“All environmental protection, like all politics, is quite local,”
Environmental Protection Agency director Lisa Jackson told her staff
this month. “Very
few people come to environmental protection because they wake up one
morning and read a book about it. They come to environmental protection
because it touches them — the lack of that protection, a fear about an
environmental outcome, or about their health or their family’s health
motivates them to some type of action.”
Not since the early 1990s — when President Clinton’s appointee
Carol Browner headed the agency and established its office of
environmental justice — has an EPA administrator focused on the
degradation and pollution of communities of color. Since taking office
nearly one year ago, Jackson — the first African American to head the
agency — has announced that the EPA will assess the impacts of its
hazardous waste rule on disadvantaged communities and appointed senior
advisers for environmental justice and civil rights in order to address
the burdens faced by communities disproportionately affected by
pollution.
And now, with Congressional Black Caucus chair Barbara Lee
(D-Calif.), Jackson will tour several areas of the country — including
South Carolina, Maryland, Georgia and Mississippi — to highlight
environmental justice challenges.
Part of Jackson’s initiative is “expanding the conversation of
environmentalism” to include environmental justice in “every action we
take.”
“We have begun a new era of outreach and protection for communities
historically underrepresented in EPA decision-making,” Jackson wrote to
her staff, listing priorities for 2010. “We are building strong working
relationships with tribes, communities of color, economically
distressed cities and towns, young people and others, but this is just
a start. We must include environmental justice principles in all of our
decisions. This is an area that calls for innovation and bold thinking,
and I am challenging all of our employees to bring vision and
creativity to our programs. The protection of vulnerable subpopulations
is a top priority, especially with regard to children.
Representing the 42-member Congressional Black Caucus, which calls
itself “the conscience of Congress since 1971,” Lee said, “The
consequences of global climate change, disastrous trends of
environmental degradation, and our nation’s perilous dependence on
fossil fuels are being felt in communities here in the United States
and around the world, especially in communities of color.”
The next issue of High Country News focuses on environmental justice in the West and inaugurates our special coverage of this topic.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
