Key Concepts in Environmental Justice Movements

Why This Matters

Environmental justice sits at the intersection of several major themes you'll encounter throughout this course: equity and access, sustainability, Indigenous sovereignty, grassroots activism, and the uneven distribution of environmental burdens. When exam questions ask about environmental policy, they're often testing whether you understand that environmental problems don't affect all communities equally—and that the communities with the least political power often bear the greatest environmental costs. These movements demonstrate how marginalized groups have organized to demand both procedural justice (a seat at the decision-making table) and distributive justice (fair allocation of environmental benefits and burdens).

You're being tested on your ability to connect specific cases to broader patterns. Why do toxic waste sites cluster in low-income neighborhoods? How do colonial legacies shape who controls natural resources today? What strategies have communities used to fight back—and which have succeeded? Don't just memorize the names and dates of these movements. Know what structural inequality each one exposes, what tactics proved effective, and how local struggles connect to global environmental governance.

---

Toxic Exposure and Environmental Racism

Environmental racism describes the pattern by which hazardous facilities, pollution, and toxic waste are disproportionately sited in communities of color and low-income neighborhoods—often due to their limited political power to resist.

Warren County PCB Protests (1982)

• First major U.S. environmental justice protest—residents of a predominantly African American community in North Carolina organized against a PCB landfill, marking the birth of the modern EJ movement
• Coined the term "environmental racism"—the protests prompted a landmark 1983 GAO study confirming that hazardous waste sites were disproportionately located near minority communities
• Direct action tactics—over 500 arrests during nonviolent protests demonstrated how civil rights strategies could be applied to environmental struggles

Love Canal Disaster and Activism

• Toxic waste beneath a neighborhood—homes and a school in Niagara Falls, NY were built directly on 21,000 tons of buried chemical waste, causing birth defects, miscarriages, and cancers
• Grassroots leadership by Lois Gibbs—a working-class mother organized residents and forced government action, proving that affected communities could drive policy change
• Created the Superfund program (CERCLA, 1980)—this case directly led to federal legislation establishing liability for hazardous waste cleanup, a major policy win

Flint Water Crisis and Activism

• Government cost-cutting poisoned a city—switching Flint's water source in 2014 exposed 100,000 residents (majority Black, 40% in poverty) to lead contamination
• Systemic failure at every level—state-appointed emergency managers ignored warnings, EPA delayed action, exposing how procedural injustice compounds environmental harm
• Ongoing accountability demands—activists continue pushing for infrastructure investment, highlighting that EJ isn't just about stopping new harms but repairing historical neglect

---

Indigenous Sovereignty and Resource Extraction

Indigenous communities often face a double burden: their lands contain valuable resources that outsiders want to extract, while their political marginalization limits their power to refuse. These movements assert that environmental protection and Indigenous rights are inseparable.

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's Dakota Access Pipeline Protests

• Water protection as sovereignty—the #NoDAPL movement (2016-2017) framed pipeline opposition around treaty rights and the principle that "water is life" (Mni Wiconi)
• Sacred sites and consent—the pipeline route crossed sacred burial grounds and threatened the tribe's water supply, raising questions about free, prior, and informed consent
• Coalition building—thousands of allies joined, making Standing Rock a flashpoint for Indigenous rights, climate activism, and anti-corporate resistance simultaneously

Navajo Nation Uranium Mining Resistance

• Cold War legacy of contamination—uranium mining for nuclear weapons (1944-1986) left over 500 abandoned mines on Navajo land, causing lung cancer, kidney disease, and birth defects
• Environmental colonialism—the U.S. government and mining companies extracted resources while externalizing health costs onto Indigenous communities with minimal compensation
• Traditional ecological knowledge—Navajo activists emphasize hózhó (balance/harmony) as a framework for environmental stewardship that challenges extractive development models

Indigenous Environmental Network

• Grassroots coalition founded in 1990—connects over 100 Indigenous communities across North America fighting fossil fuel projects, mining, and toxic dumping
• Climate justice through Indigenous lens—argues that protecting Indigenous land rights is one of the most effective climate strategies, since Indigenous territories hold 80% of remaining biodiversity
• Frontline leadership—emphasizes that those most affected by environmental harm should lead the movement, not just be consulted

---

Global South Movements and Sustainable Livelihoods

In the Global South, environmental justice movements often emerge from communities whose livelihoods depend directly on natural resources threatened by development projects or extractive industries. These movements challenge the assumption that economic growth requires environmental sacrifice.

Chipko Movement in India

• "Tree-hugging" as direct action—villagers in the Himalayan foothills (1970s) literally embraced trees to prevent logging, creating an iconic tactic of nonviolent resistance
• Women-led environmental defense—women bore the burden of deforestation (walking farther for fuel and water), so they led the resistance, linking gender equity to environmental protection
• Policy impact—contributed to India's 1980 Forest Conservation Act and demonstrated that local communities could challenge state-backed development

Green Belt Movement in Kenya

• Tree planting as empowerment—founded by Wangari Maathai in 1977, the movement planted over 51 million trees while training women in forestry, food processing, and beekeeping
• Connecting environment to democracy—Maathai argued that environmental degradation and political repression were linked; she later won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize
• Community-based conservation model—showed that environmental restoration could be led by rural women rather than government agencies or international NGOs

Chico Mendes and the Brazilian Rubber Tappers

• Extractive reserves as alternative development—Mendes proposed protecting forest areas where rubber tappers could sustainably harvest without clear-cutting, challenging cattle ranchers
• Alliance of forest peoples—united rubber tappers, Indigenous groups, and international environmentalists around shared interest in standing forests
• Martyrdom and global attention—his 1988 assassination by ranchers transformed him into an international symbol, accelerating Brazilian and global rainforest protection efforts

---

Displacement and Development-Induced Harm

Large infrastructure projects—dams, pipelines, industrial zones—often displace communities and destroy ecosystems in the name of "development." These movements challenge who benefits from such projects and who bears the costs.

Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens (MAB) in Brazil

• Representing dam-affected communities—MAB organizes the estimated 1 million Brazilians displaced by dam construction, demanding compensation, resettlement, and policy reform
• Challenging hydropower as "clean energy"—argues that large dams cause massive social and ecological harm (methane emissions, fish kills, cultural destruction) often ignored in sustainability calculations
• Rights-based framework—pushes for recognition that affected populations have rights to participation, not just charity, in development decisions

Ogoni People's Movement in Nigeria

• Oil extraction's local costs—Shell and other companies extracted billions in oil from Ogoniland while gas flaring, spills, and pollution devastated local farms and fisheries
• Ken Saro-Wiwa's leadership and execution—the writer and activist led nonviolent resistance until Nigeria's military government executed him in 1995, sparking international outrage
• Corporate accountability—the movement pioneered arguments that multinational corporations bear responsibility for human rights and environmental abuses in their supply chains

---

Systemic Approaches and Policy Frameworks

Beyond individual struggles, environmental justice movements have pushed for systemic policy changes that address root causes of inequality and create lasting institutional reforms.

Environmental Justice Movement in the United States

• Executive Order 12898 (1994)—Clinton's order required federal agencies to address environmental justice, creating the EPA's Office of Environmental Justice
• Principles of Environmental Justice—the 1991 First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit produced 17 principles that remain foundational to the movement
• Procedural and distributive justice—the movement demands both meaningful participation in decisions and fair distribution of environmental benefits and burdens

Environmental Justice for All Act

• Comprehensive legislative approach—proposed federal legislation that would codify environmental justice requirements, strengthen community engagement, and increase enforcement
• Cumulative impacts assessment—would require regulators to consider the total pollution burden on communities, not just individual permits in isolation
• Accountability mechanisms—aims to give communities legal tools to challenge permits and hold polluters responsible for disparate impacts

Climate Justice Movement

• Framing climate as equity issue—argues that those least responsible for emissions (Global South, low-income communities) face the greatest climate impacts
• Just transition—demands that the shift away from fossil fuels protect workers and communities dependent on extractive industries rather than abandoning them
• Intergenerational and intersectional—connects climate action to racial justice, economic inequality, and obligations to future generations

Environmental Justice Movement in South Africa

• Post-apartheid environmental inequality—apartheid's spatial planning concentrated pollution and environmental hazards in Black townships, a legacy that persists today
• Constitutional right to environment—South Africa's constitution guarantees environmental rights, creating legal frameworks for EJ claims unavailable in many countries
• Land rights central—environmental justice in South Africa is inseparable from land reform and addressing historical dispossession

---

Quick Reference Table

---

Self-Check Questions

1. Which two movements best illustrate how gender shapes both environmental vulnerability and resistance strategies? Explain what tactics each used and why women led them.

2. Compare the Warren County protests and the Flint water crisis. Both are cited as examples of environmental racism—what different mechanisms produced environmental harm in each case?

3. If an FRQ asked you to discuss tensions between economic development and Indigenous rights, which three cases would you use? What common pattern do they reveal about who benefits and who bears costs?

4. How did the Love Canal disaster lead to systemic policy change, and what does this suggest about the relationship between grassroots activism and legislation?

5. The climate justice movement argues that climate change is an equity issue, not just an environmental one. Using at least two other movements from this guide, explain how environmental justice movements have consistently linked environmental and social inequality.