Environmental Justice is the right to a safe, healthy, productive, and sustainable environment for all, where environment is considered in its totality to include the ecological (biological), physical (natural and built), social, political, aesthetic, and economic environments. Environmental justice refers to the conditions in which such a right can be freely exercised, whereby individual and group identities, needs, and dignities are preserved, fulfilled and respected in a way that provides for self-actualization and personal and community empowerment. This term acknowledges environmental injustice as the past and present state of affairs and expresses the socio-political objectives needed to address them.
Everybody has a right to clean water and clean air, and nobody has a right to degrade and destroy the environment. People deserve healthy communities where children can go out to play, where they can live knowing that everybody must do their part in using and disposing of toxic chemicals properly.
Environmental justice means the pursuit of equal justice, and protection under the law for all environmental statues and regulations without discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and or socioeconomic status. This concept applies to governmental actions at all levels—local, state and federal—as well as private industry activities. There are actually three categories of environmental equity issues. Providing environmental justice includes a guarantee of equal access to relief and meaningful community participation with government and industry decision-makers.
Communities of color in the United States have begun to question the lack of equity that plague their environments. These communities ask why people of color and the poor breathe dirtier air, have high blood lead levels, and have undesirable landfills and incinerators. Very often, the same people perform jobs with the highest environmental risks.
The demands for answers to these questions started the environmental movement. The Principles of Environmental Justice at the People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit on October 27, 1991, in Washington, D.C. indicates that 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. Environmental justice demands that public policy be based on mutual respect and justice for all peoples, free from any form of discrimination or bias. Environmental justice mandates the right to ethical, balanced and responsible uses of land and renewable resources in the interest of a sustainable planet for humans and other living things. Environmental justice calls for universal protection from nuclear testing, extraction, production and disposal of toxic/hazardous wastes and poisons and nuclear testing that threaten the fundamental right to clean air, land, water, and food
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Environmental justice affirms the fundamental right to political, economic, cultural and environmental self-determination of all peoples. Environmental justice demands the cessation of the production of all toxins, hazardous wastes, and radioactive materials, and that all past and current producers be held strictly accountable to the people for detoxification and the containment at the point of production. Environmental justice demands the right to participate as equal partners at every level of decision-making including need assessment, planning, implementation, enforcement and evaluation. Environmental justice affirms the right of all workers to a safe and healthy work environment, without being forced to choose between an unsafe livelihood and unemployment. It also affirms the right of those who work at home to be free from environmental hazards
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Environmental justice protects the right of victims of environmental injustice to receive full compensation and reparations for damages as well as quality health care. Environmental justice considers governmental acts of environmental injustice as violation of international law, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and the United Nations Convention on Genocide. Environmental justice must recognize a special legal and natural relationship of Native Peoples to the U.S. government through treaties, agreements, compacts, and covenants affirming sovereignty and self-determination
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Environmental justice affirms the need for urban and rural ecological policies to clean
up and rebuild our cities our cities and rural areas in balance with nature, honoring the culture integrity of all our communities, and providing fair access for all to the full range of resources. Environmental justice calls for the strict enforcement of principles of informed consent, and a halt to the testing of experimental reproductive and medical procedures and vaccinations on people of color
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Environmental justice opposes the destructive operations of multi-national corporations. Environmental justice opposes military occupation, repression and exploitation of lands, peoples and cultures, and other life forms. Environmental justice calls for the education of present and future generations which emphasizes social and environmental issues, based on our experience and an appreciation of our diverse cultural perspectives
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Environmental justice requires that people, as individuals, make personal and consumer choices to consume as little of “Mother Earth’s resources and to produce as little waste as possible; and make the conscious decision to challenge and reprioritize our lifestyles to insure the health of the natural world for present and future generations
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