Robert D. Bullard[1]

Bullard, environmental justice, ethnicity and race

Unequal Protection (1994)

Environmental justice movement – environmental equity

• Transboundary waste trade

• land-fill sites and contaminants

“Environmental Racism is the link in the chain of acts of unsustainable development. It involves a denial of human rights, environmental protection, and economic opportunities to the communities where people of color live and work.”

p. 1.

“environmental discrimination is unfair, unethical and immoral. They also recognize that environmental justice is a legitimate area of inquiry. . . . “

pp. 1-2.

Race Matters

Oct 27, 1991

“this multinational People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit ...to fight the destruction and taking of our lands and communities...do hereby re-establish our spiritual interdependence to the sacredness of Mother Earth.”

p. 3.

Executive Order 12898 “Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and low-income populations.” 2-11-1994

“many opportunities to address environmental hazards in minority communities and low-income communities ... from being subject to disproportionately high and adverse environmental impacts.”

p. 3.

UT Dallas study 46 percent – poor-suited housing development are within a mile of factories reporting “toxic emissions to the EPA.”

p. 4.

“prevent environmental threats before they occur.”

“All communities are not created equal.”

West Dallas, West Harlem, South side Chicago, South central Los Angeles.

Leveling the Playing field

Pensacola, Florida EPA relocated 358 families “from a dioxin dump, tagged “Mount Dioxin, marking the first time a black community was relocated under the federal government’s giant Superfund program.”

p. 8

Uranium enrichment plant, 1997.

Homer, La. Claiborne Parish between two African Amrican communities -- Forest Grove (1865) Center Springs (1910)

“For example African-Americans constitute 13 percent of the US population, 20 percent of the southern state’s population, 31 percent of Louisiana’s population, 35 percent of Louisiana’s northern parishes (counties), and 46 percent of Claiborne Parish.”

pp. 8-9.

“The aggregate average percentage of blacks in the population within a one mile radius of the seventy eight sites examined (in sixteen parishes) is 28.35 percent. “ When looking at “37 sites” within 9 parishes “rose to 36.78”

legal victory fo CANT (opponents)

NRC – Nuclear Regulatory Commission:

“1) inaccurately assessed the costs and benefits.”

“2) they failed to consider the inequitable distribution of costs and benefits.”

3) they failed to consider the fact that siting the plant in a community of color followed a national patter.”

pp. 9-10.

Environmnetal Justice has faltered (1970s-2002)

p. 11.

Mossville Community “surrounded by fourteen industrial facilities that together emit millions of pounds of toxic chemicals into the air, water, and soil each year.”

p. 12.

“complexities of building a multiethnic movement whose leaders often have divergent worldviews and sometimes competing interests.”

p.13.

NIMBY vs PIBBY

“The lives of people living in sacrifice zones”

The Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights and the Politics of Pollution (2005)