JUST 357 Midterm

Environmentalism

Advocacy for the protections of our environments and ecosystems from adverse impacts of humanity

Environmental Justice

fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies

Rawls

- theory of justice: justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as trust is of systems of thought

Core premises of EJ

- Management of the environment, its resources, and access to them should be no different
- important to work towards environmental governance

What does EJ embrace?

- social justice (do the right thing to humans)
- ecological justice (do the right thing for a wider ecological communities)

Rachel Carson

- Silent Spring
- demonstrated effects of pesticides and other synthetic chemicals on humans, wildlife, and environments (stimulated policy changes)

Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta

- Latino and AA farm workers organized for protection from harmful pesticides in California's San Joaquin Valley

Hazel M. Johnson

- "mother of EJ"

Toxic wastes and race in the US

- Communities with greatest number of commercial hazardous waste facilities had the highest composition of racial and ethnic diversity
- income and home values usually lower

Environmental protection agency (EPA)

- becomes office of environmental justice
- Clinton signs to make EJ a part of the federal policy making process

Justice 40 initiative

Categories of investment include:
- climate change
- clean energy and energy efficiency
- affordable and sustainable housing

Contemporary Struggles for EJ Examples

1. Water Crisis in flint, MI
2. Standing Rock and DAPL
3. Atlantic Coast Pipeline
4. Cancer Alley Louisiana
5. Sit-in against warren county, NC PCB Landfill

Movements for and studies of EJ arise from?

various combinations of socioeconomic, racial, and gendered inequalities

EPA goal will be achieved when everyone enjoys what?

1. the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards
2. Equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, work, etc.

Environmental racism

- the disproportionate burdens of environmental hazards and risk borne by individuals and communities of color

environmental equity

- what some in the EJ movement see as the US government's response
- the redistribution of environmental risk
- EJ movement seeks the elimination of environmental risk

Dr. Robert D. Bullard

- "father of EJ"

What are the three dimensions of EJ

1. Distribution
2. Procedure
3. Recognition

Distribution

- how environmental harms and benefits are distributed among individuals and groups
- dominant and most researched dimension of EJ

Procedural

- governance, with emphasis on participation and the processes of policy, rule, and decision-making
- how decisions are made and who has the privilege, rights, or responsibilities to participate in making them

Recognition

- the accommodation and respect of different peoples, their cultures, their relations to nature and the environment, their identities and their knowledge systems
- most consequential dimension (i.e. nature and society divide)

Recognition 3 key mechanisms:

1. formal or customary institutions (land tenure system dominated by males)
2. cultural norms (leadership position unavailable to women)
3. forms of knowledge and related discourse (failure to recognize local knowledge systems)

Recognition justice example

- Mohawk nation of Akwesasne
- erosion of traditional fishing culture, breakdown of social structures, impacts on health

Post WW2

- decolonization of Asia and Africa
- emergence of the Third World

Global difference in terms of terminology

"third world", "Developing world", "global south"

Measuring Global difference

1. economic development: GDP, GNI
2. Human development: HDI

Coloniality

- intellectual legacies of colonialism. long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism

unequal ecological exchange

- economically wealthy and powerful centers of the world economy sustain their own high consumption levels while shifting the ecological burden onto less powerful places
- (Burden shifting)

ecological debt

Liability of the most developed economies for the problems caused by resource extraction, waste dumping, & other environmental hazards, both within & outside of their borders

environmental externalities

real costs related to negative impacts of businesses, such as pollution, biodiversity erosion, waste, etc. Societies must address rather than the firms themselves.

Ecosystem services

life-sustaining benefits people gain from ecosystems (or ecological processes) for their health, well-being, and quality of life

inequity

unfair distributions of burdens and benefits

dominance and hegemony

unequal participation and lack of recognition and respect

ineffective legal institutions and norms

deficient international treaties and lack of procedural remedies

environment

- biotic and abiotic surroundings of an organism or population. Ranges from microscopic to global

Modernity and perceptions of the environment (Two conceptual divides)

1. between nature and society
2. between the West (Europe) and the Rests (indigenous and ancestral communities)

Social construction

theory that any category, condition, or thing is understood to have certain characteristics because (certain groups of) people agree that it does

Social context

set of social relations that determines which concepts are created, which take hold, and which are dismissed

What is considered a human environment?

wilderness areas, forest parks agriculture, etc.

Western social construction of nature developed through and reinforced by:

1. cultures (Concepts of wilderness)
2. politics and economics
3. science and the academy

The Pristine Myth

The misconception that the New World was a lightly populated, unmodified wilderness when it was first encountered by Christopher Columbus.

Terra Nullius

international legal framework for land expropriation
- "nobody's land"
- justifying settler colonialism

New world civilizations

- maya civilization
- Amazon, evidence of urbanism

The Columbian Exchange

The exchange of plants, animals, diseases, and technologies between the Americas and the rest of the world following Columbus's voyages.

Disease biggest carriers

- pigs, breeded fast and carried multiple diseases (i.e. tuberculosis)

Old world disease consequence

triggered native American depopulation

old world disease in Peru/Incan empire

- typhus, smallpox, flu, measles, diphtheria
- killed half of the empire

Population of Americans before 1492

40-80 million
- 1550, 85-90% decline to 4-6 million

Social construction of race, environments, and land in the US

"Nation was founded on the principles of "free land" (Stolen from Native Americans and Mexicans), "free labor" (extracted from enslaved Africans", "free men" (White men with property)
- American Progress (lady liberty image)

Merchant's relationship between race and environmental history

- Native Americans removed from lands they had managed for centuries
- slavery and soil degradation= interlinked systems of exploitations

Homestead Act and Land-Grant Universities

- emancipated black people expected to pay for land with wages
- lands taken from indigenous communities and promoted to white settler families
- as white families fled urban areas to new suburbs, AA families bore disproportionate levels of environmental pollution and disease

Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)

- The knowledge base acquired by Indigenous and local peoples over many years through direct contact with the environment

Rio Earth Summit (1992)

A UN summit aiming to get states to agree to a framework for future actions

Critical realism

- all knowledge is "partial and contingent"

coloniality and TEK

Works to erode traditional knowledge/perspectives, replacing them with Western knowledge, educational, and cultural systems

Ideas for organizing communities and economies based on colonialism

- structures and hierarchies of power developed for/during colonialism
- forms of social discrimination based on categories of race, gender, ethnicity, etc.
- serves as the intellectual and material basis for modern societies

Recognizing TEK

- Validity
- difference
- complexity
- ecological relationships

Corn

- US largest producer
- acts as bread and basis of civilizations

Integrating TEK and western Science

- NSF research center will partner with native people on farming, climate, etc.
- cultivate indigenous knowledge to respect local communities

Terra preta

Dark, fertile soils high in charcoal and nutrient content, created by native populations in the Amazon River Basin before the arrival of Europeans.

Biosphere reserves

- established by the UN educational, scientific and cultural organizations
- sought to reconnect and enhance biodiversity and human livelihoods
- failed to recognize value of TEK

ICCAs or Territories of Life

territories and areas governed, managed and conserved by custodian indigenous peoples and local communities

3 characteristics distinguished by ICCA

1. there is a close and deep connection between a territory and its custodian indigenous community
2. Custodian people makes and enforces decisions and rules about the territory or area through a functioning governance institution
3. Governance contributes to the conservation of nature

Payments for Ecosystems Services (PES)

redd+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, plus the sustainable management of forests, and the conservation and enhancement of forest carbon stocks

REDD+

- Recognizes indigenous communities as vital stakeholders
- payments for intact or regenerated forests in the Global South

Greenwashing

- spending more time and money claiming to be "green" through advertising and marketing rather than actually implementing business practices that minimize environmental impact

Development and conflict in the Amazon

- widespread deforestation
- global and local economic forces converge to commodify and liquidate forest resources: timber, mining, etc.
- environmental and social costs and injustices interlinked

Biocultural or socioecological conservation

- protect environment by working with local communities
- indigenous or local cultures, values, rights integrated into conservation planning, decision-making, managements
- prioritize long-term relationships

reconnecting

Nature/Society

Undoing

Pristine Myth

recognizing

TEK

Enabling

Just Conservation