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Environmental Justice

Why Tortuguita’s Murder Is Only The Tip Of The Iceberg

April 10, 2023 Elena Novak, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
Few people outside of Atlanta knew about the police training facility nicknamed “Cop City” when plans were approved in 2021, but all that changed in January when Manual Esteban Páez Terán, known as “Tortuguita,” was murdered by police. Their death launched a torrent of news coverage, including an article by NBC stating that police had never killed an environmental activist in the U.S. before Tortuguita. That may be true, but the U.S. has long been complicit in the death of activists abroad through its involvement in resource extraction and training police and military personnel. One such country is Honduras, which had the highest number of killings of land defenders per capita in the world in 2019.

Parliament Adds Ecocide To EU’s Draft List Of Environmental Crimes

April 6, 2023 Valentina Romano, Euractiv.com. , , ,
“This is historical! The European Parliament unanimously supports my proposal to enshrine ecocide in European law,” said French MEP Marie Toussaint, who is leading the EU’s environmental crime directive for the Greens in the European Parliament. According to the French MEP, “the issue of ecocide has resurfaced” in recent years since the Erika oil tanker sank off the Brittany coast in 1999, bringing the issue to the EU’s attention. “The litigation cases that we have taken, for the climate or for the rights of nature, have contributed to reviving the urgency of dealing with attacks on living beings in and through the law,” she said.

Fossil Fuel Firms Fast-track LNG Export Projects Near Black Communities

March 25, 2023 Sara Sneath, Desmog. , , ,
Years before Hurricane Katrina levee failures flooded New Orleans, a Louisiana hurricane expert warned federal officials of the potential for the levees to break. Now, Ivor van Heerden, the former deputy director of Louisiana State University’s Hurricane Center, is concerned about the disastrous and potentially lethal consequences of a hurricane hitting a liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminal under construction south of New Orleans. “Once again we’ve got politicians and state agencies ignoring the facts, just like they did with Hurricane Katrina,” van Heerden said. “We’re going to have another catastrophe.”

Black Residents Of Cancer Alley Sue Local Government

March 22, 2023 Sara Sneath, DeSmog. , , ,
A discrimination lawsuit filed Tuesday in the Eastern District of Louisiana alleges that the St. James Parish Council steered polluting facilities into Black neighborhoods along the Mississippi River. As a result, Black residents there are forced to breathe in more pollution and face a higher risk of related health problems, according to the suit filed by Inclusive Louisiana, Mount Triumph Baptist Church, and RISE St. James. “We’re being ignored and we have to do whatever we have to do to stop it,” said Myrtle Felton, a lifelong resident of St. James Parish and co-founder of Inclusive Louisiana, a community group focused on environmental injustices.

Minneapolis: Battle Against City Plans To Spread Arsenic Contamination

December 19, 2022 Fight Back News. , , , ,
Minneapolis, Minnesota - Roughly 100 East Phillips residents and supporters rallied at the Hennepin County courthouse, December 15, protest the city’s East Phillips demolition plan and long legacy of systemic racism. For generations, East Phillips residents have suffered from multiple sources of concentrated pollution, including toxic deposits of arsenic from a former pesticide factory. When the vacant Roof Depot warehouse came up for sale, the neighborhood developed plans to renovate the building into an urban farm and community hub. But, despite proclamations of environmental justice, the city of Minneapolis plans to demolish the building - exposing a bed of untreated, arsenic-laden soil underneath - and replace it with a public works truck yard, where 888 city vehicles would further concentrate toxic fumes in one of the city’s most polluted neighborhoods.

How Vanguard Funds Harm And Fuels Extractive Industry

March 24, 2022 ACRE. , , ,
Pennsylvania based asset manager, Vanguard, is the world’s second largest asset manager, with over $8 trillion in assets under management. Vanguard is referred to as a “universal owner,” with ownership stake in over 10,000 corporations. The financial institution dominates market environments and consequently has the ability to set industry norms. Asset managers have largely ignored calls for divestment from extractive industries. Asset managers, like Vanguard, have failed to include a robust racial and environmental justice orientation in their business practices. In turn, they flood extractive industries with capital. Industries like the carceral and fossil fuel industries use those investments to extract from low-income and BIPOC communities.

New Report: Climate Harms To Health Are Widespread And Costly

May 21, 2021 Vijay Limaye, NRDC. , , ,
A new report NRDC published with partner groups today spotlights the enormous, often overlooked, and inequitable health and economic costs of climate change and air pollution from burning fossil fuels on the United States. This report, produced by the Medical Society Consortium on Climate & Health, Wisconsin Health Professionals for Climate Action, and NRDC focuses on the frequently ignored but profound public health problems and costs linked to the climate crisis.

An Environment Of Anti-Racism Is How We Win

May 13, 2021 Janelle Lapointe, National Observer. , , ,
Canada - Spring has always been a time of renewal and hope. I’m filled with a sense of wonder and possibility as I watch new life sprout from the soil and cherry blossoms bloom along streets. But this spring, I feel a prevailing heaviness. For many of us, this season marks a year since COVID-19 restrictions were put in place. March 13 marked one year since Breonna Taylor was shot in her sleep by police in Louisville, Ky. As the season progresses, and as we pass through solemn anniversaries, I continue to be reminded of where we were a year ago. Last spring, the COVID-19 pandemic started to unmask the inequalities in society, with the virus disproportionately affecting racialized communities. Headlines were filled with stories of police violence as mass protests erupted around the world.

Our Biggest Jails Are Frontline Environmental Justice Communities

May 9, 2021 Adam Mahoney, Grist. , , ,
For more than half a century, 441 Bauchet Street has been the address where Los Angeles’ most stark social and environmental inequalities converge. It’s the location of L.A.’s Men’s Central Jail, the largest facility in the most populated county jail system in the country. On any given day, about 5,000 people are incarcerated there. A block south from the jail is the 101 freeway, one of the most traveled highways in America, which generates dangerous levels of air pollution linked to a slew of birth defects. A block east is the L.A. River, home to at least 20 different pollutants, from feces to oil, at levels that violate federal standards. Another 100 yards east is the SP Railyard and Union Pacific Transportation Center, which operate at all hours, receiving big rig diesel trucks that spew an estimated 40 tons of particulate matter into the air annually.

Contemplating Black Ecologies

May 8, 2021 Celeste Henery, Black Perspectives. , ,
Earlier this year, political scientist and Black feminist Julia Jordan-Zachery asked the question, “What do Black women think about the rain?” She was sharing emergent questions from her research pertaining to Black women, not specifically related to environment studies. Her question echoed some of my own inquiries into the conversation between water, skies, fire, and the currents of Black life. Her question also posited that Black women, complex and disparate, observe and connect to the phenomena called nature. Jordan-Zachery presented a path into the brambled and verdant terrain of Black people’s wonder and delight in the natural world. Environmental scholar Carolyn Finney notes that “One of the biggest challenges for individuals whose work is considered ‘environmental’ is how quickly anything related to African Americans and the environment get designated as an ‘environmental justice’ concern.”

Hunger Strike, Activists Take Fight Against Scrapper To City Hall

February 27, 2021 Maxwell Evans, Block Club Chicago. , , ,
Chicago - Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th) announced Tuesday he will join 10 hunger strikers fighting to block another polluter from receiving the city’s approval to operate on the Southeast Side. As the Pilsen alderman joined the strike, United Neighbors of the 10th Ward member Breanna Bertacchi, Southeast Youth Alliance founder Oscar Sanchez and George Washington High School teacher Chuck Stark wrapped up their 20th day without food. They’ll complete their third week Wednesday. The three initial strikers and eight others who have joined the fast in recent weeks are demanding the Chicago Department of Public Health deny an operating permit to Southside Recycling, a metal scrapper planned for 11600 S. Burley Ave. in East Side.

Groups Sue Trump Administration To Protect Clean Water

September 3, 2020 Earth Justice. , , ,
Washington, D.C. — American Indian and Alaska Native federally recognized Tribes and environmental groups, represented by Earthjustice, sued the Trump administration over its attempt to weaken clean water protections. The rule changes proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency would force states and Tribes to accept damaging and unwanted pipelines and other fossil fuel projects on their lands. The EPA reverses its long-standing interpretation of Section 401 of the Clean Water Act in a move that is contrary to the language, purpose, and intent of the statute. 

Connecting The Dots Between Environmental Injustice And The Coronavirus

May 18, 2020 By Katherine Bagley, Yale Environment 360. , , ,
While cities and towns across the United States are wrestling with the devastating impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, none have been hit harder than low-income and minority communities. Places like Detroit, Chicago, and St. James Parish in Louisiana, plagued by decades of economic inequality and pollution in impoverished neighborhoods, have experienced some of the country’s highest mortality rates from the virus. Recent studies have shown a link between high levels of pollution and an increased risk of death from Covid-19. Sacoby Wilson, an environmental health scientist at the University of Maryland, believes the coronavirus has cast a spotlight on largely unnoticed segments of society, from low-income people in polluted neighborhoods to residents of nursing homes and prisons, to workers in the nation’s meatpacking plants

Defender Of Brazil’s Indigenous Tribes Murdered ‘Execution-Style’ In Amazon Town

September 22, 2019 George Dvorsky, Earther. , , ,
Maxciel Pereira dos Santos, a veteran defender of Brazil’s indigenous people, has reportedly been shot dead in a remote Amazon town while riding his motorcycle. The BBC reports Santos was shot twice in the head while riding his motorcycle down the main street of Tabatinga, a Brazilian city near the border of Colombia and Peru, according to a statement issued this past weekend by the National Indian Foundation (INA), a union representing workers at Brazil’s indigenous protection agency, FUNAI. This incident happened on the evening of Friday September 6, according to Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo. Santos worked at FUNAI for the past 12 years, where he defended both contacted and uncontacted Brazilian tribes from miners, loggers, farmers, and anyone else seeking to seize land in the Amazon rainforest.

A Fight For The Right To Breathe Begins In South Africa

July 11, 2019 By Ramin Pejan, Earthjustice.org , , ,
South African environmental justice advocates are suing the government to force it to clean up the air in the country’s Mpumalanga Highveld region. In the mid-1990s, South Africa’s post-apartheid government overhauled the nation’s constitution. Among the reforms, the country’s leaders adopted a bold, sweeping protection for the land and its people: the right to a healthy environment. Now, as scientists warn that all countries must take bold, sweeping action to avert the worst effects of a climate crisis, South African environmental justice advocates are testing that constitutional right. They are suing the government to force it to clean the dirty air that smothers South Africa’s Mpumalanga Highveld region.
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