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Environmental Injustices, Political Struggles
Race, Class, and the Environment
By David E. Camacho Duke University Press
Copyright © 1998 Duke University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-9663-5
CHAPTER 1
David E. Camacho
THE ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT
A Political Framework
Individuals and groups in the United States have promoted protection of the environment since at least the 1830s. Two often conflicting concerns dominated the early environmental movement: (1) natural resources conservation, and (2) wilderness and wildlife preservation. One allowed for resource extraction and consumption; the other attempted to prevent such practices. At the same time, both concerns converged in their interest in the management of large, sparsely populated, public wetlands. From the 1950s onward, a third concern has influenced the modern environmental movement: human welfare ecology. Today, human safety and, in fact, survival are threatened by the dangers of nuclear plants, the growth in the nuclear arsenal, and nuclear wastes; by global warming and the thinning of the ozone layer; and generally, by ground, air, and water pollution. This threat to human survival is of a global dimension. It was on the basis of these concerns that the environmental movement emerged as a significant mass movement in the 1970s. This modern, mainstream environmental movement has tended to exclude substantive participation by people of color, although people of color have organized around environmental issues at an unprecedented rate since the late 1980s.
Like many individuals and groups attracted to the contemporary environmental movement, people of color and low-income groups were horrified when they learned of the dangers to their communities caused by acute and chronic exposures to toxins and other environmental hazards. As noted by Peter J. Longo (this volume), however, mainstream environmental groups have still been slow in broadening their base to include people of color as well as poor and working-class whites. Like Longo, Stephen Sandweiss suggests that mainstream groups are ill equipped to deal with the environmental, economic, and social concerns of minority communities. For example, during the 1960s and 1970s, while mainstream environmental groups focused on wilderness preservation and conservation through litigation, political lobbying, and technical evaluation, people of color were engaged in collective action mobilizations for basic civil rights in the areas of employment, housing, education, and health care. Thus, two often conflicting movements emerged, and it has taken nearly two decades for any significant convergence to occur. While there are now efforts at coalition building, differences remain over how the two groups should balance economic development, social justice, and environmental protection. The crux of the problem is that the mainstream environmental movement has not fully recognized the fact that social inequality and imbalances of power contribute to the environmental degradation, resource depletion, pollution, and environmental hazards that disproportionately impact people of color along with poor and working-class whites. There is generally a lack of concern over "justice" in the mainstream environmental movement.
The environmental justice movement, then, is an attempt to unite the concerns of both the environmental and civil rights movements. Mainstream environmental organizations are beginning to understand the need for environmental justice and are increasingly supporting grassroots groups in the form of technical advice, expert testimony, direct financial assistance, fund-raising, research, and legal assistance. John G. Bretting and Diane-Michele Prindeville (this volume) point out that environmental justice advocates are not saying, "Take the poisons out of our community and put them in another community." They are saying that no community should have to live with these poisons. Bretting and Prindeville suggest that environmental advocates have taken the moral high road and that they are building a multiracial and inclusive movement that has the potential to transform the political landscape of this nation if we learn from its leadership style and organizational structure. The environmental justice movement is an inclusive one in that environmental concerns are not treated as separate and apart from health, employment, housing, and education issues. Indeed, Linda Robyn suggests that environmental justice cannot be separated from one's cultural lifestyle.
But what is to be done? Harvey L. White provides ample evidence that the record of environmental policy is not encouraging. The federal government has traditionally accepted major responsibility for protecting the health and wellbeing of U.S. society. During the 1980s, an extreme shift in governmental responsibilities emerged. This "New federalism," ushered in by the Reagan administration, signaled a reduction in domestic programs to monitor the environment and protect public health. The shifting of environmental protection away from the federal government to subnational governments continues today. Actions by states are viewed as preferable and more effective. But the policy of delegating more responsibility for environmental protection and management to state agencies has serious implications. States generally do not have the expertise to handle this responsibility, and there has been no corresponding increase in financial resources to assist them in meeting these new responsibilities. The federal policy to continue with "New Federalism" has resulted in an abdication, rather than a shifting, of environmental protection and management.
Robert Bullard has provided "a glimpse of several representative struggles within the grassroots environmental justice movement." Bullard offers insights into the coalescing of mainstream and grassroots environmental efforts, wherein he suggests that the situation is changing for the better. In addition, local governments have been moved to action and, in some cases, have also elicited the cooperation of environmental industries. But numerous challenges still face the environmental justice movement and its efforts to confront environmental problems. Sustaining a coalition based on racial, gender, and class differences is a formidable task; limited resources impede organizing; lack of information can block mobilization efforts; determining accountability and responsibility for environmental hazards can be impossible–these are some of the difficulties confronting the movement. In the end, they are political challenges.
Citizen deliberation is essential if there is to be a collective effort addressing environmental problems and solutions. Because the environmental crisis is a political one, thoughts on the environment must be cast in political terms. To this end, this chapter reviews the political process model. The intent is to identify factors that may lead to a successful insurgency around environmental injustices. Although the contributors to this volume will not necessarily make deliberate, direct references to the nature of power or the char-direct references to the nature of power or the characteristics of politics as discussed below, as the reader continues through Environmental Injustices, Political Struggles, it is important that the framework discussed in this chapter guide one's critical analysis of the essays collected here.
The Political Process Model: Central Concepts and Assumptions
Politics refers to that set of social structures and processes by which humans resolve their conflicting interests without having to be in a constant Hobbesian "state of war." The term process conveys a main idea of the theoretical perspective taken in this anthology: a political movement represents a continuous process from generation to decline, rather than a discrete series of developmental stages. Accordingly, the political process model offers the reader a framework for analyzing the entire process of a movement's development rather than a particular phase (e.g., the emergence of the tactic of protest) of that same process. At its most elementary level, the study of politics is concerned with the processes that determine "who gets what, when, and how." David Easton suggests that politics is the "authoritative allocation of values for society." These two views of politics provide insights into the study of power. Power is "the ability of A to somehow affect the behavior of B," suggesting that at its most basic level, power can be seen as the capacity of some groups or individuals to impose their preferences on others within a collective.
The Lasswellian view breaks politics into four related parts: (1) who acts, (2) what is being sought, (3) when (the empirical context), and (4) how (the process). This perspective identifies the actors who pursue the rewards and benefits of political participation. The attention given to the political process helps answer significant questions: How do actors accomplish their political objectives? How do actors lose out in their pursuit of rewards? Further, it helps identify competition among actors as well as the historical development of that competition. The notion of historical development is an important one. As regards the environmental justice movement, it suggests that the tenets of the movement cannot be separated from the past socioeconomic and political conditions that spurred it.
Easton points out that order is a necessary condition of society. As such, people within a political system authorize government (or its public officials) to manage conflict in society. Government, then, is given legitimacy to manage the affairs of its citizens through the "social contract" entered into by a political community. The management of conflict is accomplished primarily through a system of rewards and punishments, or by rules that provide an orderly manner by which groups and individuals can interact with each other. Witness, for example, the valuable guidance offered by constitutions in the U.S. political system. Government, in its provision of social order, is responsible for making sure that human behavior is kept within the parameters of "the accepted way of doing things."
An important way that government maintains the social order is by its provision of collective goods and services: it supplies those rewards and benefits demanded or needed by the public at large and, in some instances, by private individuals. This capacity to provide collective goods and services also implies that government has the capacity to withhold rewards and benefits. Excluding some groups and individuals becomes especially necessary under the condition of "limited resources." A condition of limited resources, like the economic condition of "scarcity," exists when wants exceed available goods and services. Government simply does not have all the resources at its disposal; thus, the role of government in managing the political process becomes problematical because wants inevitably exceed the available goods and services that government possesses.
This suggests that the role of government is to carry out two necessarily crucial functions for society: (1) the provision of social order, and (2) the provision of public goods and services. These functions are not mutually exclusive. Used in combination, they reinforce each other in effectively meeting the ends of the state: the provision of goods and services essential to maintain the social order. Government's role becomes critically important, then, under the condition of limited resources. Indeed, government exists to decide (authoritatively) how limited resources (values) are to be allocated for society so that order is maintained. Since there is not enough of what people want for everyone, each public policy decision requires that some groups and individuals make sacrifices. In determining the winners and losers involved in the competition over limited resources, government takes on a special significance because it is dictating power relations in society.
Government's sanctioning of power relations in society is, therefore, a result of its role in managing conflict in society. Government upholds, justifies, and legitimates traditional modes of behavior and an established pattern of authority in assuring that human behavior is kept within the parameters of the accepted way of doing things. In the end, public policy decisions aimed at resolving political conflicts over resource allocations, procedural rules and regulations, and values will mostly favor these traditional and established patterns. Consequently, both human behavior and political action are significantly shaped by the institutional and procedural parameters of a society. Stated differently, a key factor in understanding political development and behavior is the institutional framework of U.S. society. For example, individuals engaged in mainstream politics are not likely to upset established power relations because their political behavior is within the parameters of the accepted way of doing things; conversely, protest is a type of political behavior that falls outside of mainstream politics and can be understood as a reaction to glaring inequalities or a lack of political resources.
In brief, then, politics involves power when it is viewed as a process whereby groups or individuals compete against each other over limited resources, and as a result, there are winners and losers. Conflict is a fundamental condition of politics. Power relationships exist when there is conflict over resource allocations, procedural rules and regulations, and values.
The Political Process Model: Theoretical Perspective
The political process model is based on an elitist conception of power. Power is conceptualized as the ability of A to prevail over B in formal decision making; A also prevails over B in determining what is to be deemed a formal issue. Elite theory argues that there are essentially two major groups in society: a small group of powerful elites and the powerless masses. Under elite theory, people of color and the working poor are part of the powerless mass. The elite group is well organized and controls the major economic, social, and political institutions in society. While the masses might influence government through elections, their influence is seen as marginal rather than as a serious challenge to elite dominance, which is embedded in socioeconomic institutions and reinforced by ideology, or a dominant set of values, beliefs, attitudes, and norms. social movements are viewed as attempts by excluded groups to mobilize sufficient political leverage to influence elite dominance.
Where our perspective diverges from the elite model is in regard to the extent of elite control over the political system and the insurgent capabilities of excluded groups. Theorists of the elite model tend to hold a view of the disparity between elite and excluded groups that grants the former virtually unlimited power. Excluded groups are seen as functionally powerless compared to the enormous power wielded by the elite. Under such conditions, the chances for successful insurgency would be nil. The power disparity between elite and excluded groups is substantial, but there is potential for insurgency among excluded groups. Political efficacy is crucial for awakening latent insurgency. That is, members of excluded groups must believe in their ability to mobilize significant political resources and in their skill to effectively exercise political leverage (see Bretting and Prindeville, this volume).
The political process model is consistent with Easton's views on "insiders" and "outsiders" and the conservatism of the political system. According to Easton, political actors inside a political system hold the values of that system and perceive its interests as their own. Political interaction within the system involves disagreements, to be sure, but within the bounds of a basic consensus or within the parameters of "the accepted ways of doing things." Political actors outside a political system typically will not share certain basic values with the groups and authorities inside the system. The basic values held by insiders and outsiders could be so fundamentally different that a peaceful coexistence is impossible (see, this volume, Clarke and Gerlak; Berry; Robyn and Camacho). The interaction between excluded groups and the system would involve conflict to the extent that the relationship would revolve around a clash of values. Like Easton's thinking, the political process model is based on the notion that political action by insiders reflects an abiding conservatism. Accordingly, insiders resist changes that would threaten the realization of their interests, fight tenaciously against a loss of power, and work to bar admission to the political system of political actors whose interests conflict significantly with their own.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Environmental Injustices, Political Struggles by David E. Camacho. Copyright © 1998 Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission of Duke University Press.
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