In 2014, city administrators in Flint, Mich., switched the city’s water supply to the polluted Flint River. The move was meant to cut costs, but ended up plunging the town residents – particularly residents of color – into an ongoing crisis.
Now, some of these communities are pushing for environmental justice action. According to Karin Jakubowski, a university adjunct professor who lectured this semester about environmental justice and climate activism in a marine environmental education class, “Everyone who is part of the system should have the same rights to the same environmental protections, benefits from the environment, as well as meaningful involvement…”
Bryce DuBois, associate professor in the university’s marine and environmental science department, defines environmental injustice as an inequitable burden that primarily people of color experience, especially in relation to toxics and environmental hazards. For instance, the New Haven Environmental Justice Network has focused on issues such as the cleanup of a closed power station built in the 1800s.
The issues facing most indigenous populations differ from both local populations and other indigenous populations. For example, the Indigenous Wayuu people from Colombia face “droughts, intensified by climate change” and have “worsened water scarcity…” according to Associated Press journalist, Steven Grattan.
In Indonesia, members of the Papuan community are exposed to environmental stressors and degradation. For example, “…pollution, development and biodiversity loss shrink the forest and stunt plant and animal life,” which leads to villagers worrying that traditions and livelihoods will be lost.
Environmental injustices’ effect stateside on African Americans, Asians and Latinos tends to be different. Students of color often experience more psychological stress compared to their white peers.
Dorceta Taylor, a Yale University environmental justice professor, said, “Students of color can be very afraid to say they don’t understand something…They are so programmed to think they must know everything and that they must succeed at everything.” In other words, many students of color end up feeling isolated, disregarded and feel as if their ideas and opinions do not matter.
Taylor also said that when students learn about challenges other people face, they become psychologically and emotionally impacted and become more empathetic.
DuBois, who has a background in environmental psychology, said reports from the ‘60s and ‘70s – such as those that looked at toxic waste facilities near communities of color — marked the modern beginning of the climate crisis.
There is also a clear connection between environmental injustices and the socioeconomic status of impacted populations. Members of Black, Latino and Indigenous communities are not responsible for creating the climate crisis. That responsibility falls on corporations and the people who establish institutions that compromise the health and well-being of these minority groups, whose members are experiencing a never-ending cycle of exposure to hazards, poor-quality healthcare and education, with limited access to resources.
In Jakubowski’s class, she said that socioeconomic factors are interconnected with nature. In another one of Jakubowski’s courses, students discussed how global and climate change are issues of environmental justice.
In the U.S., activists have focused more on water justice and quality because there are “concerns about the quality of the U.S. public drinking water supply have primarily focused on lead pipes, aging infrastructure, and workforce recruitment and retention,” said Paige Stein, Yale University’s chief communications and marketing officer. As with the situation in Flint, the question is how water can be equitably distributed, particularly in impoverished communities.
During the Biden administration, there were multiple efforts made in response to environmental injustice, which involved “…new environmental justice initiatives…aimed at helping disadvantaged communities protect against disproportionate environmental pollution,” said Faith Arcuri, former Charger Bulletin managing editor.
According to Arcuri, the previous administration introduced a program to resettle climate refugees and it created a Climate Change Support Office. In April, the Trump administration fired federal employees in charge of U.S. global climate policy and climate aid.
Yale School of the Environment’s Justice, Equity, Diversity and Sustainability Initiative, studies the relationship between social inequalities and the environment.
The initiative is “the most comprehensive of its kind, features professionals in the energy, Indigenous land rights, conservation, climate, and environmental justice fields…” said Fran Silverman, the school’s associate director of communications.
DuBois was a member of Rockaway Sandy, an “organization around a racial justice lens and [established] after Hurricane Sandy…to do some resilience building.” With a framework called a Community Benefits Agreement, a formal document where a community identifies their needs, the organization works to prevent minority communities from becoming displaced.
