The law of Environmental justice

Description

There is no universally accepted definition of environmental justice. I define it as the idea that minority and low-income individuals, communities, and populations should not be disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards, and that they should share fully in making the decisions that affect their environment.

This notion has been around for years. I can recall attending the National Conference on the Urban Environment in New York City in 1975, and the Urban Environment Conference in Detroit in 1978, which focused on issues of pollution in the central cities. The suggestion that this pollution was distributed in a systematically unfair manner was not widely discussed, however, until the landmark 1987 report, Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States, from the Commission of Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ. Many groups organized after that report, and they came together at the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., October 2427, 1991. I attended that conference as well and saw the leaders of several national environmental organizations sitting in the front row and being lectured by the conference organizers for allegedly devoting too little attention to the environmental concerns of communities of color.