Our Future is Interdisciplinary, Inclusive, and Equitable: Acknowledging and redressing physical, structural, and epistemological violence in the environmental peacebuilding field
art by Shar Tuiasoa (Hawai’i, USA)
Emily Sample (The Fund for Peace); Regina Paulose (International Criminal Law Attorney)
The scholars, practitioners, and community leaders who make up the environmental peacebuilding field must recognize how we as individuals and as a group benefit from and contribute to environmental racism and work to end and rectify past harm through justice and empowerment of Black and Indigenous communities, and communities of colour.
Context
The environmental peacebuilding field grows out of a multi-disciplinary acknowledgement that the environment is an essential aspect of future conflict prevention. Building upon the vast scholarly and grey literature of both peace studies and environmental science, the field also brings with it certain theories, methodologies, biases, and historiographies that perpetuate the harm initiated by its disciplinary forebears. The resulting issue is two-fold: 1) environmental racism in practice, and 2) replicating systems of white, settler colonialist supremacy within the field.
First, environmental racism is a form of structural violence, in which white supremacist systems of power allow and perpetuate environmental harm against specific populations.[i] This issue was first publicly acknowledged in the United States in the 1970s when the predominantly Black community of Warren County, North Carolina, rallied against an attempt to relocate polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB)-laced soil to their local landfill, which led to the first official study recognizing that hazardous waste sites were disproportionately sited near majority-Black or ethnic minority communities in the United States.[ii]
Second, the proclaimed superiority of white science, medicine, and epistemology followed the transoceanic, colonial commodification of the land and its resources, and led directly to mass environmental destruction in both the long- and short-term. From imperialist resource harvesting and extraction to the monopolization of scholarly, political, and even activist leadership, white supremacy continues to dominate every sphere of environmental management.
What’s been done
The modern environmental justice movement, as well as the burgeoning climate justice movement, focuses on environmental racism and its effects. The environmental justice movement gained visibility in 1990 when a group of activists wrote a series of letters to call attention to the whiteness of the “Group of 10”, a nickname for ten of the major environmental organizations in the United States at the time.[iii] In 1992, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established their Office of Environmental Justice. They define their role in this field to be the “involvement of all people regardless of race, colour, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies”.[iv] The Federal Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice (EJ IWG), established by Executive Order in 1994, has established a framework for how federal agencies can integrate an environmental justice lens onto future projects, including methods for mitigating community harm in cases of “unavoidable adverse impacts”.[v] However, there continues to be little progress on justice methods (e.g., reparations, free or reduced healthcare, land repatriation, etc.) for current or previous harm done, outside of direct litigation.
The nascent climate justice movement overlaps in mission with the environmental justice movement, but with specific focus on the imbalance between the countries and communities affected by climate change and those causing climate change. These activists, advocates, and scholars work to highlight the economic, infrastructural, political, and social inequalities that are and will be exacerbated by the adverse effects of climate change.
The creation and support of these movements over the last 30 years has exponentially diversified the environmental field. This is of specific importance for environmental peacebuilders because of the essential intersections between conflict prevention, identity, inclusion, and justice from the grassroots to the highest level of multilateral stakeholders.
Looking ahead
While improvements have been made to diversify the field, much of the visibility and leadership of the mainstream environmental movement remains dominated by white men. Those who identify themselves as environmental peacebuilders should actively engage in reflective praxis in order to acknowledge, investigate, and decolonize their own work. This can manifest as more inclusive hiring practices, locally informed national and international lobbying agendas and platforms, diversifying and ethically divesting funding streams, and mindful representation and inclusion of a variety of identity groups.
Environmental peacebuilding scholars can increase equity and access by actively seeking out diverse scholars and methodologies for citations and syllabi, centring BIPOC epistemologies and skills, advocating for open access to journals, and increasing funding and mentoring options for students, scholars, and practitioners from historically excluded communities and countries.
Further, the environmental movement is severely lacking in the voices and practices of those who historically have the most experience and knowledge of environmental management: Indigenous Peoples. While many around the world focused on the wildfires that burned uncontrollably in Australia and in California, the solutions were portrayed as out of reach. The response of extinguishing wildfires is a shift from the cultural practices that were once utilized by Native Americans in California known as controlled burning.[vi] In many cases of environment management, the knowledge and practices of Indigenous Peoples have been erased, further perpetuating the demise and erasure of Indigenous Peoples and their knowledge systems. It is of significance to note that many environmental organizations and movements have appropriated the knowledge and practices of Indigenous Peoples without acknowledgement.[vii]
It is thus of vital importance that credit be given where credit is due. This translates to incorporating honest environmental history and justice in all aspects of environmental discussions in order to create a holistic picture that does not eliminate any people or narratives just to fit into the traditional understanding of “environmental peacebuilding.”
Footnotes
i Sample, E. (2020) ‘Environmental In/Justice: Peacebuilding in the Anthropocene’, in Sample, E. and Irving-Erickson, D. eds., Building Peace in America, Lanham, UK: Rowman & Littlefield, 119–34.
ii U.S. GAO (1983) Siting of Hazardous Waste Landfills and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding Communities, U.S. General Accounting Office: Washington, DC (https://www.gao.gov/assets/150/140159.pdf.)
iii Sandler, R. L. and Pezzullo, P. C., eds. (2007) Environmental Justice and Environmentalism: The Social Justice Challenge to the Environmental Movement, Urban and Industrial Environments, MIT Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts.
iv U.S. EPA (2014) Environmental Justice, Collections and Lists, US EPA: Washington, DC (https://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice)
v EJ IWG abd NEPA Committee (2019) Community Guide to Environmental Justice and NEPA Methods, Federal Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice & National Environmental Policy Act: Washington, D.C. (https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/05/f63/NEPA%20Community%20Guide%202019.pdf)
vi Sommer, L. (2020) To Manage Wildfire, California Looks to what Tribes have Known All Along, NPR (https://www.npr.org/2020/08/24/899422710/to-manage-wildfire-california-looks-to-what-tribes-have-known-all-along)
vii Deceleration (2016) How to Co-opt and Indigenous Struggle, Deceleration (https://deceleration.news/2016/10/19/standing-rock-environment-struggle/)