The document discusses environmental justice and outlines several key points: 1) Environmental justice aims to ensure that no groups bear a disproportionate share of negative environmental impacts. It addresses issues like "environmental racism" and ensuring equal protection and opportunity. 2) Health is a main focus of the environmental justice movement in addressing how pollution and toxins affect communities. Several case studies of disproportionately impacted areas are mentioned. 3) Solutions discussed include preventing environmental threats proactively, mobilizing affected communities, and joining environmental and social justice efforts into a unified movement focusing on sustainability and equitable development.

1. Environmental Justice
Critical Urbanism
Montgomery Norton
May 11, 2009

2. Poisoned Communities
• Institute of Medicine of the National
Academies (1999) - Toward
Environmental Justice: Research,
Education, and Health Policy Needs
• Center for Health, Environment, and
Justice (2001) - Poisoned Schools:
Invisible threats, visible action

3. Environmental Justice
• “No group of people, including
racial,ethnic, or socioeconomic groups,
should bear a disproportionate share of
the negative environmental
consequences resulting from industrial,
municipal, and commercial operations
or the execution of federal, state, local,
and tribal programs and policies” - EPA

4. Environmental Justice
• “Environmental Racism: denial of human
rights, environmental protection, and
economic opportunities” to communities of
color (p.1).
• “Environmental justice is a civil rights and a
human rights issue” (p. 2).
• Health is the main focus of the environmental
justice movement in the U.S.

5. Principles of Environmental
Justice-Oct 27,1991
• Preamble: “We... Fight the destruction
and taking of our lands and
communities, do hereby re-establish
our spiritual interdependence to the
sacredness of our Mother Earth; to
respect and celebrate each of our
cultures, languages and beliefs about
the natural world and our roles in
healing ourselves...”

6. Environmental Justice
• U.S. EPA (1992) - Office of Environmental
Equity (renamed Office of Env. Justice)
• Executive Order 12898 (1994) - Federal
Actions to Address Environmental Justice in
Minority Populations and Low-Income
Populations
• CA Office of Planning and Research:
– General Plan Guidelines (2003) - Sustainable
Development and Environmental Justice
– Env Just in CA State Government (2003)
• Cal/EPA (2004) - Environmental Justice
Action Plan; Inter-Agency Environmental
Justice Strategy

7. Why?
• CEQA/NEPA - enforced through
litigation
• No other comparable state
environmental regulations

8. Where?
• Cancer Alley - Louisiana’s petrochemical
corridor
• Texas’ Gulf Coast Communities
• North Richmond, CA
• Los Angeles/Long Beach Ports, CA
• West Dallas, TX
• South Bronx, NY
• South Central LA, CA

9. Solutions
• Environmental Justice framework seeks to
prevent environmental threats before they
occur - “Precautionary Principle”
• Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management
Corp. (1979)
• Activation & mobilization of the
disenfranchised (impoverished, indigenous,
minorities, women, and children)
• Join forces: Environmental & Social Justice
activists into the Environmental Justice
Movement (Sustainability)

10. Green Collar Jobs
• Green-collar jobs address two crucial concerns facing
our survival—restoring the environment and making a
living.
• Green-collar jobs consist of work within the growing
industries that are helping us kick the oil habit, curb
greenhouse-gas emissions, eliminate toxins, and
protect natural systems.
• These green jobs connect a person’s commitment to
their work with a commitment to the planet, while
building a vibrant, restorative economy.
• A job that does something for the planet, and little to
nothing for the people or the economy, however,
does not qualify.