Abstract
This chapter introduces students to the topic of environmental justice. Environmental justice (EJ) is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people with respect to environmental contamination or degradation. The call for EJ stems from a history of discrimination where both corporate entities and governments have selected locations for locally undesirable land uses (incinerators, sewage treatment plants, bus barns, etc.), known as LULUs, in neighborhoods where the population was majority nonwhite race and/or economically poor. This history means that these communities have disproportionately resided in some of the most toxic urban environments or in rural areas where raw materials for our cities’ economic life are extracted or where urban wastes are frequently disposed. The US Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Environmental Justice was formed in 1993 to help communities fight institutionalized racism. Case studies and tools for assessing EJ violations are presented, and factors influencing public response to environmental risk are reviewed.
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Notes
- 1.
The mnemonic BEEF as used here, and much of the information in this section, derives from a lecture on environmental risk assessment by Brenda Nordenstam, PhD, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, NY, November 3, 2003, and multiple years thereafter.
- 2.
Bioaccumulative refers to the presence of a chemical in tissue of living organisms that magnifies as one moves up the food chain. Also the older and larger an organism, the more concentrated is the chemical, i.e., more of the chemical per unit tissue. This may be due to the larger amount of fat in the organism.
- 3.
Title VI 42 U.S.C. § 2000d et seq. Was enacted as part of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. It prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance, https://www.justice.gov/crt/fcs/TitleVI-Overview.
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Hall, M.H.P., Balogh, S.B. (2019). Environmental Justice in the Urban Environment. In: Hall, M., Balogh, S. (eds) Understanding Urban Ecology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11259-2_13
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