Search
110-S2
Table of Contents
EHPS Archives
Publications
Subscribe
|
Environmental
Health Perspectives Supplements Volume 110, Number 2, April 2002
Environmental Justice: Building a Unified Vision of Health and the
Environment
Charles Lee
Office of Environmental Justice, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,
Washington, DC, USA
|
|
Full Article in PDF
|
Abstract
The assorted and multidimensional concerns that give rise to the issue
of environmental justice have proved to be intellectually daunting and
highly resistant to positive change. Low-income, people of color, and
tribal communities confronting environmental stressors are beset by stressors
in both the physical and social environments. For this reason, while the
bifurcation of the public health and environmental fields taking place
over the past several decades has yielded generally negative impacts in
areas of public health, environment, and planning, the consequences for
low-income and disadvantaged communities have been especially grievous.
This commentary builds on the recent Institute of Medicine workshop titled
"Rebuilding the Unity of Health and the Environment: A New Vision of Environmental
Health for the 21st Century." The workshop organizers posited that only
by thinking about environmental health on multiple levels will it be possible
to merge various strategies to protect both the environment and health.
In this commentary we examine how such a new vision of uniting public
health and the environment can contribute to attaining environmental justice
for all populations. Key words: environmental justice, environmental
policy, health disparities, minority health, planning, public health,
socioeconomic status, sustainable communities. Environ Health Perspect
110(suppl 2):141-144 (2002).
http://ehpnet1.niehs.nih.gov/docs/2002/suppl-2/141-144lee/abstract.html
This article is part of the monograph Advancing Environmental
Justice through Community-Based Participatory Research.
Address correspondence to C. Lee, 1200 Pennsylvania
Ave. NW, Mail Code 2201-A, Washington, DC 20460 USA. Telephone: (202)
564-2597. Fax: (202) 501-1163. E-mail: lee.charles@epa.gov
The views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author. No official support or endorsement by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency or any other agency of the federal government is intended
or should be inferred.
Received 13 August 2001; accepted 11 January 2002.
|
The assorted and multidimensional concerns that give rise to the issue of environmental
justice have proved to be intellectually daunting and highly resistant to positive
change. On one hand, people of color, tribal, and low-income communities often
suffer adverse and disproportionate exposure to environmental and occupational
toxins. Most of these negative impacts have yet to be documented. However, the
emerging literature on this subject has begun to conclusively document serious
environmental inequities in the areas of lead poisoning; air pollution and ambient
air quality; groundwater contamination and drinking water safety; proximity
to noxious facilities, mining waste and nuclear plants; location of municipal
landfills, incinerators, and abandoned toxic waste sites; placement of transportation
thoroughfares; illegal dumping; occupational health and safety; use of agricultural
chemicals; contaminated fish consumption; habitat destruction; cleanup of Superfund
sites; and unequal enforcement of environmental laws (1-18).
On the other hand, these populations tend to be more susceptible and vulnerable
by virtue of the social environment. Factors such as economic distress and low
socioeconomic status (SES) contribute to the impact of these exposures as well
as act independently to lower health status. Exposure to toxic environmental
and occupational agents can have different effects in individuals differing
in age, SES, ethnic background, gender, and genetic composition. Some subsets
of the population are inherently more susceptible to cellular or genetic damage
for a number of reasons, including genetic susceptibility, nutritional status,
other social or cultural factors, or in the case of children, the vulnerability
of developing systems to environmental insult. Distressed communities also suffer
from fragmented social fabric and psychosocial and cultural stressors. Although
the effects of stress occur individually, cumulatively they may often acquire
new dimensions (19-27).
Addressing these concerns will require the articulation of new visions, new
strategies, new models, and new partnerships. Environmental justice encompasses
many concepts. These range from community-based research to sustainable communities
(28-30). More often than not, issues of environmental justice comprise
a complex web of public health, environmental, economic, and social concerns.
Given the multiple stressors that impact low-income, people of color, and tribal
communities, such groups do not have the luxury of addressing one issue at a
time. They require holistic, integrative, and unifying strategies that address
social, economic, and health improvement simultaneously. For this reason, while
the bifurcation of the public health and environmental fields taking place over
the past several decades has yielded generally negative impacts in areas of
public health, environment, and planning (31,32), the consequences for
low-income and disadvantaged communities have been especially grievous.
Institute of Medicine Workshop
On 20-21 June 2000, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) conducted a workshop
titled "Rebuilding the Unity of Health and the Environment: A New Vision of
Environmental Health for the 21st Century." The purpose was to raise awareness,
promote community-based environmental health, and mold multidisciplinary partnerships
to redefine and improve environmental health. IOM stated:
The goals of environmental health are to maintain a healthy, livable environment
for humans and other living species-an environment that promotes well
being and a high quality of mental and physical health for its inhabitants.
. . . Responsible leadership requires that policy makers, health professionals,
industry representatives, and the general public all carry an expanded and
enhanced vision of environmental health forward into the 21st century. New
approaches towards building environments that actively improve health will
be required, including strategies to deal with waste, unhealthy buildings,
urban congestion, suburban sprawl, poor housing, poor nutrition, and environmentally
related stress.
The workshop brought together a broad group of representatives, including
business leaders; economists; architects; urban planners; engineers; public
health, environmental, and social scientists; clergy; educators; and citizens
to share and discuss their views on the elements for a healthful environment.
The workshop organizers posited that only by thinking about environmental health
on multiple levels will it be possible to merge various strategies to protect
both the environment and health (33).
Environmental Justice
The issues and ideas that gave birth to the IOM workshop are highly consonant
with and closely related to the issues and ideas embodied in the concept of
environmental justice. The concept of environmental justice has itself undergone
significant maturation in the short time that it has existed. In 1979, an African
American community in Houston, Texas, filed suit to prevent the siting of a
solid waste landfill in Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management (34).
In 1982, the predominantly African American community in Warren County, North
Carolina, protested the siting of a polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) landfill.
This incident brought together the environmental and civil rights communities
and sparked national attention. It gave rise to the landmark 1987 United Church
of Christ study Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States (6).
These events provided impetus for the emerging awareness about environmental
conditions in low-income, people of color, and tribal communities. A groundswell
of activity around a vast array of issues began to take place within such communities,
including but not limited to toxics, lead poisoning, housing, land use, air
quality, workplace heath and safety, economic development, and multi-issue organizing
(35).
In little over a decade, what was a loose alliance of community-based activists,
church-based civil rights leaders, and academic researchers had transformed
into a vibrant social movement that sought to systematically examine and develop
proactive strategies to address issues of environmental degradation in people
of color, tribal, and poor communities. A systematic public discourse on issues
of race and the environment began around issues of the siting of hazardous waste
and other noxious facilities. Initially, issues of race and the environment
were understood only within the narrow context of the siting issue. This would
dramatically change as more people of color communities demanded that the residential,
occupational, or other issues they were confronting in their own communities
be made part of the discourse on environmental policy. Environmental justice
is based upon the idea that the health of the members of a community, both individually
and collectively, is a product of physical, social, cultural, and spiritual
factors. The impetus for such an integrative view of the health and well-being
of a community comes directly from the emerging movement around environmental
justice.
Environmental justice represents a new vision borne of a community-driven
process in which the core is a transformative public discourse on what constitutes
truly healthy, livable, sustainable, and vital communities. It has given birth
to a new definition of the environment as "the place where we live, where we
work, and where we play" (36). It sees the ecosystem that forms the basis
for life and well-being as composed of four interrelated environments, i.e.,
natural, built, social, and cultural/spiritual (37). It has made important
contributions to the understanding of the profound value of public participation
and accountability in formulating public policy and environmental decision making.
It has significantly expanded the discourse concerning public health and environmental
risks to include issues of multiple, cumulative, and synergistic risk. It has
pressed for a new paradigm for conducting community-driven science and holistic,
placed-based, systems wide environmental protection. It is searching for concepts
and tools that are at the same time holistic, bottom-up, community-based, multi-issue,
cross-cutting, interdependent, integrative, and unifying.
Implications
A useful starting point for examining how the issues of environmental justice,
public health, and the environment can be addressed in an integrative manner
would be a common proactive definition of health. The World Health Organization
defines health as "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well being,
not merely the absence of disease or infirmity" (31). It further defines
a healthy community as one that includes
a clean, safe, high-quality environment and a sustainable ecosystem; the
provision of basic needs; an optimum level of appropriate high-quality, accessible
health and sick-care services; and a diverse, vital economy. (33)
Although often quoted, the vision embodied in this definition is not easily
attained. At the IOM workshop, Bullard emphasized that health is more than the
absence of disease and that environmental justice must be the starting point
for achieving healthy people, homes, and communities. In addition, we must work
beyond false dichotomies such as jobs versus the environment or jobs versus
health (33). Rather than dwell on such dichotomies, we must strive to
identify the synergies between various issues. For example, the issues of environmental
justice will provide challenges for public health and environmental health professions
and stimulate practitioners to think more integratively. Moreover, the holistic
unifying paradigm articulated at the IOM workshop provides a context through
which public and environmental health practitioners can apply the tools of their
professions in the service of such communities.
A significant attempt in recent years to begin creating a proper context for
the greater utilization of the tools of public health and environmental practitioners
is the work of the Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice (IWG),
which was established under Executive Order 12898 on environmental justice (38).
Through its Integrated Environmental Justice Action Agenda, the IWG seeks to
nurture and promote collaborative models for achieving environmental justice.
The Action Agenda attempts to target and focus the varied resources of federal
agencies in conjunction with local partnerships to address community-based environmental,
health, and livability concerns (39).
The centerpiece of the Environmental Justice Action Agenda includes 15 environmental
justice demonstration projects in diverse urban, rural, and tribal communities
in virtually all regions of the nation, including Puerto Rico and Alaska. These
demonstration projects are intended to a) promote federal support of
solutions that begin in the community and remain in the community; b)
link federal, state, tribal, and local government with comprehensive community-based
planning processes; c) seek collaboration and integration so that resources
can be better targeted and leveraged; d) develop a template for holistic
local solutions to environmental justice issues; and e) serve as a platform
for advocating innovation in government (40).
Both the unifying vision and the specific ideas articulated at the IOM workshop
hold potentially enormous promise for distressed communities. As communities
engage in comprehensive planning processes to articulate a vision of their future,
they would benefit immensely from the intellectually creative, imaginative,
and vibrant ideas presented by farsighted participants in the dialogue to build
this new vision of environmental health for the twenty-first century. The following
five communities provide some good examples of how the natural, built, and social
environments interface with each other. They also provide some examples of how
land-use planning, housing, pollution prevention, use of new technologies, and
community capacity building are being applied in the context of holistic vision
of comprehensive community revitalization.
Linking environmental cleanup, economic revitalization, and holistic community
planning in a way that builds community capacity and combats urban sprawl is
an exciting challenge. The mantra of Bethel New Life, a renowned faith-based
community development corporation in the African American West Garfield section
of Chicago, Illinois, is captured in the following phrase: "Turning environmental
liabilities into community assets and opportunities" (41). Bethel New
Life is designing and building a mixed-use development that takes advantage
of existing rail links and converts an abandoned industrial area into a revitalized
economic center to provide much-needed housing, jobs, and commercial and industrial
development. This is an on-the-ground example of how many of the elements that
make up a new vision of health and environment can be applied.
Re-Genesis, a community-based organization in the Arkwright and Forest Park
sections of Spartanburg, South Carolina, is spearheading the building of a broad-based
partnership of community groups, local government, business and industry, faith
groups, universities, and federal agencies to clean up and revitalize a depressed,
contaminated community. A predominantly African American community lives within
a quarter mile of two Superfund sites and close to an abandoned textile mill,
an operating chemical plant, tow waste disposal sites, and several suspected
illegal dumps. Through a community-based planning process, residents have developed
a vision of revitalization for the community. Envisioned are new housing, technology
and job training centers, and a health clinic. Another feature of this vision
is a "greenway," a feature the state health officer encouraged as a prescription
to promote wellness and exercise and to combat obesity.
Addressing transportation-related pollution in overburdened poor urban environments
has more often than not resulted in inaction. However, this has not been the
case for the New York City Alternative Fuels Summit, a project that grew out
of a set of commitments made by federal agencies during the 6 March 1999 Local
Environmental Justice Listening Session led by the White House Council on Environmental
Quality (42). The project is built around a process whereby community-based
organizations identify vehicular fleets operating in communities with poor air
quality and high rates of respiratory illness and are good candidates for conversion
to clean-fuel vehicles. One recent breakthrough was the commitment of $1.93
million by the U.S. Postal Service for the purchase of 55 electric and natural
gas vehicles for use in the South Bronx and similar neighborhoods.
Barrio Logan is a low-income Latino community in San Diego, California, plagued
by substandard housing, overcrowded schools, lack of adequate healthcare and
social services, and high unemployment rates. Criss-crossed by two major highways,
this community is subject to release of three million pounds of toxic air pollution
each year from numerous small industries, large shipyards, naval installations,
and waste storage facilities. A partnership that involves the Environmental
Health Coalition, California Air Resources Board, City of San Diego, University
of Southern California, federal agencies, and others is seeking to reduce exposure
of residents to air pollution, reduce incompatible land uses, and improve children's
health by improving the ambient environment. Facilitation and conflict resolution
have been important elements in building this partnership.
The Metlakatla Indian Community Master Plan seeks to clean up contamination
of the Annette Island Indian Reserve in southeastern Alaska and plan redevelopment
to promote economic growth through tourism and commercial fishing. Federal agencies
made a commitment to work in partnership with the Metlakatla to address contamination
issues that have resulted from the construction and operation of defense facilities
over the past five decades. Extensive soil contamination has occurred around
fuel storage sites. In addition, lead, asbestos and oils containing PCBs have
been found. Especially pertinent to attempts to properly address the issues
of Native Americans and Alaska Natives are issues such as the proper implementation
of federal trust responsibilities and the building of tribal capacity to manage
and conduct environmental programs. The Metlakatla has also been designated
a national Brownfields Showcase Community.
Challenges
The above communities are a few of the many examples where the vision articulated
at the IOM workshop "Rebuilding the Unity of Health and the Environment" can
be usefully applied. Environmental justice issues necessarily involve the interplay
of the natural, built, and social environments. To date, these communities suffer
from the lack of a well-articulated paradigm and a context for effectively leveraging
much-needed public health, environmental, planning, and other tools. Many challenges
must be overcome for the IWG environmental justice collaborative model to contribute
significantly to achieving this unifying vision. Long-term, these challenges
include the need to educate the nation's leaders about the goal of environmental
justice that is already embedded within the nation's long-standing environmental,
public health, transportation, housing, and other statutes. Short-term, three
strategies require immediate concerted attention:
- Foster capacity-building within affected communities so they can strategically
form partnerships and proactively access, utilize, and leverage the resources
of government and other institutions. Capacity-building activities range from
training and technical assistance to the use of facilitation and consensus
building, where appropriate. The vision of environmental justice is rooted
in the philosophy that solutions must rely on community-based participatory
efforts.
- Promote a national dialogue on achieving collaborative models to achieve
environmental justice. The ultimate goal is for these environmental justice
collaborative models to be integrated into the normal conduct of business.
Such a goal will require understanding and "buy-in" to the collaborative model
on the part of all sectors of society, who in turn must advocate for greater
commitment to such efforts on the part of government and other institutions.
- Identify elements of success of a collaborative model and ways to measure
them. For environmental justice collaborative models to reach their full potential
as a significant tool for achieving healthy communities, a template for conducting
successful environmental justice collaborations must be developed and tested.
The elements of such a template include but are not limited to the following:
partnerships and transparent relationships among all parties, intergovernmental
coordination, meaningful community involvement, recognition of community expertise,
cultural considerations, and availability of resources. Once the elements
of success are identified, an even greater challenge will be the evaluation
and measurement of success. These will have to address, among other things,
process design, institutional and culture change, and improvement in quality
of life. Although these questions are complex in and of themselves, they become
exponentially more difficult when we have to factor in the differing perspectives
of sometimes adversarial parties.
These three strategies are critical for environmental justice collaborative
models to progress beyond being merely good ideas. Farsighted public health
and environmental practitioners can play a critical role in nurturing and promoting
a unifying vision of health and the environment within communities where such
a new paradigm will make the most meaningful difference.
References and Notes
1. Landrigan PJ, Gehlbach SH, Rosenblum BF, Shoults JM,
Candelaria RM, Barthel WF, Liddle JA, Smrek AL, Staehling NW, Sanders JF. Epidemic
lead absorption near an ore smelter. N Engl J Med 292(3):123-129 (1975).
2. Davis ME. The Impact of Workplace Health and Safety
on Black Workers: Assessment and Prognosis. Labor Stud J 4:29-40 (1981).
3. Bullard RD. Solid Waste Sites in the Black Houston
Community. Sociolog Inq 53:273-288 (1983).
4. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Report
of the Secretary's Task Force on Black and Minority Health. Washington, DC:DHHS,
1985.
5. Wasserstrom RF, Wiles R. Field Duty, U.S. Farm Workers
and Pesticide Safety. Washington, DC:World Resources Institute, 1985.
6. United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice.
Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Study on the Racial and
Socio-Economic Characteristics of Communities Surrounding Hazardous Waste Sites.
New York:United Church of Christ, 1987.
7. ATSDR. The Nature and Extent of Lead Poisoning in Children
in the United States. Atlanta, GA:Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry,
1988.
8. Moses M. Pesticide related health problems in farm
workers. Am Assoc Occup Health Nurses J 37:115-130 (1989).
9. Weiss KB, Wagener DK. Changing patterns of asthma
mortality: identifying target populations at high risk. J Am Med Assoc 264(13):1683-1687
(1990).
10. Bullard RD. Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental
Equity. Boulder, CO:Westview Press, 1990.
11. U.S. EPA. Environmental Equity: Reducing Risk for
All Communities. Report to the Administrator. EPA230-R-92-008. Washington, DC:U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, 1992.
12. West PC, Fly F, Marans R. Minority anglers and toxic
Fish consumption: evidence from a state-wide survey of Michigan. In: Race and
the Incidence of Environmental Hazards: A Time for Discourse (Bunyan B, Mohai
P, eds). Boulder, CO:Westview Press, 1992.
13. Lavelle M, Coyle M. Unequal Protection: The Racial
Divide in Environmental Protection. Nat Law J (Special Issue) 15(3) (1992).
14. Louisiana Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights
Commission. The Battle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana: Government, Industry
and the Public. Kansas City, MO:U.S. Civil Rights Commission Regional Office,
September,1993.
15. Sexton K, Anderson YB, eds. Equity in Environmental
Health: Research Issues and Needs. Toxicol Ind Health (Special Issue):9(5):679-977
(1993).
16. Wernette DR, Nieves LA. Breathing polluted air. EPA
J 18:16-17 (1992).
17. Friedman JG. Achieving environmental justice: the
role of occupational health. Fordham Urban Law J 21(3):605-631 (1994).
18. O'Neill CA. Variable Justice: Environmental standards,
contaminated fish, and 'acceptable' risk to native peoples. Stanford Environ
Law J 19(1):1-118 (2000).
19. Jaynes GD, Williams RM Jr. A Common Destiny: Blacks
and American Society. Washington, DC:National Academy Press, 1989.
20. Harris F, Wilkins R, eds. Quiet Riots: Race and Poverty
in the United States. New York:Pantheon Books, 1988.
21. Hayes-Bautista DE, Shink WO, Chapa J. The Burden
of Support: Young Latinos in an Aging Society. Stanford, CA:Stanford University
Press, 1988.
22. Limerick PN. The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken
Past of the American West. New York:W.A. Norton, 1987.
23. National Center for Children In Poverty. Five Million
Children: A Statistical Profile of Our Poorest Young Citizens. New York:Columbia
University, 1990.
24. Bullard RD, Grigsby E, Lee C, eds. Residential Apartheid:
The American Legacy. Los Angeles:UCLA Center for Afro-American Studies, 1994.
25. Surface Transportation Policy Project. Getting A
Fair Share: An Analysis of Federal Transportation Spending. Washington, DC:STPP,
1996
26. Arnold CA. Planning Milagros: Environmental justice
and land use regulation. Denver Univ Law Rev 76(1):1-153 (1998).
27. National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences.
Health Disparities: Linking Biological and Behavioral Mechanisms with Social
and Physical Environments. Request for Application. RFA #ES-00-004 (1999).
28. Kuehn RR. A Taxonomy of Environmental Justice. ELR
News & Analysis. Washington, DC:Environmental Law Institute, 2000.
29. Ruhl JB. Seven degrees of relevance: why should real-world
environmental attorneys care now about sustainable development policy? Duke
Environ Law Policy Forum 8:273-293 (1998).
30. National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences.
Advancing the Community-Driven Research Agenda: Conference Report. Conference
on Advancing the Community-Driven Research Agenda, 27-29 October 1997. Research
Triangle Park, NC:NIEHS.
31. Institute of Medicine. The Future of Public Health.
Washington, DC:National Academy Press, 1988.
32. Greenberg M, Popper F, West B, Kruekeberg D. Linking
City Planning and Public Health in the United States. J Plan Lit 8(3):235-239
(1994).
33. Institute of Medicine. Rebuilding the Unity of Health
and the Environment: A New Vision of Environmental Health for the 21st Century.
Washington, DC:National Academy Press, 2001.
34. Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management. Case
No H-79-2215, U.S. District Court, Southern District Texas, Houston Division,
Houston, TX, 21 December 1979.
35. Bullard RD. People of Color Environmental Groups:
1994-95 Directory. Atlanta, GA:Clark-Atlanta University, 1994.
36. Gauna J. Unpublished observations.
37. Lee C. Unpublished.
38. Clinton WJ. Executive Order 12898. Federal Actions
to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations.
Fed Reg 59:7629 (1994).
39. U.S. EPA. Integrated Federal Interagency Environmental
Justice Action Agenda: Working Together Towards Collaborative and Innovative
Solutions. EPA/300-R-00-008. Washington,DC:U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,
2000.
40. Lee C. Unpublished observations.
41. Nelson M. Unpublished observations.
42. Lee C. Unpublished.
Last Updated: March 25, 2002
