Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights and the Politics of Pollution

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Overview

In 1994, Sierra Club Books was proud to publish Dr. Robert D. Bullard's Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color, a collection of essays contributed by some of the leading participants in the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, which focused attention on "environmental racism"-racial discrimination in environmental policymaking and the enforcement of environmental-protection laws and regulations. Now, picking up where that groundbreaking anthology left off, ...
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More About This Book

Overview

In 1994, Sierra Club Books was proud to publish Dr. Robert D. Bullard's Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color, a collection of essays contributed by some of the leading participants in the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, which focused attention on "environmental racism"-racial discrimination in environmental policymaking and the enforcement of environmental-protection laws and regulations. Now, picking up where that groundbreaking anthology left off, Dr. Bullard has assembled in The Quest for Environmental Justice a new collection of essays that capture the voices of frontline warriors who are battling environmental injustice and human rights abuses at the grassroots level around the world, and challenging government and industry policies and globalization trends that place people of color and the poor at special risk.

Part One presents an overview of the early environmental justice movement and highlights key leadership roles assumed by women activists. Part Two examines the lives of people living in "sacrifice zones"-toxic corridors (such as Louisiana's infamous "Cancer Alley") where high concentrations of polluting industries are found. Part Three explores land use, land rights, resource extraction, and sustainable development conflicts, including Chicano struggles in America's Southwest. Part Four examines human rights and global justice issues, including an analysis of South Africa's legacy of environmental racism and the corruption and continuing violence plaguing the oil-rich Niger Delta.

Together, the diverse contributors to this much-anticipated follow-up anthology present an inspiring and illuminating picture of the environmental justice movement in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
Bullard offers a disturbing account of the environmental and human cost of the excesses of capitalism in this follow-up to Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color. This volume takes a fresh look at the often unequal distribution of environmental hazards to poor and minority communities, examining locations from Louisiana's "Cancer Alley" to Nigeria. In part one, women activists detail their gutsy battles against the combined power of business and government when their minority neighborhoods were threatened by industrial pollution. Part two tells the stories of people (again, mostly minorities and the poor) living in "sacrifice zones," such as Cancer Alley the stretch down the Mississippi River in Louisiana where "approximately 80 percent of the total African American community in the nine parishes lives within three miles of a polluting facility." Parts three and four examine Chicano struggles in the Southwest and global justice issues, including "corrupt... petro-capitalism" in Nigeria, where deep poverty persists despite the country's oil wealth. Readers can learn much about those who pay the costs in safety and health for many of modern life's conveniences. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781578051205
  • Publisher: Sierra Club Books
  • Publication date: 11/28/2005
  • Pages: 414
  • Sales rank: 542,661
  • Product dimensions: 5.90 (w) x 8.90 (h) x 1.10 (d)

Meet the Author

Robert D. Bullard is the Ware Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University. He is the nation's leading authority on race and the environment and the author of twelve books addressing environmental justice, community health, urban land use, transportation, and suburban sprawl, including Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color (Sierra Club Books, 1994), Sprawl City: Race, Politics, and Planning in Atlanta, and Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity. His award-winning book Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality is a standard text in the environmental justice field. Dr. Bullard lives in the Atlanta area.
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Table of Contents

Foreword ix
Preface xv
Acknowledgments xix
Introduction 1
Part 1 A Legacy of Injustice 17
1 Environmental Justice in the Twenty-first Century 19
2 Neighborhoods "Zoned" for Garbage 43
3 Women Warriors of Color on the Front Line 62
Part 2 The Assault on Fence-Line Communities 85
4 Living and Dying in Louisian's "Cancer Alley" 87
5 Environmental Inequity in Metropolitan Los Angeles 108
6 Toxic Racism on a New Jersey Waterfront 125
Part 3 Land Rights and Sustainable Development 143
7 Anatomy of the Urban Parks Movement: Equal Justice, Democracy, and Livability in Los Angeles 145
8 Resource Wars against Native Peoples 168
9 Tierra y Vida: Chicano Environmental Justice Struggles in the Southwest 188
Part 4 Human Rights and Global Justice 207
10 Environmental Reparations 209
11 Vieques: The Land, the People, the Struggle, the Future 222
12 Alienation and Militancy in the Niger Delta: Petroleum, Politics, and Democracy in Nigeria 239
13 Environmental Racism and Neoliberal Disorder in South Africa 255
14 Addressing Global Poverty, Pollution, and Human Rights 279
Appendix A Principles of Environmental Justice 299
Appendix B Nongovernmental Organization Language on Environmental Racism 303
Notes 307
Selected Bibliography 359
About the Contributors 365
Index 373
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