13th most deprived authority. The zone is an area that spans the city center and Shipley/Saltaire corridor, a transport and development area that is a major artery. Reportedly after 1 year of the zone’s implementation, GP visits for respiratory illnesses were down by a quarter, saving the NHS over £30,000 monthly. Hence, it is clear that by minimizing pollution, the city saw real results on health, as well as taking some burden off the constantly overwhelmed NHS.
Part 4: Conclusion
Understanding the issues present in our societies, and being aware of the reasonings behind them is key to achieving progress against them. Environmental inequality is rooted in racism and classism, that still continues to this day because of bias and privilege. It is vital that those who benefit develop an understanding of why they do, and what they can do to make things even. Raising awareness and starting discussions on a topic present at local and global scales is the first step to achieving change.
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