In the fall of 1982, more than 500 people were arrested while protesting the creation of a toxic landfill in Warren County, in the U.S. state of North Carolina.

The site was chosen in a mostly Black, low-income area, prompting the Washington Post to describe the protests as “the marriage of environmentalism with civil rights.” The event sparked national attention and introduced the term “environmental racism.”

Benjamin Chavis, a lead organizer and former executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), later defined this as systemic environmental decisions that disproportionately affect marginalized communities. This highlighted how people of color often bear the brunt of pollution and malicious environmental planning. These phenomena can cause a variety of health problems, including cancers, asthma, high blood pressure, and low birth weights. Environmental racism is often systemic, reflecting regulations, policies, and decisions made by governments and large corporations.

Historic, discriminatory housing policies like redlining have left lasting environmental effects. Redlined communities often have fewer trees and parks, more heat-retaining pavement, and worse air quality. A study of 108 urban areas found former redlined neighborhoods were up to 10.5 degrees Celsius (13 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than others , increasing risks like heat stroke and other health hazards.

Examples abound. Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley” is home to 150 oil refineries, plastics plants, and chemical facilities. Its name comes from the high toxicity in the air, leading to local cancer rates 50 times the national average. According to data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the cancer risks in the African American districts of this area are 104 and 105 cases per million. Meanwhile, the rates in its predominantly white districts range from 60 to 75 per million.

In Bhopal, India, a U.S. -funded pesticide plant, Union Carbide, leaked 40 tons of highly toxic gas, killing thousands and sickening hundreds of thousands more. In 2014 in Flint, Michigan–an economically impoverished, majority-Black city–to save money, city officials changed the city’s water source to the Flint River. Up till then, the city used treated Detroit Water and Sewerage Department water sourced from Lake Huron and the Detroit River. Residents reported concerns about the taste, smell, and appearance of their new water. Government officials ignored these reports, until scientific studies revealed lead contaminated water caused multiple deaths and long-term health problems due to delayed government action.

Indigenous populations also face intentional threats. In Ecuador, Explorer Nemonte Nenquimo, a member of the Waorani tribe, sued the government for auctioning off huge plots of land in the Amazon rainforest to oil companies. “As indigenous people, we must unite in a single objective: that we demand that they respect us. The Amazon is our home and it is not for sale,” Nenquimo said in an interview with the UN.

In the U.S., the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe opposed the Dakota Access Pipeline for its risks to drinking water and sacred land. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe opposed the pipeline via the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, which provides the sovereign nation “undisturbed use and occupation of the lands granted to them. Despite years of protests, Energy Transfer Partners began operating the pipeline in 2017.

Environmental justice, which the EPA describes as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies” has gained traction. In 2021, the UN recognized a healthy environment as a human right.

The work for environmental justice is not restricted to governments and international groups. Local organizations like WE ACT for Environmental Justice in Harlem, New York, and Mboni ya Vijana, are leading efforts in Kasulu, Tanzania, for safer air and water, better agriculture, environmental protections, policy activism and community development.

The Ocean Connection

The ocean, Earth’s largest water source, is the source of all life. But it is also among the most abused by human activity, polluted by sewage, agricultural runoff and plastics. Climate change worsens these threats, harming both marine life and human communities.

Coral reefs, home to an estimated 25 percent of marine species, are especially vulnerable. Coral reefs support a huge diversity of marine life, including many at the base of the ocean’s food web, like snails and marine worms. They are used for shelter, protection and breeding.

These marine-based environments also buffer coastlines from floods and storm damage, potentially saving millions of dollars annually. Warming seas also trigger coral bleaching, which disrupts entire ecosystems and hurts tourism and fisheries – at a cost of $30 billion a year.

These disruptions often affect coastal and fishing communities, including the Quinault Indian Nation in the U.S. state of Washington. Millennia before the building of the plants that polluted the local waters, the Quinault used the razor clam (Siliqua patula) for trade, subsistence, sustenance, and maintaining their way of life.

They have faced declining clam and other marine populations due to ocean acidification and deoxygenation, both fueled by industrial emissions and agricultural runoff. While this is a global problem with planetary oxygen levels falling about two percent since the middle of the 20th century, it is not uniform.

Worse, when natural disasters strike, marginalized communities tend to recover more slowly. A 2018 study found white Americans often gained wealth after natural disasters, while residents of color lost it, deepening wealth inequality.