Environmental Injustices in Urban and Rural Communities

Environmental Justice vs. Disadvantaged Communities

Environmental justice recognizes disadvantaged communities that generally are low-income and minority-populated areas disproportionately affected by pollution. The environmental problems such groups of people experience are broad, compromising air, soil, and even water. Ideally, environmental law and policy should address the disproportion and problems generated. Nevertheless, that is not the current situation, and very little to nothing is being done to find an effective solution. This essay seeks to identify the relationships between poverty, demographic patterns, and air pollution. Furthermore, this essay will demonstrate a far more complicated situation, \"This inequality is enhancing the gap between poor and affluent social groups based on the ethnic or racial composition of the neighboring community\" (Taylor, 2020). These actions result in minority communities being subject to disproportionate health and welfare impacts from a particular facility creating a never-ending social imbalance.

“Environmental justice” emerged from the activism of communities of color and minorities in the U.S. in the last decades of the twentieth Century (Taylor, 2020). Today environmental justice is used to describe a worldwide network of social movements that are outspoken and critical of the imbalance and depredations resulting from unchecked expansion and neo-colonial logic of non-renewable energy use of modern industrial development (Ramcilovic-Suominen, 2022). The pursuit of environmental justice is not only a social or political issue, but also foremost a moral issue. Environmental justice represents a struggle for human rights, healthy surroundings, and flourishing democracies that are directed by citizens of communities once negatively affected by financial and ecological degradation. Environmental justice questions the excessive and unnecessary burden of harmful contamination, waste disposal, and ecological annihilation borne by colored communities, low-income neighborhoods, and colonized regions.

Many global factors drive environmental injustice, and each country has different circumstances, but similarities can be found, especially when people migrate from rural to urban areas. Because environmental justice is the principle that all people have the right to live in a clean and healthy environment, it is just as important to consider how people in rural areas are affected as it is to consider people in urban areas. In fact, due to a variety of systemic drivers, such as poverty, lack of resources, and poor infrastructure, many rural residents are forced to relocate to urban areas in search of a better quality of life (Satterthwaite, 2013). This can be seen as an example of rural environmental injustice, as those who are already struggling are forced to endure even more difficult living conditions by moving to a city. In addition, it creates environmental problems in both rural and urban areas, as the population density in cities increases while natural areas are destroyed (Satterthwaite, 2013). Moreover, as the transition happens, people lose their political patronage and social networks, making them more vulnerable to the evils of \"city life\" (Chu & Michael, 2019). They face conflicts in communities with stark gender, social class, caste, and religious and ethnic divisions. Furthermore, they face elevated exposure to environmental risks due to the inability to secure job opportunities, get access to public and financial services, and, at times, mobilize against displacement (Chu & Michael, 2019). These factors enhance their vulnerability, making it easy to pray for those who can abuse the system in favor of financial gain. Nowadays, it is difficult to prohibit the construction of industrial facilities based on a disproportionate impact on low-income, minority communities. As a result, minorities experience severe environmental injustice as they are often invisible to the official state apparatus or, worse, are actively erased from cities through force or discriminatory development policies (Chu, 2019). Their situation becomes extreme to the point that they face only two options: live with the problem or pack the little they have and move away to start from scratch.

In the U.S., Approximately 60 percent of American homes still have lead-based paint in them (Bullard, 2007). While low-income children are eight times more likely than those of affluence to live where lead paint is found in homes, and African-American children are five times more likely than White children to suffer from lead poisoning, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C.) (Landrigan, 2002). Recent studies by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences indicate that a young person\'s lead burden is linked to lower I.Q., lower high school graduation rates, and increased delinquency (Gould, 2009). This \"small\" condition, to the eyes of many, is increasing the development gap within society. Those affected by lead in their infancy have fewer chances in the future than their peers developed in a healthy- clean environment. As a result, the long-term impacts of lead paint exposure compound existing disparities in society, as these same factors can also contribute to the education gap between African-American and white children.

Not only can the effects of environmental injustice be found in the education gap but also in health disparities. For instance, in 1995, more than 5,000 Americans died from asthma (Bullard, 2007). This disease accounts for more than 10 million lost school days, 1.8 million emergency room visits, 15 million outpatient visits, and nearly 500,000 hospitalizations yearly. Asthma cost Americans more than $14.5 billion in 2000, according to the C.D.C. (Bullard, 2007). In the U.S., Blacks and Hispanics are three to four times more likely than Whites to be hospitalized or die from asthma (Bullard, 2007). Moreover, getting sick poses extraordinary hardships for those without health insurance. A 2001 Commonwealth Fund study found that the uninsured rate for Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans is more than one-and-a-half times the rate for White Americans (Bullard, 2007). Considering the high prices for health coverage, those with enough to survive day by day prefer to put food on the table then pay for health insurance. While a number of factors contribute to this disparity, one major factor is the structural inequality present in our healthcare system. Low-income and racial/ethnic minority groups are more likely to live in areas with poor air quality and lack access to quality healthcare. As a result, they are more likely to suffer from asthma and other respiratory diseases. In addition, these groups are also less likely to have insurance coverage and are more likely to delayed or no care at all. This creates a vicious cycle in which the poor air quality leads to asthma attacks which then go untreated due to lack of access to care. As a result, the burden of asthma falls disproportionately on low-income and racial/ethnic minority groups. The cycle is perpetuated by an ineffective healthcare system which fails to provide these groups with adequate care. Thus, there is a clear link between environmental justice and asthma.

A similar link exists between environmental justice and housing. A 2000 study by The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas-Dallas says that 870,000 of the 1.9 million (46 %) housing units for the poor - primarily minorities - sit within about a mile of factories reporting toxic emissions to the E.P.A. (Environmental Protection Agency) (Bullard, 2004). Many Homeowners associations use the \"NIMBY.\" (Not in My Back Yard) tactics to deter polluting industries from their communities. Furthermore, Discrimination keeps millions of Blacks, Latins, and minorities from enjoying the advantages of home ownership. For centuries in our country, structural racism in the housing system has shown persistent racial disparities in wealth and financial well-being, especially between colored and white households. These differences are so entrenched that if current trends continue, it could take more than 200 years for the average Black family to accumulate the same wealth as its white counterparts

(Collins, 2016). Hispanics and other new immigrants face the same situation, enhancing the gap in equality. Compared to native-born whites, Hispanics are more than twice as likely to live in poverty-level housing conditions, and new immigrants are almost three times as likely. This disparity can be attributed to a number of factors, including discrimination in the housing market, a lack of affordable housing options, and language barriers (Collins, 2016. While the situation may seem bleak, there are a number of organizations working to address the issue.

To create changes, some authors emphasize the necessity for more representative and inclusive decision-making processes considering differential interests, values, and priorities (Anguelovski et. at, 2014). In comparison, others remark on the significance of accounting for how the benefits and drawbacks of adaptation actions should be shared and allocated across communities. This is especially the case where residents experience varying levels of adaptive capacity, socioeconomic status, and political voice (Satterthwaite, 2013). Nonetheless, both groups agree that there is a real problem to be addressed, and the imbalance is real. After all, industrial high-pollutant facilities do not build their factories in affluent communities. Health-based violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) were more recurrent in poorer communities with higher proportions of Latin or Black residents; the effects of race and ethnicity were not apparent in more affluent communities (Schaider, 2019).