By Harrison Cox, University College London

The movement’s organisation

The grassroots movement was effective because of its popularity, but its lack of organisation led to a disjointed approach, meaning that efforts were often unnecessarily duplicated. A more organised approach would have been more coherent and promoted its relevance.

The movement seems to have acknowledged this drawback. Following the upsurge of interest in the issues, the organisations working on EJ seem to have institutionalised themselves[1]. They became “Registered EJ Organisations (REJOs)”. This allowed them to secure consistent financial assistance,[2] and more importantly, the movement gained political legitimacy. These groups also gained legal ability as officially recognised representatives of the discriminated communities.

The US REJOs have also expanded their remit by developing alliances and combining their work with NGOs. This is notable given the historical differences between the EJ movement and NGOs, who have tended not to “engage with communities on the ground dealing with Environmental Justice”[3]. In a similar movement of combining efforts, the EJ Atlas was launched in 2014, offering an invaluable tool for these movements to coordinate to work more effectively. However, one could question how these grassroots movements can fit into an institutional framework in which discriminatory processes have historically dominated. To remain relevant, they must take care not to alienate the social origin of the movement in favour of a globalised broad approach.

The legal evolution

It was not until Clinton’s 1994 Federal Executive Order that legal provisions were implemented to address these issues in the US. This seems relatively late, given that the movement has been at the forefront of environmental demands since 1987. It is also remarkable that international instruments started to discuss this issue before the US addressed it. In 1992, the Rio Declaration recognised the inherent link between social and environmental issues. Principle 6 highlights this recognition by combining “the least developed and those most environmentally vulnerable”. Naturally, this does not refer directly to racial discrimination, but often, the least developed countries are those that suffered from extraction by colonial empires. EJ theories also figure in the Kyoto Protocol[4] by recognising different climate change responsibilities, the Aarhus Convention,[5] which offers solutions to address these issues through procedural rights and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)[6].

Finally, a significant factor in environmental law is environmental impact assessments. These play a valuable role in promoting EJ. By guaranteeing public participation, they are giving local communities a say in the development of their environment and favouring better decision-making in protecting vulnerable communities. However, they are a limited EJ tool because they do not examine environmental effects on specific communities.

EJ is thus addressed throughout international instruments raising its relevance.

An increased relevance through affiliation

EJ has become more relevant through its affiliation with other vital movements in the environmental field.

This has already been evidenced by its legal representations being mainly instruments regarding sustainability (Rio, Kyoto, SDGs). Nationally, this is also the case as in the UK, the 1999 UK Sustainable Development Strategy has a guiding principle of “Ensuring a Strong, Healthy and Just Society”[7] with a focus on combatting poverty and social exclusion, leading to what Agyeman has coined “Just Sustainability”. This gives EJ an important supplement, as it was about distributing harm equally but not limiting harm’s occurrence, which is the objective of sustainability. Interestingly, this also gives an essential political platform as many NGOs and policy decisions focus on sustainability issues.[8] Thus, EJ has developed a form of mission hybridity[9], making itself more relevant in political discourse.

The movement has also been linked to environmental democracy. Firstly, through Procedural Environmental Rights,[10] which emerged following Agenda 21[11] and secondly, through the Aarhus Convention. These two procedures are interlinked, as Aarhus offers procedural rights to deal with environmental issues. This gives vulnerable communities opportunities to access information, allowing them to participate effectively and defend their rights in court. The Aarhus Convention also requires that they can access the courts to defend themselves without being prohibited due to prohibitive costs,[12] which is an essential consideration for vulnerable communities.

Finally, recognising environmental rights in the human rights discourse may give further weight to EJ arguments[13]. This is especially the case if combined with non-discrimination legislation relating to race. Although this gives increased relevance to EJ by allowing communities of colour to claim discrimination in their right to a healthy environment, and given how important environmental human rights are becoming, it is to be seen how this movement will adapt to the rights-based approach, specifically when considering the argument that the ‘human’ in human rights is a white, wealthy male[14] and not the discriminated communities of colour.

To conclude, EJ has evolved since its origins. It has gone from an unorganised movement addressing local issues in the US to a global movement affiliated with various other theoretical and practical approaches to addressing environmental concerns. This has made EJ much more relevant today than in the 1980s.

Bibliography

AC Perez and others, ‘Evolution of the EJ movement: activism, formalization and differentiation’ [2015] 10(10) Environmental Research Letters <https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/10/105002> accessed 30 November 2023

Anibal Quijano, ‘Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality’ [2007] 21(2) Cultural Studies 168, 171

Commonwealth of Massachusetts, EJ Policy of the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, 2002

Dorceta Taylor, ‘The Rise of the EJ Paradigm’ [2000] 43(4) American Behavioral Scientist 508-580

Elizabeth Fisher, ‘The many forms of EJ’ Environmental Law: A Very Short Introduction (OUP 2017) 110

Executive Order, ‘Federal Actions to Address EJ in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations’, (12898 1994), Federal Register, 59, 32

Friends of the Earth (FoE), ‘EJ: mapping transport and social exclusion in Bradford’ [2001]

G. Mitchell, The Messy Challenge of EJ in the UK: Evolution, status and prospects, (NECR273, 2019), Natural England Commissioned Reports

Groundwork UK, ‘Out of Bounds : Equity in Access to Urban Nature’ |2021]

Harris AP, “Toward a Law and Political Economy Approach to EJ” in Sumudu A Atapattu, Carmen G Gonzalez and Sara L Seck (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of EJ and Sustainable Development (Cambridge University Press 2021)

Jane Holder, ‘EJ in Everyday Green Spaces’, [2016] 81-85

Joshua Gellers and Chris Jeffords, ‘Toward Environmental Democracy?: Procedural Environmental Rights and EJ’ [2018] 18(1) Global Environmental Politics 99-121

Julian Agyeman and Bob Evans, “Just Sustainability’: The Emerging Discourse of EJ in Britain?’ [2004] 170(2) Environment and Development in the UK 155-164

Principles of EJ, The First People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, 1991

Robert Bullard, ‘Overcoming Racism in Environmental Decision Making’ [1994] 36(4) <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00139157.1994.9929997> accessed 1 December 2023

Spencer Banzhaf and others, ‘EJ: The Economics of Race, Place, and Pollution’ [2019] 33(1) The Journal of Economic Perspectives 185-208

United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice. ‘Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States’ [1987]

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[1] Perez (7), 2      

[2] Perez (7), 5

[3] Perez (7), 7

[4] 1997

[5] 1998

[6] Ideas underpinning EJ are explicitly visible in SDGs, 1, 3, 5, 10 and 16.  

[7] My emphasis

[8] Agyeman (2), 160

[9] Perez (7), 9

[10] Gellers, PERs and EJ, 2018

[11] Ibid

[12] Aarhus Costs protection – CPR 45, Part VII

[13] Harris (3), 467

[14] Ibid