Environmental justice

 

Introduction

            The emergence of the movement of environmental justice has been enabling the activists in blocking the spread of the existing and development of new projects. There has been still the existence of environmental racism between the whites and the black communities. The failure of environmental justice to achieve success in this concept has been associated with minimal optional movements of environmental justice and the co-option state of the activists in environmental justice. It is claimed that as people should take care of all places in the environment. It has enabled the activists to come up with decisions concerning the environmental justice. There is a great relationship between the environmental justice and of racism of the environment and shadow places.

The Environmental Racism

            This concept is also referred to as environmental gap and explains the presence of inequality between the black and the white communities. This gap is usually manifested in regulations, practices and the outcomes. The gap requires discerning between the environmental justice and the universal regulations like Clean Air Act. There has been improvement and researchers have recorded increased decline in air pollution (Pulido, 2017). Contrast of this is that, the environmental justice initiatives had been targeted towards protection of the vulnerable communities and addressing the issue if differential exposure. For the achievement of this, there is usually the requirement of environmental justice. The activists have been in the position to come up with decisions in order to solve the state. First, there had been implementation of laws. To date, there have been a total of eight lawsuits that has been filed. The laws have been basing the clause of Equal Protection (Pulido, 2017). This had been located in the fourteenth amendment of the constitution of the United States but they failed because of lack of ability to give prove about intention of the discrimination. The second decision that the activists has been able to make is coming up with the Title IV Complaints. The public agencies that have been receiving the federal funds had been restricted from the practice of discrimination under the Act of The Civil Rights. Out of 298 files, only one had been given attention.

            The third decision made had been that of the Executive Order. This order had been numbered as 12898 (Lester, 2018). It had been directed towards the requirement of consideration by all the federal agencies on the implications resulting from the activities that had been done by the activists of the environmental justice. The forth decision is enforcement of regulations as far as environmental racism is concerned. This is seen especially among the Latino societies. The last one had been development of initiatives by the activists’ of environmental justice. These initiatives have been in the position to provide microcosm in inability to minimize the gap of environmental racism or the refusal to reduce the gap

The Concept of Shadow Places

            There have been suggestions that in the circumstances of circulation of things, capital and people globally, the common places that had been referred as home had been carried by shadow places. Plumwood had been able to apply the concept of shadow place. He had argued that people should cherish the places which are special (Wright, 2016). In the process of taking care of the special places they should consider their surroundings as well. There is therefore the need to recognize all places basing economy and philosophy in order to facilitate the production.

            The goal of Plumwood had been to critique a known bio-regionalist position. This position had been grounded on a problematic split that is; between elevated, singular, dwelling place, multiple disregarded and conscious places of ecological and economical support (Cooke, 2011). The support had been created under capitalism and colonialism. The concept of one home place is usually a problem the moment there has been acknowledgement of the split. Plumwood continues arguing that any theory that is related to place is supposed to be in the position to show how the nice places and their shadows have been related. This would help to make the ecological relationships accountable and visible.

            The presence of shadow places have been enabling to several activists to make decisions on what to do in order to solve the issue. Although the capital that had been supplied by the British government got depleted, Darjeelin Nepalis have been able to work with an aim of maintaining the colonial infrastructure (Besky, 2017. Sense of belonging is usually difficult therefore they had to make reconciliations of the split concept that had been claimed by Plumwood. The Darjeeling had been claiming that belonging is more about environmental justice because they are all about politics identity. There had been migration of villagers and plantation residents towards Darjeeling town and this made the occupants of the areas to start blaming them to be the cause of speeding of the destruction of the urban infrastructure.

Conclusion

            Regardless of the presence of environmental justice movement, still there has been the existence of environmental racism between the whites and the black communities as discussed in the paper above. Racism is usually manifested in regulations, practices and the outcomes. It has been claimed that as people work hard to take care of the places they cherish and love most, the other areas in the environment also need to be protected. Through the concepts discussed above, the activists have been in the position make decisions on environmental justice. From the above discussion, it is therefore clear that there is a great relationship between the environmental justice and of racism of the environment and shadow places.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reference

Besky, S. (2017). The land in Gorkhaland: On the edges of belonging in Darjeeling, India.             Environmental Humanities, 9(1), 18-39.

Cooke, S. (2011). Echo-coherence: Moving on from dwelling. Cultural Studies Review, 17(1),     230-46.

Lester, J. (2018). Environmental Injustice In The US: Myths And Realities. Routledge

Pulido, L. (2017). Geographies of race and ethnicity II: Environmental racism, racial capitalism             and state-sanctioned violence. Progress in Human Geography, 41(4), 524-533.

Wright, K. (2016). Transdisciplinary Journeys in the Anthropocene: More-than-human    encounters. Routledge.