Environmental justice is when all people, no discrimination, have meaningful involvement with physical environmental benefits and burdens, equal protection from environmental hazards, and decisions that affect environmental health. It also includes the fair treatment. This means no one group holds the most negative consequences from industrial, commercial, and government operations. Some examples of environmental justice issues are unequal sitting of landfills, disparate risks in safe food consumption standards, and unequal study subject participation in clinical trials.
The purpose of the environmental justice atlas is to show environmental struggles around the world. It documents 1,400 conflicts that range from land wars to oil pollution. The map is interactive and the conflicts can be clicked on to discover the problems, people involved, solutions, and the final outcome. The types of groups responsible for creating it were a coalition of green groups and social movements: Grain, World Rainforest Movement, Oilwatch International, OCMAL, Latin American Observatory of Mining Conflicts.
These groups have been supporting and fighting for impacted communities and has created a global movement for environmental justice. This atlas is an inspiration of Ejolt. Ejolt is a European supported project that brought together 23 organizations to analyze and record ecological conflicts. Two environmental justice issues I focused on were in Italy. They were the Disaster of Seveso, Italy and the Vajont Dam Disaster. In the disaster of Seveso, Italy the specific issue had to do with ICMESA.
ICMESA was a chemical industry hat manufactured a toxic substance used in herbicides, and in July of 1976 there was a leak of the dangerous substances. The people that caused the environmental problem according to ICMESA, was of “human error. ” The people demanding environmental justice were: farmers, industrial workers, international ejos, local ejos, local government/political parties, citizens/communities, and pastoralists. Also some environmental justice organizations and other supporters were: Comitato di Coordinamento Cittadino, Comitato 5D, Legambiente circolo di Seveso.
The environmental protesters response to this issue was to first have environmental improvements/restoration of the area. Then there was a court decision, negotiated alternative solution, new legislation, strengthen of participation, and then the project was cancelled. The project was a success in some ways, but in others not. The area is still polluted and committees are still fighting against a project to build a highway “pedemontana”.
One of the good things that came out of this disaster was now there has been laws and international treaties that protects the right to health care and has contributed to the Italian environmental movement. In the Vajont Dam Disaster the issue was that a landslide collapsed in the water basin and caused a wave surge of 200 meters and flooded towns. The environmental problem was caused by the failure of engineers and geologists to understand the nature of the problem they were trying to deal with.
The people demanding environmental justice were: Farmers, Local ejos, local government/political parties, Neighbors/citizens/ communities, and pastoralists. Some of the environmental justice organizations that were involved were: Committee for the defence against SADE, Foundation Vajont, Citizens for the memory of Vajont, and Survivors Association and Survivors Committee. The response to the disaster was Compensation, Criminalization of activists, Environmental improvements, rehabilitation/restoration of area, Land demarcation, Court ecision, Migration/displacement, and New Environmental Impact Assessment/Study.
It’s hard to determine if this was a success. Despite this, the infrastructure project was invasive, had corrupt policies, and flooded towns. This disaster has forced institutions to a commitment compensation to the society involved in the disaster and more attention to the safety of these mega plants. Both of these cases had similar conflict responses and the same type of people mobilizing for the issue. Both had minimum successes and in both cases the project was stopped after the disaster.
In both cases the area is still either polluted (by people or by the chemicals). More awareness to each issue has risen from these disasters, which is a success. In conclusion, I think the environmental justice movement is an amazing movement. I believe everyone should take part in these issues and it’s important to educate everyone on what is happening around the world. The Ejatlas is a brilliant tool and very interesting. I learned about a lot of different issues I had no idea were problems in certain areas.
I chose the specific issues | did, because in both cases something could have been done to prevent these disasters, but because people weren’t well informed something went wrong. I think these movements are appropriate to enact change. People don’t like to change things unless they have tangible proof something is wrong. Seeing a picture and having information on these issues in one convenient place for someone to read is a perfect way to get people informed and involved. Having tools, like the Ebatlas, and these other organizations to promote change are exactly what we need in order to improve these environments in which people live in.
