Chapter 1: What is environmental racism and why is it important?
What is environmental racism? Thanks for asking. We've covered a lot of environmental issues on Do You Really Know?, so regular listeners will be well aware of how the climate crisis is affecting the whole planet. But it's important to also note how these problems don't affect everyone equally.
People in developing countries, particularly in the southern hemisphere, are already feeling the impact on their income, physical health and surrounding environment. That's despite industrialised countries having contributed far more to global warming overall. But this isn't just happening in the third world.
Even in the West, low-income communities, and ethnic minorities in particular, are feeling the worst effects of Earth's environmental burdens.
Chapter 2: How does environmental racism affect communities in developing countries?
That's due to factors like past colonialist exploitation, discriminatory regulations, and current policymaking. The term environmental racism was coined by African-American civil rights leader Benjamin Chavis in 1982. It is linked to the environmental justice movement which was developing in North America in the 1970s and 80s. What specific kind of environmental problems are we talking about?
Proximity to pollution can have a major impact on people's life expectancy, with fine particle pollution leading to over 4 million premature deaths per year at a global level. Research has shown that poorer people are exposed more. They tend to live further out of city centres, in locations where you're more likely to find industrial facilities and factories.
There tend to be less green spaces and natural water sources too, meaning surface temperature is higher and the effects of extreme heat are felt harder. An American study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2019 found that black Americans breathed in 56% more pollution than what they generate through consumption habits.
That figure rose slightly to 63% for Latinos but it was a completely different story for non-Hispanic white people. They were in fact exposed to 17% less air pollution than what they were creating. The evidence is striking. Do you have any concrete examples? The mid-2010s water crisis in Flint, Michigan was a textbook example of an environmental racism case.
Toxic, undrinkable water was delivered to the city, which has a black majority population. The reason? Authorities had changed water source to save money, but didn't subject the new supply to necessary treatment. Resident complaints were more or less dismissed for 18 months before community pressure forced the city to acknowledge the problem.
12 people ended up dying from Legionnaires disease and many thousands of children drank water containing unsafe levels of lead.
What about on an international level?
Globalisation has exacerbated environmental racism and technological advances have led to the rapid growth of electronic waste, known as e-waste for short. We're talking about damaged or obsolete devices which have been discarded. The quantities generated are increasing each year and reached over 50 million tonnes in 2021 according to estimates.
80% of that is actually exported to Asia in what has been described by fairplanet.org as a neo-colonial solution. The town of Guiyu in China is a hub and these discarded electronic parts contaminate the water supply when piled at the riverside. Samples taken showed the levels of lead were 190 times higher than World Health Organization recommended limits. There you have it.
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