Introduction: The Why and What of the Environmental Justice Conference
I understand that what happens to my environment happens to me. No one can escape living in their environment, yet many fail to recognize the connection between their well-being and the well-being of the place where they live. I recognize that I am fully responsible for every piece of trash that is created by my use or misuse. Yet, I continue to live a lifestyle that fills landfills. It is difficult to escape the American way of life in America. I look for ways of minimizing my negative effect on my environment, while at the same time being able to live what I consider to be a normal lifestyle. I know that my understanding of this normal lifestyle is relative to the lifestyle I have lived in the past, but nonetheless I wish to continue this lifestyle. My goal is to be able to fit into my society with the benefits that this lifestyle reaps, while minimizing the negative effects this lifestyle tends to have on the environment. For this reason I try to take advantage of every opportunity to learn about how I can meet this goal. I make an effort to stay up to date on environmental issues and take advantage of the opportunities offered in my community. It was for this reason that I chose to attend the conference, A Quest for Environmental Justice: Healthy, High Quality Environments for all Communities.

Walking to Olivia Hall to attend the conference, I anticipated what I would learn. I expected to learn of the unequal ways we treat different types of environments. What I did not expect was to learn about the unequal ways we treat different races in respect to the qualities of their environments. As soon as the keynote address began, Bunyan Bryant made it clear to me that I was going to learn about something that I was not even aware existed. Environmental justice is a goal. It is a state in which our society should be, but is far from reaching. It will exist only when all of our cultural norms, values, and actions are synonymous with sustainable communities where distributive justice prevails. It is the realism of our highest potential for all environments without the existence of any environmental discrimination. I had no idea how far we are from this utopian goal.

The environmental justice movement has its roots in the civil rights and environmental movements. The term environmental justice was first used in 1976 at the Black Lake Conference that was organized by students. In 1978, there was a study conducted about toxic waste and race in the U.S. It showed race to be the most significant variable, over income, in determining the distribution of toxic waste. This was the first conclusive evidence to support the lack of environmental justice in our country. Since then many issues have arisen related to environmental justice. The difference between race and income, intended versus non-intended environmental discrimination, and top-down versus bottom-up approaches to environmental problem solving, are all examples of studies of such issues. Once I understood this information, as presented by Bryant, I began to wonder how deep environmental inequities reached and what was being done to remedy these situations. These were exactly the issues that would be presented in the subsequent sessions.

Unequal Environmental Conditions: The Race Factor
Many speakers throughout the length of the conference illustrated the effect of race on environmental injustices. Manuel Lizarralde illustrated the importance of compensating indigenous peoples for damages done to their native lands. Green imperialism or ecoimperialism is the claiming of land and/or resources of native people. In the United States, foreigners claimed much land as they moved into North America with little to no compensation for the rightful inhabitants of the land. Treaties were signed that were unfair, unlawful, and unjust. Today there is a new form of ecoimperialism. Developed nations are stealing valuable plants and knowledge from indigenous tribes; they are committing biopiracy. These are global instances of environmental injustice that have existed for hundreds of years.

Timothy Black and John Stewart explained a very localized instance of environmental injustice. They studied the locations of ash landfills, incinerators, transfer stations, and bulky waste landfills in relationship to the populations of people living near these waste disposal facilities. They used tract data to isolate individual variables about the populations in different tract, in order to determine what relationships exist between waste facilities and these variables. They found that the most significant variable, in terms of population factors of people living in areas close to waste facilities, is race. It is far more significant than the percent of people living below poverty levels. This information came as a surprise to me. I did not believe that this kind of inequity existed where I live.

This leads into another presentation by Harvey White. I belong to a relatively affluent white family. If any type of waste facility were proposed in our neighborhood, or even a surrounding neighborhood, we would undoubtedly fight against its installment. Our neighborhood has significant economic and academic resources. I live in a community of doctors, lawyers, academics, and individually wealthy people and, while there are a variety of different races represented, whites are the majority. This is a classic example of the NIMBY philosophy. My family would say Not In My Backyard. The communities with the least resources are least able to mobilize against proposed waste facilities. White brought up the related issue of the WIMBY (Why in My Backyard?) philosophy. Once a waste facility (or other environmentally unfriendly facility) is in place, residents in surrounding communities are left to ask, why me? This thought can spur neighborhoods to mobilize against expansions or even for removals of these sites. Because there already exists a large amount of environmental injustice, the WIMBY response is of critical importance. These mobilizations are reactive and can stimulate a change in people's acceptance of waste facilities. The difficulty is that NIMBY mobilizations tend to be stronger than WIMBY mobilizations, because less people are willing to challenge their preconceived beliefs. While White did not teach me a way to help solve the environmental injustice problems, he offered valuable insight into the ways communities mobilize in reaction to waste facility placement. NIMBY reactions only bolster the system as it stands today, while WIMBY reactions can lead people to claim responsibility for their waste production and storage. Until my family and the rest of the world are able to accept that our waste must go somewhere, and that somewhere might have to be close to home, any efforts to alleviate environmental injustices are significantly more difficult.

Hope for the Future: What Is Being Done
While most speakers informed me of the problems that exist in regards to environmental justice issues, several speakers gave me hope for a better future by describing some projects that are working today. Kenny Foscue spoke about an effort to restore Brownfields into viable public spaces. Brownfields are abandoned or idle industrial or commercial facility sites in which redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived contamination. These sites are usually in urban settings. Factors relating to the existence of Brownfields are residential segregation, disinvestments in inner cities, urban sprawl, degradation of urban environments, and polarization of urban versus non-urban areas. These factors relate to environmental injustices since they directly correspond to racially polarized neighborhoods, which contain large percentages of minorities in urban centers. Cleaning up Brownfield sites can lead to greater environmental justice when done with the proper intent. Redevelopment can lead to employment opportunities and improved health care access. Not only do the hazardous wastes get cleaned up, but also the overall mental health of communities can improve because of an overall confidence in neighborhoods. I believe that Brownfield cleanups have a large potential for improving many communities. When people feel like they are uncared for by their city, state, and fellow citizens they are less likely to respect their environment. Areas with Brownstones have a negative feedback cycle. Residents feel disrespected because their environment is in a poor state. Thus, they find little reason to respect their environment when they are already living in degraded areas. In this way, redeveloping and cleaning up such neighborhoods can result in many positive outcomes while at the same time increasing environmental justice.

The conference made clear to me that health is a major part of environmental justice. Kathy Cooper-McDermott gave a presentation that illustrates an initiative that is working to reverse a negative health effect most likely caused by the environment. Asthma is a lung disease of chronic inflammation that is common in today's society. It is often strongly linked to environmental factors such as exposure to certain air pollutants. Mark Mitchell discussed the high asthma rates in Hartford children and how these rates relate to higher exposure by minorities, resulting in higher asthma rates in minority children. Kathy, however, discussed a city asthma initiative that was designed to raise awareness about asthma and its treatments. It was founded by the New London Department of Health and Social Services in conjunction with Lawrence and Memorial Hospital. It focuses its attention on educating school communities about asthma triggers and treatments in order to improve people's health and lower overall health costs. They have already had success in lowering the number of visits that participants make to the Emergency Room. I think this program is an example of how, at a local level, a city was able to organize and target a specific issue. Health problems, especially those that relate to the environment are large and can seem overwhelming. It is of utmost importance for efforts to be made at manageable levels in order for them to be effective. In targeting a health issue, this initiative is able to fight environmental injustices, because if minorities are at greater risks for these health problems and have them at higher rates they will receive the greatest amount of benefit from such programs.

A Lesson Learned
My decisions can affect the quality of lives of others. If I choose to fight against the placement of a public waste facility in my neighborhood, I am fighting to have it put in a neighborhood with fewer resources, which will most likely be one with a high minority representation. This is exactly what Virginia Sharp wanted me to realize when she spoke of the conditions for environmental justice. She said that we need to look at the conditions upstream in order to attain equity. If, as a nation and world, we continue to have an egotistical view about what should happen to our environment, we will never attain justice. The problem with this scenario is that when we say environment we have too narrow a definition. We need to recognize that the earth is one system. All of her subsystems affect every other subsystem. On a short timeline I will not get sick from the fumes of an incinerator across town. I need to recognize, however, that the earth will get sick from these fumes. Thus, in time so will I.