“Aligning with Our Communities”
Environmental Justice
Our Work
• Earthjustice is committed to expanding our work
and partnerships with communities
disproportionately impacted by environmental
pollution and climate change. Despite our
country’s pledge that all people are equal under
the law, communities of color, indigenous
communities, and low-income communities have
historically and currently shoulder the burden of
environmental impacts.
http://earthjustice.org/about/diversity-statement
Our Work
• Three program areas:
– Public Lands and Wildlife
– Climate and Energy
– Healthy Communities
• Much of our environmental justice work falls
under Healthy Communities
• We represent our clients free of charge
What is environmental justice?
• “Environmental justice is the fair treatment
and meaningful involvement of all people
regardless of race, color, national origin, or
income with respect to the development,
implementation and enforcement of
environmental laws, regulations and policies.”
-U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
https://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice
Principles of Environmental Justice
Delegates to the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit held on
October 24-27, 1991, in Washington DC, drafted and adopted 17 principles of Environmental
Justice. Since then, The Principles have served as a defining document for the growing grassroots
movement for environmental justice.
PREAMBLE
WE, THE PEOPLE OF COLOR, gathered together at this multinational People of Color
Environmental Leadership Summit, to begin to build a national and international movement of all
peoples of color to fight the destruction and taking of our lands and communities, do hereby reestablish our spiritual interdependence to the sacredness of our Mother Earth; to respect and
celebrate each of our cultures, languages and beliefs about the natural world and our roles in
healing ourselves; to ensure environmental justice; to promote economic alternatives which
would contribute to the development of environmentally safe livelihoods; and, to secure our
political, economic and cultural liberation that has been denied for over 500 years of colonization
and oppression, resulting in the poisoning of our communities and land and the genocide of our
peoples, do affirm and adopt these Principles of Environmental Justice:
1) Environmental Justice affirms the sacredness of Mother Earth, ecological unity and the
interdependence of all species, and the right to be free from ecological destruction.
….
http://www.ejnet.org/ej/principles.html
Laws, Guidelines, Policies, Etc.
• Executive Order 12898 of 1994 (established
federal environmental justice program)
• EPA Environmental Justice Guidance
• US Constitution (Equal Protection)
• Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act
• Federal environmental laws
• Federal Indian law, treaties, tribal regulations
• State specific laws and regulations
• Local permitting and land use regulations
• Tort claims, common law remedies
Working with Communities
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“Environmental justice communities”
LISTEN.
Don’t assume you know what the issues are
How can you help? Potential remedies?
Who is not in the room? Why?
What are other potential barriers?
Put the voices of the clients at the forefront
Some cases we’re working on
NW Office Cases:
• Representing the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in
their legal challenges against DAPL.
http://earthjustice.org/features/teleconference-standing-rock
• Representing farm worker, environmental,
labor, health, and Latino organizations in the
fight to ban the neurotoxic pesticide
chlorpyrifos
http://earthjustice.org/library/chlorpyrifos
Chlorpyrifos
 Farm workers and children in agricultural communities
(often majority Latino and low-income) at greater risk
 Unsafe in all Food – Children Ages 1 to 2 Exposed to
140 Times Safe Levels
 Unsafe in Drinking Water
 Toxic Drift 300 Feet or More from Fields
 All Workers Face Unsafe Exposures
 Residential uses banned in 2000
 EPA refused to ban food uses
Protect children from neurodevelopmental harm
Ensure safe food
and drinking water
Prevent fieldworkers from
re-entering unsafe areas
Protect agricultural
communities from spray drift
Protect pesticide handlers and
applicators from poisoning
Earthjustice Responds to Trump’s Executive Actions to Target Immigrants and Refugees
“Silence and inaction are breeding grounds for injustice, and Earthjustice will not stand by while
this reality continues.”
“Earthjustice holds as a foundational principle that every human being has
a fundamental right to a clean and healthy environment. Inherent in that
right is the ability to participate in democratic decision-making affecting
one’s health and access to a fair and impartial judiciary to ensure that the
laws and rules meant to protect public health and the environment are
enforced with fairness and equality.
Unfortunately, millions of individuals are denied this ability to protect
their own health and that of their children because to do so would risk
retaliation, incarceration, deportation and separation from their families.
The short-sighted measures taken yesterday by the Administration will
bring dire consequences and compromise the future of mixed-status
households with U.S. citizens who depend on their undocumented family
members and share the fears, apprehensions, and exclusions with their
loved ones.
….”
http://earthjustice.org/news/press/2017/earthjustice-responds-to-trump-s-executive-actions-to-target-immigrants-and-refugees
/ earthjustice
@ earthjustice
earthjustice.org