Essay On Environmental Justice

I will be discussing Environmental Justice as defined by Julie Sze and London, is the social movement that came from environmental racism which involves paying less attention to environmental concerns such as pollution among racial minorities (Sze and London 1332). Therefore, there are two parts of environmental justice and the first is that it battles environmental racism ad second, it deals with issues and policies regarding natural resources like air, water and land (Sze and London 1336).

I am arguing that environmental justice is a strong theoretical framework because it aims to gain inclusion among race and class and it plays a role in improving the health among everybody no matter what the colour of the persons skin is and regardless

Anthropocentrism as defined by Williston is “The view that we need look only to what humans value to discover all of our duties (413) “unfortunately, too often we lose sight of the fact that economic efficiency is only one value, and it may not be the most important one” (Williston 114). Although, environmental justice also expands its research to assess air and water quality, the case studies that I have outlined in this paper emphasize a more anthropocentric point of view on environmental justice. Moreover, environmental justice came to be because of the effect of pollution among people who are of a racial minority and those who are poorer. Although later environmental justice developed to focus on air, water, soil, etc, it still places its focus on how it affects humans rather than plants and

There are multiple examples in which environmental racism was a major factor in the treatment of the people. For example, the contaminated Flint river water that took place in Flint Michigan was the cause for lead contamination in many people. Too, there was the contaminated soil which was being dumped in the Warren County and it took nearly 30 years to fix the problem. Moreover, these citizens were mainly black and/or poor. However, an example such as the love canal in which there were chemical wastes buried and few years later there was a clean up and almost an immediate response once the issue was noticed but most people living there were white and had more money. There are many more cases in which environmental racism took place. As a result, Warren county raised attention to a common factor of racism in these types of situations and therefore, this was the beginning of environmental justice in which action is now taken to attempt to receive equal environmental rights and treatment for all types of