The Shriver Brief : Poverty Law Commentary & Insights : Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law : Affordable Housing, Healthcare Reform

The White House held an Environmental Justice Forum on December 15, 2010 – the first ever such forum. Participants included Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson, Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) Chair Nancy Sutley, and Attorney General Eric Holder (recipient of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law’s 2010 Equal Justice Award), as well as over 100 environmental groups. The forum reinforced President Obama’s goal of requiring federal agencies to consider environmental justice impacts in their daily decision-making. 

The forum comes after EPA’s Jackson and CEQ’s Sutley reconvened the Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice for the first time in 10 years, and the White House announced its recommitment to the Executive Order on Environmental Justice, which requires federal agencies to collaborate to further the goal of ensuring that minority, low-income, and other underrepresented communities do not bear the brunt of environmental degradation.

In his remarks, Attorney General Holder said that the Justice Department’s Environmental Justice Initiative will address the link between race, economics, employment, and environmental sustainability by integrating environmental justice goals into its enforcement and strategic planning. He stated that it is “unconscionable” that minority and low-income neighborhoods bear a disproportionate burden of pollution and that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a potent tool for enforcement with the “potential to transform lives and strengthen communities.” He called on all Justice Department attorneys to “start thinking of environmental justice as a civil rights issue” and went on to say that “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—a father of our nation’s environmental justice movement—may have put it best when he declared that, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’”

Echoing Holder’s comments, CEQ’s Sutley said that the Forum was the start of a dialogue across agencies to promote a healthy environment for all people, including traditionally underrepresented communities who are overburdened with environmental negatives. She noted that environmentally degraded communities not only fare worse on health issues, but that a poor environment can limit economic opportunities.

The forum also spotlighted several environmental justice initiatives that the Obama Administration has undertaken. For instance, the EPA, Department of Transportation, and Department of Housing and Urban Development have already collaborated in a Partnership for Sustainable Communities grant program to promote walkable, liveable, and healthy communities, by awarding grants to several communities and community groups around the country.  

The EPA’s senior advisor on environmental justice reported on Plan EJ2014, part of EPA’s initiative to expand the conversation on environmental justice. The goals of the Plan are to:

• Protect health in communities over-burdened by pollution.
• Empower communities to take action to improve their health and environment.
• Establish partnerships with local, state, tribal, and federal organizations to achieve healthy and sustainable communities.

The White House emphasized its commitment to addressing climate change issues, with CEQ’s Sutley reiterating the White House’s commitment to ensuring that low-income communities are provided with the tools to cope with global warming, as it will hit them the hardest. For an in-depth look at the meaning of climate change and a green economy for low-income people and communities and key actions legal advocates can take in response, see the Shriver Center’s Clearinghouse Review, September-October 2010 Special Issue Climate Change and a Green Economy: New Advocacy Opportunities.

Responding to questions regarding sustainable communities, Sutley noted that the Department of Agriculture, Department of Health andHuman Services, and First Lady Michelle Obama have cooperated to created “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” a locally grown food initiative. Sutley also noted that President recently signed legislation reauthorizing the nation’s child nutrition programs; the law promotes healthy eating at home and in schools, gardens, and locally grown food sources. And she mentioned the America’s Great Outdoor Initiative, which is spearheaded by the Department of Interior and aims create and preserve green spaces in communities around the country.

A video recording of the White House Forum on Environmental Justice is available on YouTube (Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV). Readers can also see a video of the live chat session held after the forum, “Open for Questions: Environmental Justice.”

Kathleen Donahue McNally coauthored this article.

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Across the country, Americans are shocked and saddened by the seemingly never-ending devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The scale of this ongoing catastrophe is difficult to imagine, although it has already harmed hundreds of thousands and will likely affect many more over the next several years.

But what is the unique impact of this environmental disaster on poor people? And how should legal aid advocates be prepared to respond?

Low-income people are likely to be disproportionately affected by economic and health-related impacts of the oil spill. Anecdotal reports are already surfacing. Students at Tulane University, in conjunction with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, have created an Oil Spill Crisis Map that enables citizens to report how the spill is threatening their livelihoods and local ecosystems. The map visualizes reports of the effects of the BP oil spill on wildlife, residents' livelihoods and health, property, and other indicators.

The Mississippi Coalition of Vietnamese American Fisherfolk and Families reports that Vietnamese Americans in Mississippi are suffering a direct threat to their livelihoods as a consequence of the spill. Eighty percent of Vietnamese households in Mississippi depend on the seafood industry, and 2,000 are employed directly as commercial fisherman, seafood factory workers, and distributors. Barriers to culturally competent interpretation have impeded communication and have kept Vietnamese Americans who can no longer fish from full participation in BP's job training process. The report recommends that fishermen be given urgent financial assistance, including loan deferment and financial counseling; that accessible, "one-stop shops" for assistance with claims filing, job training, and social services be established; and that planning begin immediately on long-term job creation for displaced workers.

Over the longer term, the harmful effects of the disaster on people's health are likely to emerge. In addition to untold barrels of oil, more than 1 million gallons of dispersant Corexit have been sprayed into the gulf since the beginning of the spill. The low-income people who live in coastal communities on the Gulf are likely to be disproportionately affected by these problems because of their lack of access to quality, affordable health care.

The emerging stories of this disaster present just one angle of the likely effects of climate change on low-income people. Although climate change may be viewed by poverty law advocates as unrelated to the day-to-day survival issues facing poor people, nothing could be further from the truth. Not only does climate change affect clients' health and financial security, but also many of the potential responses to climate change may ameliorate certain aspects of poverty, for example, through access to "green" jobs or the expansion of mass transit. The upcoming September-October issue of Clearinghouse Review will explore the effect of climate change on low-income people and the advocacy opportunities that these issues present. In the meantime, we invite you to read an article by Steven Fischbach, Community Lawyer at Rhode Island Legal Services, on "Why Climate Change Issues Are Relevant to Poverty Law Advocates." This free article previews some of the topics that will be covered in more depth in the forthcoming special issue.

The Gulf oil spill will eventually be capped and contained, and the cleanup will continue. Let us learn from this disaster and prepare for the changes ahead that will affect our clients.

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