GREEN JUSTICE: A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE/李恒译(2)
II. WHAT IS ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE?
The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines” environmental justice” as the 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. Fair treatment means that no group - including racial, ethnic rococo economic groups - should bear a disproportionate share of the
Negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, municipal, and commercial operations or the execution of federal, cal, and tribal programs. Many studies have shown that, over the past 20 years, minorities - African Americans in particular - are more likely to live-in close proximity to an environmental hazard. Unfortunately, there are many examples to choose from to illustrate this observation. Colin Crawford, in his book, “Uproar at Dancing Creek,” discusses in great detail the efforts of an entrepreneur to site a new hazardous waste facility in Noxubee County, Mississippi. Conspicuously, when Crawford compared Noxubee County with other counties in Mississippi, he found that it had the highest annual average unemployment rate from 1970 –1993, a high rate of functional illiteracy with only 51.34 percent of its adult population having high school diplomas, and by far the lowest per captaincies in the region. In addition, of the 12,500 people who lived in Noxubee County, 70 percent were African American and poor. Crawford found that sitting of a hazardous waste dump in this poor, largely Minority County was not an accident, but a calculated campaign. It pitted the poor African American majority and whites against the minority, but politically powerful, white population in false promise of economic development that would bring new jobs. As Crawford stated, “people who most often bear the dangers of living near the excreta of our acquisitive industrial society are thievery same ones who have been most abused throughout our history.”
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