Environmental Injustices, Political Struggles: Race, Class and the Environment (1998).

• Author: Golden, Dylan
• Position: Review

The environmental justice movement is the result of the increasingly pro-active attitude of environmental activists. No longer content to prevent environmental harm, environmentalists are now arguing for active participation in environmental decision making and clean-up. This shift from shield to sword has culminated in the environmental justice movement. The move has political ramifications as well. Older conservative groups like the National Audubon society find themselves allied - at least in ideology - with local civil and poverty rights organizations.

Environmental justice is the struggle of the poor and minorities to ensure an equal distribution of the externalities caused by industrial processes. Recent studies confirm that the poor are the most prominent victims of environmental injustice. Poor minorities suffer the most.

Environmental Injustices: Political Struggles: Race, Class, and the Environment (David E. Camacho ed.) offers a compelling collection of articles on environmental justice and political process theory and provides specific cases demonstrating the realities of environmental injustice. The book is divided into four sections: A Framework for Analysis, Environmental Injustices, Confronting Environmental Injustices, and Environmental Justice. The collection emphasizes the political process and finds a need for greater representation of low-income individuals as well as people of color in the advocacy and policymaking process. The contributors to the collection are professors of political science, government, public policy, and economics. While some of the articles have the feel of academic research, many of the contributors have worked in government, primarily at the local level, and many have been involved in grassroots environmental movements. Beyond the statistics and political theory, the collection presents a clear portrait of the issues surrounding the environmental justice movement. Two common themes throughout the collection are the need to increase power through the political process at the grassroots level and the need to foster an ethic that emphasizes a right to a clean environment for the planet and all of its people.

The book begins by discussing the political process model. The model postulates that political decisions are primarily the result of an elite few with the wealth and power accessing the levers of government to achieve their goals. Change is achieved by organizing large groups of people with similar interests that in the aggregate have sufficient wealth and political power to get the attention of the elites who can then make change. In the absence of environmental pressure, business interests will tend to dominate environmental decision making. This dominance has often meant inadequate legislation and a heavy reliance by environmentalists on the judicial process instead of the political process. Tied to the notion of the political process model is an ongoing contrast between a Eurocentric outlook on the environment and a more...