What Is Environmental Justice?

A 1980s landmark study in the USA showed definitively that racial minorities, especially African Americans, usually lived closer to toxic waste tips than other racial groups.  Subsequent mapping confirmed that ethnic minorities also tended to live places with worse air quality, nearer to polluting factories, etc.  The idea arose that there should be environmental justice, when exposure to pollution would be equally distributed across the population, not unfairly burdened on non-white people.

But lawyers (no doubt with much regret) dismissed the idea of class-action lawsuits against the US government.  Nearly all of these ethnic-minority people in polluted areas also lived in poor areas.  So it was hard to say whether race or poverty was the deciding factor in pollution exposure.  As long as we live in a capitalist system, the rich will be able to pay for nice place to live and the poor have to put up with environmental nuisance.   At least some other studies concluded that often ethnic minorities had moved in after a polluting factory or waste disposal site had been established, house prices went down, and the area became more attractive for poor people.

The debate rages on, though.  Some argue that other forces are making it more likely that ethnic minorities will be stuck in rotten environments.  In Los Angeles, it's documented that estate agents sometimes show non-whites only properties in already majority ethnic minority areas.  In Britain, the whole Planning Permission process is difficult for ethnic minorities and recent immigrants to influence (Leeds University).  Some recent academic studies seemed to show that ethnic minorities in Britain suffer worse air pollution than comparably poor white communities, and that this is disproportionate to how much air pollution these communities were producing (from their older cars or types of employment).