University of Missouri - Columbia Institute of Public Policy
Abstract
For nearly two decades, environmental
justice advocates have charged that
low-income and minority groups suffer a disproportionate burden from environmental
risks associated with exposure to air, water, and land pollution as well as
proximity to hazardous waste and other
pollution generating facilities. Claims of
these inequities have been amplified by a growing social movement that began with widely publicized protests in Warren County, North Carolina, where a predominantly black community mobilized in large numbers to fight the siting of a PCB landfill. Since that time, grassroots organizations have sustained and brought national attention to the environmental justice movement, which is often characterized as a new kind of social campaign embodied by the convergence of civil
rights and environmental activism. Government
at all levels have taken notice of environmental justice concerns, and responded with a variety of initiatives to
these inequities (real and perceived). This policy report briefly summarizes new
research that examines an understudied
dimension of the environmental justice
argument: that government behavior
contributes to the alleged inequities.Includes bibliographical reference