A talk given to Ideas Left Outside August 1 2013
What is environmental racism?
There are disasters from natural causes, and then there are environmental catastrophes and tragedies imposed by the capitalist and imperialist systems which cause unimaginable hardship and suffering. We know that racism is part and parcel of these systems. Environmental racism has been termed “any policy that differentially disadvantages individuals, groups, of communities based on race or colour” such as by locating “hazardous waste sites, landfills, incinerators or polluting industries in areas inhabited mainly by [racialized] and low-income peoples.” (Gosine 2008 p. 4)
Let us take the example from Haiti. In [2011] Haiti was struck by a savage epidemic of cholera, an environmental disease. Cholera was introduced, in fact, by the massive UN military mission in Haiti, which dumped untreated sewage into a stream from which Haitians washed and bathed and from which they drank. More than 7,500 Haitians died.
The term “climate racism” applies this concept to climate change. The peoples whose economies have primarily caused climate change are – for now – mainly immune from its effects; damage from climate change is chiefly experienced by those who did not cause the climate crisis — racialized peoples of the global south.
Again, an example from Haiti. Hurricane Sandy is an example of the extreme weather events that are more severe and frequent because of climate change. When the hurricane arrived this year [last year???], large areas of land had in Haiti already been deforested and stood without topsoil. This left the hilly countryside vulnerable to the torrential rain, triggering massive mudslides throughout the island that wiped out entire communities.
No relief crews rushed into Haiti’s land devastated by Hurricane Sandy. There were no plans to airlift in life-saving supplies of water and food, no “promises” for a speedy reestablishment of electrical services. Instead, imperialism’s response was the inauguration of a $300 million industrial park, where Haitians can work for next to nothing to generate superprofits for U.S. business.
Climate change is a question of survival
In the case of small countries such as Tuvalu or Kiribati, homelands of Polynesian peoples in the Pacific Ocean, climate change and the resulting rise of the sea level threatens these peoples’ long-term ability to remain living on their islands (Rahman 1999, Watson 2000).
People living in the highlands of Papua New Guinea suffer more from disease spread by mosquitoes due to changing temperature and rainfall. According to the World Health Organization, malaria, dengue fever, diarrhea, and typhoid are among the climate-sensitive diseases on the rise in the Pacific. There are now more than ten million climate change refugees. Climate change poses cultural, health, and life threatening risks which essentially have the impact of warfare.
Climate change undermines individual and collective economic livelihood; affects human health through reduced availability of freshwater and food, and exposes people to new diseases. It intensifies the inequalities between people.
For example, Bangladeshis have a life expectancy twenty-one years less than Australians. There are many inequities between these two groups regardless of climate impacts. However, Australians produce eighty times more greenhouse gases than Bangladeshis, and within 50 years up to 11% of Bangladesh, its most fertile land, could be flooded due to sea-level rise.
Australia will be affected too, but less catastrophically, and with a greater capacity to cope. For most Australians, climate change is a problem of adaptation, but for the majority of Bangladeshis the problem is survival.
North America
In North America, environmental racism can be exemplified through Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 2005, New Orleans was already one of the poorest metropolitan areas in the United States, and 27% of households — approximately 120,000 people — lacked the ability to evacuate from the disaster. Heroic efforts were made by ordinary people to rescue others from the flooding. But the police and fire department, focused on defending property, portrayed people as “looters” for trying to get food and medicine and shot them as they tried to address their fundamental needs.
New Orleans is a petroleum industry hub. I used to work as a maintenance worker at the Tenneco refinery in the town of Chalmette, Louisiana.
Levees line the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain north of the city. Heather Kangas, an eyewitness, reported at the ecosocialist conference in New York this past June that she could tell which communities were Black by the heights of the levees. The floods carried toxic materials including tons of asbestos from local oil refineries, urban sewage, and bodies from local cemeteries spilled into the communities.
Although the National Hurricane Center warned that Katrina would strike with catastrophic force, New Orleans officials waited 36 hours to declare Katrina an incident of national significance. President Bush and homeland security officials wouldn’t explain why they didn’t immediately begin to direct a federal response.
The lesson learned is that poor, the dispossessed, and Black people are not on the government agenda.
New York and Hurricane Sandy
At the ecosocialist conference, Amity Page, a journalist with the Amsterdam News, described the systematic racism of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in New York after the Hurricane Sandy disaster last year. People of color were regarded simply as “looters,” she said. FEMA and police would not enter subsidized public housing to help those in need and kept assistance workers from going in, saying it was too dangerous because of hazardous gasses – but not too dangerous for the Black residents trapped in the buildings. “A disaster heightens the inequalities that are already there,” she said.
http://revcom.us/a/284/on-haiti-and-hurricane-sandy-en.html
Often, environmental racism is carried out under the banner of environmentalism. The Israeli government, with official Canadian support, rip and tear apart native vegetation and cultivated orchards while driving out the indigenous Palestinians. That is what they call “making the desert bloom.”
In Canada
When I came to Canada in 1994, I was told in university that Canada was as an egalitarian multicultural, modern country. “America is racist,” I was told, “but not Canada.” However, I since learned that racism has been an important organizing feature of European colonizers in Canada. The very processes in which land was seized and settled were justified by racist ideologies, casting Indigenous peoples as inferior savages.
The recent the Idle No More movement, led by the Indigenous peoples has highlighted the racist nature of climate destruction. In Indigenous communities close to tar sands extraction, cancer rates now exceed the Canadian average by thirty per cent.
The tar sands industries have treated First Nations with complete contempt. The Beaver Lake Cree community, for example, has recorded more than 20,000 violations of their territorial treaties. In areas close to tar sands extraction, as much as 80 per cent of the territory of Indigenous communities is inaccessible to them due to tar sands development.
The environmental health problems suffered on reserves demonstrate that the relationship between Canada, Indigenous peoples, and the natural environment shaped by racist colonialism framework.
Water, sustenance for life
Provinces require legislation for drinking water quality and safety, and municipal water treatment plants are licensed or certified to maintain minimum sanitary water standards, but Indigenous communities are legislatively exempted.
The Indigenous community of Kashechewan was officially recognized by Canada as “Indian territory” in 1905. The Cree community drew special attention in 2005 because of their exposure to toxic water. Dangerous E. coli bacteria was discovered in its water system, caused by a plugged chlorine injector.
As a matter of fact, in 2001, at least 85 Indigenous communities across the country were under boil water advisories, including Kashechewan.
In 2000, in the white community of Walkerton seven people died and another 2,300 became ill after drinking E. coli-contaminated water. There, the problem was concealed by a deceptive water supervisor. In contrast, as documented by Health Canada, the problem at Kashechewan was well known to the governments. Yet, no actions were taken.
Africville and environmental racism
Racist action in the former community of Africville in Halifax, Nova Scotia, show how Black people underwent environmental inequalities because of unequal access to power and the overtly racist government policies.
In early Halifax, overt racism led to a form of segregation – the Black population was concentrated in the so-called Africville. Industrial expansion invaded Africville, and the area was rezoned from residential to industrial use. Polluting industries poisoned the community. Meanwhile, Africville was denied garbage collection, sewage systems, police, and fire-fighting services. By the 1960s, Africville was a slum district whose residents had not been able, despite many attempts, to resist the environmental onslaught. In the 1970s the town dwellers were forced to leave without compensation for their property. Blacks had no decision-making over the process which was in the hands of white fathers — the policy makers of Halifax City. Ultimately, some degree of justice was reached through a lengthy struggle and class action suits.
Resistance to environmental racism
Environmental racism is a world-wide phenomenon reinforcing the inequities between the industrialized nations and the developing nations. Polluting industries us the dependant countries as toxic waste dumps for their hazardous industrial and nuclear wastes.
Impoverished people of colour are much less able to resist. And yet they do resist. The environmental movement is sometimes portrayed as a concern of privileged people; in fact, it is strongest in the Global South. For example, indigenous peoples have carried out brave, vigorous, and often successful resistance against Canada’s Barrick Gold and other polluters.
Very aware of global warming, Indigenous peoples came together in 2010 in a conference in Cochabamba, Bolivia, which united 35,000 environmentalists, mainly from the Global South
Bolivia as a leader of global environmental justice
Toronto Bolivia Solidarity sent a delegation to the Cochabamba conference. We took part in discussions that led to adoption of a declaration on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, which we published, along with other conference documents. (http://readingfromtheleft.com/PDF/CochabambaDocuments.pdf)
The declaration is a manifesto of the climate justice movement. It analyses climate change from the point of view of its victims and aims its fire at the capitalist corporations and governments of the industrialized countries. “They have led us to discuss climate change,” the declaration states, “as a problem limited to the rise in temperature without questioning the cause, which is the capitalist system.” The conference called for mass action to demand effective action to rein in the polluters and bring climate change under control.
Today, we have a movement for climate justice here in Canada. The Indigenous community, through Idle No More, has brought to our attention the damages of tar sands excavation and how it adds to climate change; the racist nature of the economic systems in which we live; the abuses of powerful industries; the need to build a society based on respect for those abused by neoliberalism and for Mother Earth.
North America and Europe
Grassroots environmental groups have mobilised all over North America around issues like waste facility sittings, lead contamination, pesticides, water and air pollution, nuclear testing and workplace safety. Each fight, like recent one we won on the Mega Quarry in Toronto feeds into the global movement.
Our personal responsibility as conscious anti capitalists is to build the movement for environmental justice which is independent, determined and massive. Canadian capital has given us an opportunity to unify the movement against them through the issue of the tar sands. It’s a perfect paradigm to awaken and mobilize the uninformed and complacent populations of the industrial countries. Tar sands illustrates the issue of global warming; why everyone must get involved in this great effort to save humankind and the earth from total destruction.
We have conducted the tar sands fight in the spirit of climate justice, focusing on the dreadful price paid by Indigenous peoples and the leading role they play in pointing to an alternative.
We must be determined
Tragedies like the one in Lac-Mégantic show the increasing price we pay for capitalism’s petroleum addiction. We increasingly witness an ecological and social disaster. We, must build a movement that is determined to halt this destruction. In the process, it will become evident to all involved, that capital cannot be reformed, that we need a new economic system — a system that is oriented to the welfare of humankind, for love of all humankind, and to reverence for Mother Earth.