Do poor and minority communities shoulder a disproportionate share of society's environmental risks? Do these risks cause substantial pollution-related health problems for the residents of disadvantaged communities? Environmental justice is a grassroots movement that deals with environmental burdens and their consequences. It is a form of community empowerment - a desire by minorities and the poor to actively participate in the decision making process as it pertains to local environmental issues.

The conference, A Quest for Environmental Justice: Healthy, High Quality Environments for all Communities, was held at the college on April 20 and 21. Two organizations, the Connecticut Coalition for Environmental Justice and the Southeastern Connecticut Indoor Air Quality Coalition, joined the college's Goodwin-Niering Center for Conservation Biology and Environmental Studies as conference sponsors. One of the major questions posed by the conference was to explore whether racial minorities and the poor are being environmentally victimized. In advancing its agenda of social equity, the environmental justice movement takes the position that historically disadvantaged communities are more likely to be damaged by pollution and less likely to be protected by regulatory enforcement. This is a position that provokes an adversarial cry of environmental racism: a cry that Christopher Foreman, a professor at the University of Maryland and speaker at the conference, perceives to be a "superb mobilizing tool" in the "repertoire of community advocacy."

The conference provided an opportunity for scholars to discuss the history, status, and dilemmas of the environmental justice movement. The audience of 135 people included representatives of federal, state and local governments, concerned citizens, individuals from NGOs, and students and faculty from Connecticut College and other universities. Students in the Center's Certificate Program attended the conference and wrote papers in which they summarized and evaluated presentations. Several certificate students indicated that prior to our conference they had little or no knowledge of environmental justice. Molly Lippman '03 admitted, "I was unaware of the complexities of this concept, of its inherent ties to issues such as race, culture, public health, and politics." Other students like Sarah Lathrop '03, "had not considered the overlap of social injustices and environmental problems" and viewed environmental degradation and racial discrimination as separate issues.

Bunyan Bryant, the Chair of Resource Policy and Behavior Concentration at the University of Michigan, gave the keynote address. Lauren Hartzell '03 wrote, "I expected to learn of the unequal ways we treat different types of environments. As soon as the keynote address began…Bryant made it clear to me that I was going to learn about (an issue) that I was not even aware existed." Bryant discussed the history and the struggles of the environmental justice movement. Environmental justice became a national issue in 1982 when several hundred people protested the siting of a landfill in Warren County, North Carolina. In his address, Bryant recognized that the dumping of contaminated soil in Warren County provided "activists an opportunity for championing civil rights" in a different light. By uniting civil rights and environmental activists the Warren County demonstration gave rise to the "contemporary environmental justice movement."

In response to federal regulations, state governments throughout the country are replacing "old town dumps" with regional waste disposal systems. Professors Timothy Black and John Stewart of the University of Hartford discussed Connecticut's system for disposing of solid waste. Their work is the first environmental equity study to show that regional facilities in Connecticut are located near minority and poor communities. Black and Stewart found the data for Hartford and Bridgeport especially troubling since the facilities in these cities handle the bulk of the state's incinerated trash.

Ethnobotanist Manuel Lizarralde from Connecticut College brought a global perspective to the conference with a talk on "green imperialism." Lizarralde argued that multinational corporations use "biodiversity prospecting" to exploit indigenous people by taking natural resources and other materials from their lands without just compensation. These resources often include genetic materials from which the agricultural and pharmaceutical industries realize enormous profits.

Effective citizen involvement in local or neighborhood issues is fundamental to the success of the environmental justice movement. In this respect, University of Pittsburgh Professor Harvey White spoke about environmental justice and the politics of syndrome behavior. White presented examples of syndrome behavior such as "Not In My Backyard" (NIMBY) and "Why In My Backyard" (WIMBY). The NIMBY syndrome is usually observed "in more economically and politically affluent communities," while WIMBY is found in "low income, minority communities." From White's perspective poor minority communities are more "reactive than proactive" in their response to environmental risks. These communities often lack the resources to wage a successful NIMBY campaign.

Health is an issue where environmental justice activists mobilize community support against alleged inequalities. Minority and poor communities are indeed blighted with environmental burdens: burdens that some environmental justice advocates describe as quality-of-life issues such as traffic congestion, noxious odors, noise, dilapidated buildings, and unsanitary conditions. Health in the broader context of quality of life may provide a more accurate description of the aspirations of individuals who fight against environmental injustice. Virginia Ashby Sharpe, the Deputy Director of the Hastings Center, argued that viewing health in a more inclusive framework of "public health and development paradigms" provides a "richer conception of what it would mean to be healthy - either as a society or as an individual."

Many students echoed the sentiment expressed by Hannah Shayler '02 that "one leaves the conference with an overwhelming sense of responsibility to promote…fairness when dealing with issues of environmental quality." Leys Bostrom '02 noted opportunities for change in that we "are entering a period in which our population is rising, our energy use is soaring, and our waste is increasing. However, we are simultaneously developing more technology and a greater knowledge of problems and thus alternatives." Others concluded, as does Maria Sinnamon '02, that "community action is very important but until (we) learn to use sustainable resources and limit the amount of waste there will still be environmental injustice for all of us."