1. Environmental Justice: An
Environmental Civil Rights Value
Acceptable to All World Views
Troy W. Hartley
Amanda Aitken
Torin Spencer
Sydney Jimenez

2. History of Environmental
Justice Movement
• Academic and Civil Rights communities
started identifying inequities in
environmental protection in the 1970’s.
• In 1982, in Warren County, North Carolina, a
community mobilized in opposition to a
proposed landfill for
polychlorinated biphenyls
(PCB) contaminated soils.
• NC governor selected
Afton for the landfill site.

3. Continued
• However, Afton was 84% black, while Warren
County was 64% black in a state that was only
24% black.
• Afton residents depended on wells for their
drinking water and the water table was only 5-
10 feet below ground.
• A grass-roots civil rights campaign against the
landfill. During nonviolent civil disobedience
over 400 people were arrested.

4. Injustice Study
• In 1986, the United Church of Christ sponsored
a statistical assessment of the relationship
between hazardous location sites and
racial/socioeconomic attributes of communities
surrounding sites.
• The report concluded that race
was most significant variable
with mean household income
being deemed statistically
significant.

5. 1980s-1990s
• Academic research in the 1980s helped put
environmental justice on the political agenda.
• A “Conference on Race and the Incidence of
Environmental Hazards” at the University of
Michigan was held in January 1990.
• The “Michigan Coalition” wrote to several
federal agencies and congressmen and called
for action on environmental injustices in
minority and low-income communities.

6. EPA/EEW
• In July 1990, an Environmental
Equity Workgroup was formed
to assess problems of
environmental injustice and
make recommendations based
on findings.
• In July 1992, the EPA concluded that available
data demonstrated disturbing trends.
• Recommendations included an increased effort
to identify high-risk populations and target
activities to reduce their environmental risks.

7. Continued
• Promote the use of equity considerations in the
rule-making process.
• Improved communication with minority and
low-income communities and increased
participation in the decision-making processes.
• By October 1991, at the first international
conference on environmental
justice, it was clear environmental
justice was squarely on the social
and environmental agenda.

8. Ethical Models and World Views
• Environmental justice is a fundamental value
that can be found in all environmental world
views
• Utilitarian Doctrine
• Kantian Rights and Obligations
• Rawl’s Veil of Ignorance

9. Utilitarian Doctrine
• Actions are morally right if they promote happiness
and wrong if they do not.
• CONFLICT: when a discriminatory society produces
greater net happiness than a nondiscriminatory
society.
• Compensation idea
– Assumption that there is a level of compensation that
can be found acceptable to those being exposed to
environmental inequality.
– Enable justification of unequal distribution of
environmental equality.
– Environmental justice rejects this.

10. Kantian Rights
• To have moral worth, an
action must be performed
as a duty even to the
detriment of one’s own
inclinations.
• Moral action should be
based on a principle or a
moral rule

11. Formulations to be
considered a moral rule
1.) for a rule to be a moral law, it must be a
universal law, legislatively valid for everyone.
2.) the rule must treat all human beings as an
ends and never merely as a means to an end.
3.) a person must recognize the rule as binding
upon him or her, and thus, the person must act as
if he or she is a member of an organized society of
ends.

12. Kantian Obligations
• Safe environment for all as a moral law and basic
human right.
• Based on principles of fairness and justice with a
strong emphasis on civil rights and social justice.
• Clinton Administration established environmental
justice as
“a framework of equal justice and equal
protection…to ensure every citizen’s right
to be free from pollution.
• Challenge the Utilitarian view of environmental
decision making.

13. Rawl’s Veil of Ignorance
• Tool to reach “reflective equilibrium
between theory of justice and intuition
• Removes individual’s identity in a situation
• Forces people to make
unbiased choices
• “serves the interests of
all segments of society
equally”

14. World Views
• “ constellation of beliefs,
values, and concepts that
give shape and meaning to
the world a person
experiences and acts within”
• The application of ethical
principles to the entire world
• Ways to apply and express
your views in other societies

15. Norton’s 7 Identified World Views
• 1) Judeo-Christian stewardship
• 2) deep ecology and related value systems
• 3) transformationist/ transcendentalism
• 4) constrained economics
• 5) scientific naturalism
• 6) ecofeminism
• 7) pluralism/ pragmatism

16. Justice
• “ An ethical system is inadequate if it cannot
demonstrate a moral basis for justice
• Kantian Perspective: justice is elemental to a
moral community
– Most basic of social
virtues
– Basis for social ethics

17. Equal Protection ≠ Equal Risk
• Laws, themselves contain inherent
discrimination
– Ex: all communities don’t start from the same
standard
• Risks are compounded in
disadvantaged communities
• Environmental protection must be
applied unequally to balance the
unequal risks