Abstract
Climate change will be the most consequential challenge to the global society and especially to agriculture in the coming decades. However, what does climate change have to do with environmental justice (EJ)? Is not EJ supposed to be about protecting disadvantaged communities from toxic chemicals?
Introduction
In the United States, low-income populations, often including minority or Native American groups, have historically suffered from toxic chemical pollution from factories and waste sites that are or have been located near their communities. They have borne an inordinate and inequitable (or unjust) brunt of the negative aspects of modern industrial society. Agriculture, especially industrial or commodity agriculture, though it may be conducted some distance from disadvantaged communities, may nevertheless effect their health and welfare. Extreme weather resulting from climate change can exacerbate flooding downstream in floodplains where these communities reside. Though some communities may only be marginally connected with agriculture, how the land is managed for agriculture can affect the likelihood and severity of floods. Air emissions from agriculture can and will affect weather, and hence agriculture will be affected. Moreover, agriculture can affect the quality of water used by neighboring or downstream communities. Pollution from runoff or groundwater can affect water quality far downstream, impacting water sources upon which these communities depend. Competition for water supplies as a consequence of droughts will pit low-income communities against agricultural users over scarce water supplies. Moreover, many minority populations and communities of lower economic status are engaged in farming, forestry, agroforestry, or in subsistence farming.
Environmental justice is about assuring that these low-income, often minority or tribal communities get their share of public assistance to address the impacts of climate change, including in agricultural settings. The story of how EJ became intertwined in federal policy enacted over the past decades and became an integral focus of agricultural policy must be explained.
WHAT ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IS AND HOW IT BEGAN
The civil rights movement in the United States organized minority communities around injustices experienced by their members. Too often, low-income, minority, or tribal communities were vulnerable to receive treatment and experience living conditions that the broader society did not want. In some cases, waste disposal was imposed on communities that lacked the political power to resist. In other cases, low-income people sought residence on cheap lands that had become devalued by pollution or that were at greater risk of flooding. Often they were unaware of the consequences of exposure to their health or welfare, or the risks to their livelihoods.
The push for EJ began sometime after the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) as the agency began implementing its core programs regarding air, water, pesticides, and disposal of solid and hazardous waste. Air and water quality improved for many communities, but not all: low-income communities often found themselves neglected, if not threatened from the actions, such as waste disposal, that benefited wealthier communities. The environmental contaminants that did not go into the air or water of the wealthier cities were disposed of near or in the predominately low-income communities (Office of Legacy Management 2022).
The recognized debut of EJ occurred with the establishment in 1982 of a landfill for hazardous waste near a small, mostly African American community in Warren County, North Carolina. Soil contaminated with toxic waste that had been illegally dumped along roadways was disposed of in the landfill. Protests by this and other minority and low-income communities across the country coalesced into a coalition of groups speaking out for environmental fairness. The argument was that were it not for their race and low-income status their communities would not have been made the recipient of other communities’ undesired waste.
Political pressure from Washington, DC, led the federal government’s General Accounting Office to conduct a study of the siting of landfills approved by the USEPA (Office of Legacy Management 2022). It concluded that a disproportionate percentage of the decisions adversely affected minority communities. Other studies, such as that by the Church of Christ, argued that race was the key determining factor in deciding where to locate a hazardous waste facility. Though there were counter studies that questioned the accuracy of the studies and justification of their conclusions, the prevailing view among political activists in Washington, DC, was that a remedy was necessary. The result was a consensus document known as the Principles of Environmental Justice articulating a process for ensuring communication between decision makers and affected communities (Climate Justice Alliance 2023).
The federal government responded by establishing, in 1992 under the presidency of George Bush, an Environmental Equity Working Group led by the administrator of the USEPA. The result was ongoing communications on the subject of EJ with leaders of communities and political activists to seek solutions. The discussions culminated with President Clinton in 1994 issuing Executive Order 12898, Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations. In accordance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it directed the federal government to incorporate what now became known as EJ into its decision-making processes. The intent was to discourage discrimination in programs that can affect human health or the environment of minority, tribal, and low-income communities. Agencies of the federal government were required to establish strategies for achieving EJ. The strategies were to address effects in federal programs, policies, and activities; identify areas or opportunities for public participation, enforcement, and possibly new rules, including research and data collection regarding differential consumption patterns of natural resources; and establish a timetable for remedial action.
Further progress of integration of EJ into federal policy occurred during President Clinton’s terms in office. Changes were made as to how federal agencies made procedural decisions that can adversely affect communities. These communities, generally comprised of large numbers of people with minority demographic status or lower than average income, were to be engaged in key decisions regarding environmental toxins that could affect their health and welfare.
At the time, EJ focused largely on correcting past mistakes in implementing the nation’s environmental programs. It looked backward at environmental injustices of the past that had occurred in the name of environmental protection. The intent was to fix decision processes and procedures to avoid adverse effects to these communities in the future.
Past programs, however, were not focused on mitigating or ameliorating the environmental and social consequences of climate change. A policy shift at the federal level focusing on climate change primarily occurred with the onset of the new millennium and the Obama presidency. The government recognized that the buildup of greenhouse gases can lead to future changes in the environmental adversely affecting all communities, but especially low-income and minority communities that do not possess the resources to adapt and to respond.
The decision-making apparatus of the federal government, and by extension state and local governments to the extent that they are subject to the mandate to implement federal law, was not specifically focused on or had taken into account climate change. Nevertheless, machinery of government slowly began to readjust to the imperatives of EJ. One need only imagine the federal government and its operations to function much like a supertanker: it is hard to turn, but once set in a new direction, the power of inertia moves it in its new path. Most importantly as regards to agriculture, EJ was no longer just a consideration for USEPA functions, but also now a factor in the decision-making calculus of the USDA and its agencies responsible for agriculture. These include programs to protect water and air quality in rural, primarily agricultural areas, and flood mitigation through the agricultural conservation programs that it implements.
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND FEDERAL POLICY REGARDING CLIMATE CHANGE
The presidency of Barack Obama brought EJ into the decision of the federal regulatory bureaucracy. The Interagency Working Group “Memorandum of Understanding on Environmental Justice and Executive Order 12898, Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations,” issued by President Obama, articulated federal agency responsibilities in implementing Executive Order 12898, making formal its commitments, processes, and procedures. Moreover, it expanded the scope of the Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice to broaden the complement of federal agencies not originally named in Executive Order 12898. The Interagency Working Group charter was revised to provide structure and direction. Environmental justice acquired the following definition:
Fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies…. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work. (USEPA 2023)
The core environmental statute establishing the coordinated federal effort to address environmental problems, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), was broadened to require all federal agencies to consider EJ in their activities undertaken to comply with the act. Methodologies for how to factor in EJ in NEPA reviews were provided (USEPA 2022b).
It referenced a document issued by the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ 1997) that provided six principles for EJ analyses to determine any disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects to low-income, minority, and tribal populations:
Consider the composition of the affected area to determine whether low-income, minority, or tribal populations are present and whether there may be disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects on these populations
Consider relevant public health and industry data concerning the potential for multiple exposures or cumulative exposure to human health or environmental hazards in the affected population, as well as historical patterns of exposure to environmental hazards
Recognize the interrelated cultural, social, occupational, historical, or economic factors that may amplify the natural and physical environmental effects of the proposed action
Develop effective public participation strategies
Assure meaningful community representation in the process, beginning at the earliest possible time
Seek tribal representation in the process.
USDA, and hence agriculture, was obliged to identify problems afflicting the environment and health of minority and low-income communities, including the impacts of climate adaptation and commercial transportation, as well as implementing the National Environmental Policy Act and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. An annual report was to assure its compliance (CEG 2011).
In response, USDA issued its Environmental Justice Strategic Plan: 2016-2020, a revision of an earlier document last published in 2012. It has committed in its mission “to working collaboratively with Federal, State, Tribal, and local governments, nongovernmental organizations, and private individuals to address the underlying conditions that put people at risk and to assist families across the Nation in striving to achieve environmentally suitable living conditions and healthier lives” (USDA 2016).
The latter is realized through its grant programs and programs providing technical assistance. As in previous responses to EJ, the remedy is largely procedural, integrating considerations of the needs of vulnerable, low-income, and minority communities (USDA 2016).
STILL TO BE DONE
Environmental justice is now part of all federal activities related to climate change, agriculture, and soil and water management. However, this does not mean that the initial problems for which EJ was conceived have been addressed. Much still needs to be resolved.
Planning involves not just science but also economics. Cost-benefit analysis, the vehicle through which economics enters decision making in federal policy, has, in general, not always made the shift consistent with fair and treatment of all members of our society. The product of cost-benefit analysis is important for EJ because estimates of cost versus benefits are used to set priorities in federal investments and as thresholds for evaluating public return on new regulations whereby a low or negative estimate of benefit versus the estimate of cost argues against the regulatory decision (USEPA 2017)
Economics, as practiced by most federal agencies, is based on the theory of neoclassical economics (Investopedia 2022). It is the theory underlying how USEPA and most federal agencies conduct environmental economics (USEPA 2022a). It assumes that markets are efficient, consumers are rational, and that supply and demand determine worth. Even the value of human life is determined by the marketplace. In other words, you are worth what you earn over your lifetime. This makes value, and hence the estimates of benefits, subject to the vagaries of markets that can change from year to year.
A theory that grew out of the marketplace where goods and services are traded does not easily transfer to considerations regarding the environment. The environment and their ecosystems produce goods and services that are not traded in the marketplace. Corn (Zea mays L.) is traded in the marketplace, but soil is not. Water is traded in the marketplace, but ecosystem processes that produce clean water are not. Benefit analysis in environmental economics, as it is generally conducted in the federal government, assumes that all things can be assigned a value. To arrive at these values, economists use a variety of proxy methods. Where ecosystem goods or services may be conceived as intangible, their existence is acknowledged, but then set aside for special political consideration. What matters are numbers that can be compared—not just to costs, but also to other numbers that fall into the realm of benefits. These numbers are formalized into decision documents.
Because many of the values used in environmental cost-benefit analysis are not directly derived from the market or derived from supply and demand forces, the process of assigning values becomes more an art that uses science, however burdened by significant assumptions. Any of these assumptions can lead to very different estimates. Just as art is beautiful or not beautiful, valuable or not valuable, depending upon who the evaluator is, assigning values to certain things like people, wildlife, or even ecosystems can be biased according to the observer.
In the competition for funding to protect EJ communities and their assets, poverty can represent a disadvantage in cost-benefit analysis. Land in EJ communities, not surprisingly, is likely to possess lower value than land in the general community. Water can have greater value if transferred to communities other that EJ or used on high value crops, or crops other than those grown in subsistence farming. Because of the potential to use values for benefits in project planning in ways that jeopardize EJ communities’ ability to compete with the general population for public funding, both the communities at risk and analysts conducting the analyses need to be vigilant that the data they use to make investment decisions projects are reasonable and fair.
AN IMPORTANT ROLE FOR USDA
A variety of USDA agricultural conservation and research programs can be important to ameliorate the impacts of climate change on EJ communities. The obvious ones are the programs for preventing flooding. Funding for land retirement, permanent and temporary, can also serve to reduce the intensity of extreme weather events on communities located in floodplains. Targeted location of wetlands and Conservation Reserve Program lands can capture runoff contaminated with N, P, and sediment to prevent adverse impact on water quality. Crop insurance programs can help mitigate the economic costs of extreme heat on both crops and livestock. Research needs to be conducted on new or modified crop and livestock varieties for small farmers or subsistence farming to address effects on agricultural productivity from heat stress, pests, and drought. Cost-share assistance for conservation tillage practices and cover crops would help in reducing the severity of weather events on the agricultural lands of EJ communities.
Environmental justice has made an extraordinary journey from protesting landfills to becoming a principle in federal government decision making in planning and projects relating to agriculture to address climate change. Whether or not true justice is achieved will still depend upon public awareness of the decision processes and for scientists and economists to be up front about the assumptions and data they apply to the calculus of project planning and implementation. Climate change will have tremendous economic consequences for many communities across the nation. Competition for public funding to address or help to adapt to climate change impacts will be great. Environmental justice communities, which are likely to be most at risk, will need their fair share of funding and technical assistance. USDA and its cost-share, insurance, grant, and technical assistance programs will be vitally important for helping EJ communities connected to, affected by, or engaged in agriculture.
- Received September 12, 2022.
- © 2023 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society