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Book Review
| The Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights and the Politics of Pollution. Edited by Robert D. Bullard. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books and University of California Press, 2005. xx + 393 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. Paper $18.95.
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| Robert D. Bullard's latest edited collection, The Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights and the Politics of Pollution, poignantly makes the historical case that the long quest for environmental equity by minorities and socially and economically disenfranchised groups (nationally and locally) is one that has become almost Arthurian in its legendary failure to find justice in the supposedly democratic, humane, industrialized and globalizing societies. The fourteen essays are divided thematically into four parts: "A Legacy of Injustice," "The Assault on Fence-Line Communities," "Land Rights and Sustainable Development," and "Human Rights and Global Justice." Although most of the essays provide historical or historicized narratives, none of the authors are historians. Environmental historians are not the only scholars who can produce salient environmental histories; however, given the latest interest and scholarship in environmental justice by the discipline, the edited collection would have benefited tremendously by their contributions. |
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In part 1 Bullard makes it clear that the initial holy grail for environmental justice activists and scholars—the interpretation and enforcement of environmental quality using Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964—was futile. He points out that from 1993 to 2003 "most [Title VI complaints] were rejected, dismissed, or suspended [and that] Justice has been incomplete and slow for many environmental justice complainants" (p. 37). Part 2 provides case studies that support this initial thesis. These chapters rearticulate well-known environmental justice struggles as "human rights" struggles, including Beverly Wright's essay, "Living and Dying in Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley,'" and the essay "Alienation and Militancy in the Niger Delta" by Ike Okonta and Michael J. Watts. The historical failure to achieve environmental parity through a civil rights agenda becomes the primary intellectual thrust for Bullard's recommendation for a paradigm shift to a human rights agenda (versus a civil rights agenda) for a renewed quest for environmental justice. |
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The chapter "Environmental Inequity in Metropolitan Los Angeles" by Manuel Pastor, Jr. and Rachel Morello-Frosch reflects the collection's emphasis on environmental health disparities and the critical role of the public health research community in future environmental justice struggles. This refreshing essay provides a quantitative historical study which utilized a GIS model to elucidate the environmental health disparities that had evolved over time as a result of inequitable planning policies and decisions. The authors argue that future quantitative and historically based public health research studies "must emphasize a cumulative-exposure [risk] approach to understanding inequalities in the susceptibility of communities to toxics and their potential link to disparities in health outcomes such as cancer, respiratory illnesses and immunotoxic effects" (p. 123). The theme of disproportionate environmental health risks as a fundamental violation of human rights is repeated throughout the volume and addressed from a land use perspective in Robin Morris Collin's essay "Environmental Reparations." Preserving and protecting polluted environmental justice landscapes to minimize further health risks to all forms of life is an interesting solution advanced in this collection of essays. Although readers will find a great deal in this collection a bit old or repetitive, they will be delighted to find a handful of essays that shed new perspectives on how environmental justice struggles should be retooled intellectually and strategically to promote holistically beneficial changes to environmental justice landscapes. |
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Sylvia Hood Washington, research associate professor at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health, is author of Packing Them In: An Archaeology of Environmental Racism in Chicago, 1865–1954 (Lexington Books, 2005) and editor (with Heather Goodall and Paul C. Rosier) of Echoes from the Poisoned Well: Global Memories of Environmental Injustice (Lexington Books, 2006). |
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