The Father of Environmental Justice Exposes the Geography of Inequity
- Author: Yessenia Funes
- Full Title: The Father of Environmental Justice Exposes the Geography of Inequity
- Category: articles
- Document Tags: #geospatial
- URL: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-father-of-environmental-justice-exposes-the-geography-of-inequity/
Highlights
- Black people face some of the highest cancer and asthma rates in the U.S., statistics that are inarguably linked to the environment in which someone lives, works and plays. But until Robert D. Bullard began collecting data in the 1970s, no one fully understood how a person's surroundings can affect their health. And no one, not even Bullard, knew how segregated the most polluted places really were. (View Highlight)
- Environmental justice—the idea that everyone has the right to a clean and healthy environment, no matter their race or class—has been embraced by advocates around the world and is influencing international climate negotiations. (View Highlight)
- My job was to design the study, collect the data, and present maps that showed where all the landfills, incinerators and solid waste sites were located in Houston from the 1920s up to 1979. We found that five out of five of the city-owned landfills were in predominantly Black neighborhoods, as were three out of four of the privately owned landfills. Six out of eight of the city's incinerators were in Black neighborhoods. Black people made up only 25 percent of Houston's population at the time, yet 82 percent of the garbage in the city was dumped on them. (View Highlight)
- A lot of people tried to debunk our work, but they never could. We had to fight with some of our environmental allies: conservation groups that were mostly white and affluent. They're with us now, but they were not always. (View Highlight)
- Our principles of environmental justice—which include the safety of workers, the rights of Indigenous peoples and the honoring of nature—have been translated into half a dozen languages. And globally, in countries that have suffered because of colonialism, imperialism and racism, communities are now applying that same environmental justice lens to their organizing. (View Highlight)
- Neighborhoods that were redlined 100 years ago are hotter today because of urban heat islands [see Islands of Illness]. They have no tree canopy or parks or green space. They're more prone to flooding because they lack flood protection. They are more prone to industrial pollution. And we've learned that the same neighborhoods were more prone to COVID hospitalizations and deaths. (View Highlight)