 Individual environmental hazards are seen as
part of a larger context of problems that a single community faces,
including inadequate access to quality health care and education,
poor job opportunities, lack of affordable housing, and being left
out of the process of identifying problems, communicating risks,
developing responses to problems, and developing mitigation
strategies. Rarely are the needs of low-income communities and
communities of color taken into account in the identification of
environmental health problems, studies of health outcomes, and/or
designing appropriate interventions.
Using a holistic approach and
bringing together civil rights and environmental activists, the
environmental justice movement integrates a broad range of issues,
including environmental pollution, public health, worker safety,
land use, transportation, housing, economic development and
community empowerment.Sustainability means different things to
different people. The term is most common among policy and decision
makers who are far removed from the day-to-day struggles of poor and
working-class communities. A sustainable community seems to refer to
an idealized, utopian place or condition. However, many people and
cultures do not use sustainability in their language, and this term
is not universally shared. From the perspective of environmental
justice activists, sustainability must include a process of
collective decision-making and address issues of social inequality
and racism as well as ecological degradation. A sustainable
community provides
A means of livelihood for all people,
Resources to participate in civic life, and
Respect for all members of the community.
Although most environmental justice activists do not use the term
sustainability to describe their efforts, for many the survival and
environmental health of communities has been a central theme. The
Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice, a network
of numerous environmental grassroots community organizations
throughout California and the Southwest, describes sustainability as
encompassing the political and personal, the tangible and
intangible, the past and the future, and includes such ideas as
accountability, self-determination, justice, youth, nature,
creation, collectivity, knowledge, culture, spirituality,
livelihood. To build a multi-cultural, socially just, sustainable
community, it is necessary to work together to develop a shared
language and vision.
One of the most important aspects of environmental justice is the
question of participation. In this context, it is appropriate to
examine whether the sustainability plan drafting process itself has
been inclusive of people from the entire community.
Generally,
volunteer drafters should have been recruited from three sectors:
environmental activists, City departments, and the business
community. While the sustainability draft is regarded as a starting
point for public participation and was not intended to be a final
document, the drafting process can be insufficiently inclusive with
respect to public participation. It did not ensure the contribution
of community residents, particularly those living in the City's
lower-income communities who are bearing the brunt of the
City's environmental industrial pollution. Any plan for the City's
sustainability should reflect the views and perspectives of
multi-racial, multi-ethnic communities and not only just those of
people with the time to attend drafting meetings.
Source: http://www.sustainable-city.org/ |
