What just happened?
With the recent mass rekindling of the Black Lives Matter protests following the cases of police brutality in the US, other forms of institutionalized racism have come back to light as well. The UK’s Office for National Statistics reported that as of the data updated till 9th June 2020 “for all ages the rate of deaths involving COVID-19 for Black males was 3.3 times greater than that for White males of the same age, while the rate for Black females was 2.4 times greater than for White females.”[1]The reason for this disparity is accorded to socio-economic background, exposure to pollution, working conditions, geographic locations, population density et cetera. It takes the least amount of reasonableness to draw the connection between the aforementioned data analysis and a very well ingrained system of environmental injustice (or environmental racism, if you will) that renders people of colour extremely vulnerable.
What does this mean?
The climate change and other complexities that follow because of it (the novel coronavirus outbreak, for example) disproportionately affect black people more than white people. This is attributed to the poor living and working conditions of this segment of people. The environmental justice movement started in the US in the 1980s against the ‘normalized’ practice of dumping of toxic waste in black neighborhoods.[2] The severity of the problem could be identified by quoting the prominent Indigenous and Environmental Rights Activist, Kandi Mossett, who reminisced how she thought it was normal to have a disease as fatal as cancer because so many people she knew had it. “Our territory is contaminated by the coal industry, uranium mining, over-fertilization and oil”, she said in an interview.[3] There have been studies that have evidenced that environmental racism is extremely prevalent as it is preferred to burden the minority group neighborhoods with toxic waste and garbage dump, and expose them to the worst level of air, water and soil pollution.[4] This in turn makes them vulnerable to critical diseases like diabetes, strokes, heart attacks, asthma, cancer et al.
The dubious nature of statistics of covid-19 cases threw light on this underlying problem in the UK. Prior to this, the UK Environmental Justice research mostly descriptively emphasized on measurement of environmental inequalities, instead of looking for reasons to explain them.[5] Albeit amidst very unfortunate circumstances, the silver lining is that the UK could stare out of the oblivion to realize that a lot more needs to be done to ensure environmental justice than come up with the Equalities Act or the 25 Year Environmental Plan. This is a deeply rooted problem that needs some major structural and regulatory changes-like investing in environmental regeneration of minority communities, directing environmental hazards away from such communities, making access to justice easier for these communities[6]- to barely start righting the wrong done to a considerable chunk of the population who demand as little as to feel ‘belonged’ and ‘respected’.
Written by Neha Singh
References:
[1]Chris White and Vahé Nafilyan, ‘Coronavirus (COVID-19) related deaths by ethnic group, England and Wales: 2 March 2020 to 15 May 2020’ (Office for National Statistics, 19 June 2020) <https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/coronaviruscovid19relateddeathsbyethnicgroupenglandandwales/2march2020to15may2020> accessed 15 August 2020
[2] Nina Lakhani and Jonathan Watts, ‘ Environmental justice means racial justice, say activists’ (The Guardian, 18 June 2020) <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/18/environmental-justice-means-racial-justice-say-activists> accessed 15 August 2020
[3] Nina Lakhani, ‘'Racism dictates who gets dumped on': how environmental injustice divides the world’ (The Guardian, 16 August 2020) <https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/21/what-is-environmental-injustice-and-why-is-the-guardian-covering-it> accessed 16 August 2020
[4] Environmental Racism, in Population, Urbanization, and the Environment, Introduction to Sociology <https://courses.lumenlearning.com/alamo-sociology/chapter/reading-environmental-racism/> accessed 15 August 2020
[5] G. Mitchell, ‘The Messy Challenge of Environmental Justice in the UK:
Evolution, status and prospects’ (2019) 273 Natural England Commissioned Reports < http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/file/5425667586129920> accessed 16 August 2020
[6] ibid
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