Robert Bullard: The Father of Environmental Justice

Environmental justice embraces the principle that all people and communities are entitled to equal protection of our environmental laws. It means fair treatment, and it means all people — regardless of race, color or national origin — are involved when it comes to implementing and enforcing environmental laws, regulations and policies.

One of the most important is the codification and integration of environmental justice into our language and our understanding of basic civil rights and human rights. Today we have every state at least acknowledging and recognizing that environmental justice is a framework that needs to be codified in law or some type of legislative order.

The other is that environmental justice is now being recognized as a legitimate subject for study. At least 22 legal clinics and at dozens of university-based centers and programs have environmental justice as their central focus.

And, I think, also the fact that environmental justice now is getting recognition as worthy of national and international prestigious awards, such as Goldman Prizes and Heinz Awards and MacArthur Prizes — and even the Nobel Prize, with Wangari Maathai winning the Nobel Prize for her work around environmental justice in Kenya.

And, finally, I think it’s important to note that environmental justice has springboarded from a United States domestic issue to become a global movement. The environmental justice movement has grown, matured and taken root across the globe.

Climate change for me is probably the number one environmental justice issue of the 21st century, because the people who are impacted first, worst and longest are the same communities we have been working with, trying to address environmental inequities, sustainability and environmental degradation. It’s important that we get more people who are on the front lines, and who are most impacted, who are vulnerable, to talk about their experiences and what’s happening to them right now. I think that has a lot of potential to change minds and to put a human face on the issue of climate change and build community resiliency.

We have to be more aggressive about coming up with alternatives when it comes to energy production and having more clean, efficient, green, public transportation, because a lot of our people don’t have cars. I think we have to talk about how we’re going redevelop and redesign our cities so they are walkable and greener and more sustainable and livable. Also, our cities have to become more just when it comes to the distribution of amenities and access to quality neighborhoods and green space.

The fact is that the mainstream environmental conservation movement is pretty much white and middle class. What we have said all along is that the environmental movement and the conservation movement is reflective of our society, in that it becomes very difficult for these organizations to deal with race and class and social inequality. That’s why the environmental justice movement emerged, out of saying, “If these groups don’t do it, then we will do it.”

There are parallel movements, and where there’s overlap in terms of issues and agendas and strategies for getting things done as a collective, we’re seeing groups come together. Many of the organizations have environmental justice programs. Many have people of color, and representatives from low income impacted communities on their boards. But for the most part these groups are pretty much the same as they were 20 years ago.

The other thing: These groups still get the lion’s share of funding from the private foundations. [When] we did the People of Color Environmental Groups Directory in 1991, we identified 300 people of color and environmental justice groups. Today, that number is more than tenfold, but the funding has not grown at the level of the organization. That’s a problem. That’s a big problem.

As we change demographically, it only makes sense that we not wait until 2042 when this country becomes the majority of people of color, but that we start right now developing the leadership from those communities of color. I think the face of our movement, whether it’s the environmental movement or environmental justice movement or one movement, will need to reflect that change. And it won’t happen unless we work to ensure that that transition when it comes to resources occurs.

I think it is a wake-up call. These are very smart people, and I’m sure they understand the way that complex organizations work: If you are membership based, you grow or you die. And if you look at the demographics, where is the potential growth for these organizations? If you look at the trends, the growth will most likely come from people of color. So it will make a whole lot of sense that we start to be an inclusive movement, or we have inclusive movements, and that inclusion also takes into account resource inclusion — money.

The fact that we have more and more young people, and more and more students involved in the environmental justice movement around issues of sustainability, around walkable communities and smart growth, transportation and climate change. This generation, they’re weaning themselves off of cars, and more of them are wanting to access public transportation, and access parks and green space. They want to live in cities. This is hope.

And, I think young people in many cases don’t carry those baggages of discrimination and prejudice and fear of “the other” — they have less of that baggage than my generation. We are now in an era where young people are more willing to live and let live. I think this is the kind of new movement that young people want to own as their movement. For me that’s very good.