Environmental Justice: From Los Angeles to Burlington
As an undergraduate at the University of Vermont, I am new to the world academia and research, but I have a lot of big questions that require big answers. My passion lies in the intersection of human rights and the environment because I believe that a healthy environment significantly helps in creating a healthy community and is vital to human health. The environmental regulations in the US and in international agreements are often created by people who are very removed from the situation of a majority of the populace. Thus, many groups are underrepresented in the planning process based on race, gender, class, national origin, etc. This has required a movement for environmental justice to be created so that certain people are not disproportionately affected by contamination of natural resources.
I grew up in Los Angeles, where environmental justice is a prominent and highly visible reality. The image below of Los Angeles County was generated by the Environmental Protection Agency. Represented in green are the manufacturing facilities that are heavily responsible for contamination and loss of aesthetic value. The red and orange areas are high concentrations of people of color and the yellow areas are low concentrations (40 percent and below). There is a clear correlation between race and proximity to facilities that degrade the environment. Why is this? As I previously stated, when certain groups have little to no power in the political realm, they are often neglected. However, there are other factors, such as housing discrimination, gentrification, and, of course, the plain old isms (racism, sexism, and classism).
Because Los Angeles is such a diverse place, it is easy to find high-profile cases of blatant discrimination and impressive statistics. We know that environmental discrimination is a fact now, as summed up in Clinton's executive order for environmental justice. However, now that I live in Burlington, Vermont, it is increasingly harder to look at these issues in the same way. One must take into consideration that Vermont is much smaller and more homogenous that California, and the same is true for Burlington and Los Angeles. My research this summer focuses on the ways in which cities such as Los Angeles have made the federal environmental justice mandate specific to their unique situation in this country and how cities like Burlington could tailor the mandate to their needs.