Environmental Justice Speaker Series Creates Awareness
David Pellow began his overview of environmental justice with the observation that becoming "modern" meant being able to manipulate natural and social worlds. Pellow, associate professor of ethnic studies, UC San Diego, opened the speaker series of the Environmental Justice Project. The John Muir Institute of the Environment is hosting the project to encourage and develop interdisciplinary research. Pellow's research shows how nation building and economic development has been possible in part by tolerating toxic byproducts. Politics create differentials in environmental pollution, allowing some of society to become wealthy at the expense of putting others at risk. Pellow observed that the communities unable to mount organized resistance face the greatest risks. Ultimately, these risks cycle back like a boomerang to be shared by all members of society, in the form of higher incidence of cancer, respiratory diseases, and specific diseases of exposure. Pellow coauthored "The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immigrant Workers and the High-Tech Global Economy," which described resistance to exposure from hazardous chemicals in the computer industries. He also documented mismanagement of computer waste exported to landfills in India and China by manufacturer-sponsored computer recycling.
Project director Julie Sze, assistant professor of American studies, and senior researcher Jonathan London, are engaging the campus with environmental justice research topics relevant to pressing issues in California's Central Valley. Sze described her UC Davis project as "focused on research on environmental inequality in the Central Valley, and on how public agencies and communities bearing the brunt of these problems are working to address them." Sze is committed in principle to community-based research, fulfilling the mission of a public university. London is director of the new UC Davis Center for the Study of Regional Change and represents the university on the Community University Research and Action Alliance for Justice, a coalition to address issues of race and poverty in the Central Valley.
Environmental justice is very much about active resistance. Sze began her book, "Noxious New York," while earning her Ph.D. at New York University. Her research examined the culture, politics, and history of environmental justice activism in New York City. During the 1980s and 1990s, a number of environmental justice campaigns emerged in response to proposals to site or expand noxious facilities in predominantly low-income areas and communities of color.
Dr. Shankar Prasad, Deputy Secretary for Science and Environmental Justice, California Environmental Protection Agency, reviewed his progress as head of a group of 17 individuals charged with improving environmental justice policies and funding state projects. Prasad estimated that about 50 percent of environment injustice is the result of poor decision making in land use. A prime example is the proximity of low income housing to railways and freeways, exposing communities to high levels of diesel-fuel particulates. Prasad facilitated an agency debate of the "precautionary principle," a prescription for action when "reasonable" health risks are presented that cannot be proven by undisputable scientific evidence. Discomfort with the meaning of the word reasonable is a primary point of contention for this policy, which is more accepted in European nations. The trend toward precaution is partly due to widespread increases in the incidence of cancer, now estimated at one in four within developed nations. These risks are seldom attributed to single sources of toxins. Prasad acknowledged that estimating "cumulative risks" from exposure to multiple sources, rather than a single source, is not well understood. While the US EPA and other government agencies are beginning to fund research in cumulative risks, chemical regulation is still mainly based on isolating single levels of specific carcinogens. Another political disadvantage of precautionary programs is that they pose considerable challenges for estimating the value of environmental justice research. It is difficult to estimate the value of protection until the risks are well documented. These challenges keep the budget small for environmental justice projects.
Manuel Pastor, UC Santa Cruz, and Rachel Morello-Frosch, Brown University, produce data that activists and justice organizations can use as evidence to resist environmental risks. Pastor and Morello-Frosch presented data showing that the distribution of cancer risk from airborne toxins, primarily diesel particulates, is significantly lower for white communities at most income levels. Communities of predominately low income Asians, African Americans and Latinos have a 25 percent higher cancer risk than white populations at equivalent income levels. As annual income increases beyond $100,000, the gap narrows but is still five to ten percent higher for these groups than in white communities. Race was indicated in their studies, not as a genetic marker, but as an indicator of social and political power. Racial data provides activists with a basis for resistance because discrimination on the basis of race is illegal while discrimination based on class or poverty is not. Pastor and Morello's analysis discovered that race had important effects on the placement and concentration of waste facilities and other aspects of land use related to toxic exposures.
The Environmental Justice Project continues this quarter with an interactive panel discussion, "New Directions for Environmental Justice Policy and Advocacy in the Central Valley," Tuesday, March 13, 3:00-6:00 p.m., 242 Asmundson Hall. Panelists include: The Honorable Dean Florez, CA Senate, District 16; Enrique Manzanilla, director, Communities and Ecosystems Unit, US EPA Region 9; Debbie Davis, legislative analyst, Environmental Justice Coalition for Water; and Rey Leon, senior policy analyst, Latino Issues Forum.
All the panelists are involved in actions challenging the status quo of environmental injustice.
For more information about the Environmental Justice Project see http://ej.ucdavis.edu/.
Media Contact:
- Jonathan London, Environmental Justice Project, jklondon@ucdavis.edu, phone: 530-752-2733, Fax: 530-752-5660