Statistics from the United Nations (2016) confirm that from 2015 to 2016 there have been 109 out of 197 parties, including China and the United States, signing the Paris Agreement in which they made declarations against climate change, which reveals that global leaders have been aware of the importance of environmental protection and the dangers of overly focusing on development. By definition, environment refers to the combination of the living and non-living elements (Reddy 2011), while development is considered as an upward movement of the whole society (Myrdal 1974). Both are valued as pillars for the sustainable development on the World Summit on Social Development (Mason 2005). However, protecting the environment should be accorded …show more content…
Take America for example. While suffering severely from Hurricane Katrina, thousands of African Americans living in the Gulf region were not provided with accommodation, food, or filtered water for days, because they could not afford health insurance (Brehm and Pellow 2013). By contrast, the loss caused by such environmental disasters did not impose much burden on those who had economic strength to recover (Brehm and Pellow 2013). In this way, the economic inequality was worsened. In addition to that, race inequality in certain countries is deteriorated as well. In Canada, the Ojibway Nation once protested the environmental abuses imposed on them including cutting trees and releasing poisoning wastes (Brehm and Pellow 2013). Therefore, making efforts to protect the environment is necessary to reduce social …show more content…
Valid evidence and statistics about air pollution, hurricanes, climate change, oil spills and nature reserves are employed to prove that valuing the importance of development over environmental protection is beneficial to protect public health, to diminish social inequality, and to prevent unrepaired damage done to the environment. Taking all this into consideration, although the environmental protection and development are both significant, the former needs more attention in order to achieve the ideal level of sustainable development; in the long run, development should not be pursued at the price of the quality of the
“Terms such as environmental racism and environmental justice are used to express the interconnectedness of environmental health, socio-economic conditions and racialized discrimination (OSCE, 2011). This concept originates from the early 1980’s when community concerns about toxic
Encouraged by diverse foundations from across the globe, The Environmental Justice movement has become one of the most important topics in the media. Europeans have used Marxist philosophy on class laddering, while non-Western countries required its encouragement in the criticism of colonialism. In the United States, The Civil Rights Movement was its forerunner. The notion of “Environmental Justice”, nevertheless, has its genesis in the resistance of black culture and lower income-communities in opposition to uneven ecological trouble in the United States during the last few years of the 1970s and the early 1980s. In the framework of racial improvement and public activism, the phrase was implemented to designate the racial and ethnic disparity in contact to environmental dangers like pollutions, toxic waste, and inundation, at the same time barring marginal people, like black Americans, Hispanics, and Indians, from the choosing and applying of nationwide environmental rules.
Environmental justice was primarily emerged in USA, which was raised from a campaign against the imposition of toxic and pollutants in a minority community. At the early stage, environmental justice was simply referred to the distributive justice, specifically, inequity distribution of environmental risk (Schlosberg, 2013). Particularly, the environmental impacts and risks are always disproportionately distributed into the poor and minority communities, which also indicate an early focus: racism in the environmental justice (Cole& Foster, 2001; Mohai, Pellow, &Timmins, 2009). At the time, it is still anthropocentric which with not much attention on the natural environment and the relationship between human and
Environmental racism has been an ongoing issue in the United States. This issue mainly affects communities of color, immigrants, and poor folks who live in urban areas and around public squalors. This creates an unsafe environment for low-income communities and there are hardly any resource to address these environmental destructions. Most poor communities are more than likely to experience pollution than anywhere else because of their social and class status. Due to this, it can determine their breathing and living condition. This builds the connection between race and environmental destruction because of the stigma of space that is attached to low-income areas. Even though environmental racism is more than the unloading of waste in poor areas, this paper focus more on this factor than other elements that correlate with environmental racism. In order to make space for toxic waste, society risks the safety and health of poor communities of color to ensure a capacity for industry to perpetuate environmental racism.
In the United States and internationally, there is a multitude of indicators that the racial environment is changing. Environmental pollution and racism are connected in more ways than one. The world is unconsciously aware of environmental intolerances, yet continues to expose the poor and minorities to physical hazards. Furthermore, sociologist continue to study “whether racial disparities are largely a function of socioeconomic disparities or whether other factors associated with race are also related to the distribution of environmental hazards” (Mohai and Saha 2007: 345). Many of these factors include economic positions, health disparities, social and political affairs, as well as racial inequalities.
Most Americans conjure imagery of a planet replete with pristine wilderness, crystal blue oceans, fresh air, and verdant forests when they think about the natural environment. In recent decades, this description is becoming increasingly applicable only to certain areas of the United States because poor and minority communities are overwhelmingly subjected to dangerous environmental hazards. As such, the concept of environmental racism has become a major issue affecting every aspect of their lives because of their placement and proximity to environmentally dangerous areas such as landfills, toxic waste sites, and other forms of pollution. The environmental justice movement seeks to remedy this problem by recognizing the direct link between economic, environmental, race, and health issues. The biggest aim of environmental justice is for all people to live, work, and play in clean, and environmentally safe communities. However, in mainstream American environmentalism, poor and minority communities are typically ignored in environmental communication because their white counterparts dominate the discourse. Recent scholarship suggests that people of color play a crucial role in fighting environmental discrimination because their cultural traditions, experiences, and histories allow them to uniquely communicate environmental risk and health concerns within their communities.
When we think of environmental justice, we often focus on the ecosystem in which we as humans live, and the natural resources and non-human animals that live there. We tend to think about ethical uses of natural resources, and the effects it has on the non-human animals, such as animal rights, endangerment and extinction, loss of habitat, deforestation, erosion, and pollution. Environmental justice is another factor that is concerned with environmental protection and social justice, including humans into the mix of the complex ecosystem. Environmental justice considers the fair and equal distribution of cost and benefits between humans and the natural world. (1) Environmental justice is also defined as the fair treatment of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income and no particular group should have to bear more than their fair share of the burden of negative environmental consequences from industrial pollution or
Southgate, Douglas DeWitt, and Morris D. Whitaker. Economic Progress and the Environment: One Developing Country's Policy Crisis. New York: Oxford UP, 1994. Print.
The impact of the development on the environment and its resources should be understood in order to move forward towards a way to make the relationship between development, growth and the environment possible. From here the concept
[WCED] World Commission on Environment and Development. 1987. Our common future. New York: Oxford University Press. 444p.
In traditional opinions, environmental protection and economic growth are mutually contradictory. Economic growth is a high environmental cost, and protecting the environment will limit the economic growth. The reason of contradiction stems from the inappropriate understandings among development, economic growth and environmental protection. In fact, economic growth could have a harmonious relationship with environmental protection.
The scales of environmental justice weigh far more heavily in favor of the wealthy, while many others (such as the poor around the globe) feel the effects of the global economy in a whole different way. For example, let’s think about consumerism within the United States. We are a country that consumes in abundance, in fact, it is estimated that those in the United States make up about five percent of the population while using about twenty-five percent of the worlds energy (such as oil, and coal).2 In reality, among all the countries in the world, the United States comes in at number two in terms of Carbon Dioxide emissions, only behind China.3 The United States makes up five percent of the World’s population, and contributes the second highest amount of Carbon Dioxide. The United States is a major factor in terms of global pollution, and the countries that are contributing considerably less in terms of pollution are being affected by climate changes in far greater
Sustainable development refers to not only meet the needs of contemporary people, but also not compromising the ability of future generations to meet development needs.Sustainable development and environmental protection have established contact, not the same. Environmental protection is an important aspect of sustainable development. The core of sustainable development is development, but requires strict control of the population, improve population quality and protect the environment for the conduct of economic and social development under the premise of sustainable use of resources.
Environmentalism first arose in the early 20th century with its main focal point aimed at wildlife preservation and wilderness protection. These goals were originally based on the original enthusiasts, who were usually made up of privileged whites who wished to spend their leisure time enjoying the outdoors (Bullard, 1992). However, in achieving environmental justice many minorities and working class people felt secluded and negatively affected. In many western nations many problems arose as low-income minorities were secluded from the environmental movements, thus leading to environmental discrimination, this caused an unequal distribution of employment, education and health services as well as an unequal distribution of environmental harms (Steger, 2009).
Is it right that future generations, who have committed no crimes, be forced to live in a contaminated environment with freshwater depletion, polluted air, global warming and biodiversity reduction just because our present generation has caused the damage? Should our future children be ensured an ecologically healthy environment? I think they should. I strongly believe that protecting the environment is extremely important. We are all part of the environment; Earth is what we all share in common. It is our home and we are obliged to preserve it. As someone who is aware, who cares and who is concerned, I’d like to help you understand why protecting our environment is vital. I believe that protecting the environment is essential for healthy living, in creating a healthful environment for our future generation and last but not least, the Earth is our one and only home.