On March 30th, 2021 the Migrants and Refugees (M&R) Section and the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development released a booklet entitled “Pastoral Orientations on Climate Displaced Persons” (POCDP). It provides guidelines on how the Church will respond to migration caused by climate change, promoting solidarity between individuals and urging the international community to care for this crisis through immediate action.
In the document’s preface, the Pope points out that displacement due to an uninhabitable environment might seem like a process of nature when it is in fact the result of “poor choices and destructive activity, selfishness and neglect.” The climate crisis we are now facing comes to no surprise as our environment has been decaying continuously since the start of the Industrial Revolution. While this crisis is a global one, the ones facing the most consequences are those who have contributed the least. Today, we witness the rapid acceleration of climate migration for which there needs to be immediate global responses.
“Come, let us talk this over. If you are ready to listen, we can still have a great future. But if you refuse to listen and to act, you will be devoured by the heat and the pollution, by droughts here and rising waters there” (cf. Isaiah 1:18-20) the Pope quotes. This message, although one of faith, strongly reflects how this crisis has been ignored by many players in the global community. It emphasizes the importance for those in power to listen and acknowledge the distressing position of climate migrants by taking necessary measures to mitigate its impact.
The POCDPbegins with a general introduction on the climate crisis and how it plays a role in the displacement of many. It is then followed by nine steps that deal with the various aspects of climate migration. They are the following:
Acknowledging the climate crisis and displacement nexus
Promoting awareness and outreach
Providing alternatives to displacement
Preparing people for displacement
Fostering inclusion and integration
Exercising a positive influence on policy-making
Extending pastoral care
Cooperating in strategic planning and action
Promoting professional training in integral ecology
Fostering academic research of CCD (Climate Crisis and Displacement)
Local church leaders and congregations were asked to develop these guidelines, particularly those who witnessed first-hand climate-related incidents or displacement, such as archbishop Claudio Dalla Zuanna from Beira, Mozambique. In 2019, the city of Beira was critically hit by Cyclone Idai causing massive flooding, the destruction of 90 percent of its buildings and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. Having witnessed the emergency response to this natural disaster, the archbishop stated that it is not enough to solely resettle people. It is important to take additional measures by putting in place the conditions necessary to welcome climate migrants and to provide them with essential services.
Between 2008 and 2018, 253.7 million people were displaced by climate disasters. The document states that in the first half of 2020 only, 9.8 million people were displaced because of droughts, floods and other climate-related events. The number of climate migrants is still growing and is expected to reach 200 million by 2050. With those numbers in mind, the Vatican’s policy guidelines offer possible ways to raise awareness on climate migration and promote the importance of conversations between governments and policy makers. The M&R Section also encourages churches around the world to welcome displaced people, offer support and integrate them within their new society.
The POCDP is an important move towards a solution-based approach in the confrontation of the climate migration crisis. By calling for international help and action, the Catholic Church takes a stance in an important debate, which could bring positive changes to our current migration policies. While the primary message of this document relies on a message of faith, it extends a hand to climate migrants, making them feel seen and supported, a step most governments have not yet taken.
Flora Bensadon is an Earth Refuge Archivist with a degree in History and International Development Degree from McGill University. Through her studies, her culturally diverse background and her travels, Flora has taken a profound interest in the problems of migration, specifically those of climate refugees.
In recent weeks, an increasing surge of migrants have attempted to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, many of them being unaccompanied minors. Authorities have placed these minors in overcrowded detention centers. American lawmakers cast blame for the inhospitable facility conditions across the partisan aisle. Congress has been unable to pass any legislation to change their country’s immigration system. Meanwhile, thousands of bald eagles have begun their pre-breeding migratory season. They are crossing the U.S.-Canada border by the thousands to build their nests in the trees of the Prairie Provinces and British Columbia.
We are led to believe that our material reality exists in an orderly fashion, that what we call nature organizes itself through confinement. Certain things belong in certain places. Any movement outside of these confinements is an anomaly. What is foreign is invasive. Sonia Shah, in her recently published book The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move, points to a dynamic world (increasingly so with the impacts of climate change), and the enduringly migratory humans that, only recently, have placed abstract obstacles between one another.
A Faulty Science
A large portion of Shah’s book uses an appeal to nature when it comes to the inherent migratory function found in almost all species. Originally, our collective science of taxonomy was based on location. We thought of habitats as closed containers, where each species has a specific function to fulfill and can grow only based on the availability of resources within that closed space. Early scientists believed ecosystems were in a constant stasis, and therefore, any species leaving one location and entering another spelled disaster. They saw migration as a threat to the balance, where according to Gause’s Law of Competitive Exclusion, if two species are competing for resources within a closed space, one will always destroy the other.
It isn’t difficult to follow the threads of these beliefs through the history of racial discrimination and immigration law, and the conflation of those laws as ethics. The father of taxonomy, Carl Linnaeus, based his 18th century classifications on the distinctions between species and perpetuated that certain racial distinctions between humans invoked a hierarchy. As pseudoscientific racial science gathered support in Western countries, certain racial traits were deemed undesirable, nonexistent borders between races were arbitrarily parsed, and new immigration laws based on the prevention of racial mixing surged. These sentiments carry into modern-day immigration law with Linnaean nationalism and neo-Malthusian practices underlying modern reactionary anti-immigrant rhetoric, (e.g., American right-wing nationalism and Italy’s Five Star Movement).
No Vivarium in Nature
Of course, these beliefs are not centered in much scientific ground. No ecosystems functions as a closed system. Individuals move in and out of populations and environments constantly. Invasive species are often more common and less malevolent than people think. What scientists nowadays are adopting is an ecology not based on origin, but one based on traits and contributions to an ecosystem. According to Shah, the reasons for migration are a complex myriad of genetic and environmental factors, but she stresses the question we need to ask shouldn’t be why people choose to migrate. Rather, we need to ask why migration inspires terror in natives. Migration is written into the essence of our species. We have been migrating as long as we have been around, for opportunity and for survival. And as Shah finds, migrating peoples are not inherently more violent, nor less intelligent, nor unhealthier, nor a constant hindrance on a host country’s long-term economy. What remains is the ideological and immaterial borders we construct at the cost of the real suffering of people.Despite titling her work The Next Migration, Shah spends the majority of her book investigating the past and affords little time speculating about the future. If one were to build off of her findings and predict the future of migration, one needs to keep in mind the expiration date on xenophobia. There is no such thing as a closed system, and as assimilation increases and distinctions between people diminish, people holding on to some idealized figment of a place will find their environment change around them.
Benjamin Chappelow is a writer and narrative designer in the Appalachian mountains, United States. As an immigration researcher and former Narrative Writer for the Climate Resilience Toolkit, he is focused on how the stories we tell dictate our behavior in an ecological crisis. When he is not writing, Benjamin is trying to teach his cat how to type so he won’t have to.
The seemingly insuperable nature of the boundaries between human and non- human beings carried throughout bodies of literary work evokes issues regarding the substantiality of land and animal ethics. The projection of human characteristics onto the natural world is exemplified through both fictional and authentic accounts of anthropological consciousness in relation to non-human sentience. In order to redefine the divisions between humans and the environment, it is imperative to transgress egocentric perceptions of consciousness. The theoretical framework presented in Aldo Leopold’s essay, Land Ethic, manifests a rich representation of the deep interconnections between human ideology and environmental degradation; while J.M. Coetzee’s novella, The Lives of Animals, materializes the necessity of surpassing conventional notions of consciousness to establish climate responsibility. Each of these works posits the significance of advancing ethical thought beyond the limited scope of human egoism, and illustrates the possibility of bridging the divide between human and non-human realms through the emergence of an ecological conscience.
I. The Fragmentation of Anthropocentric Philosophy
Coetzee offers an earnest interrogation of the partitions between human and animal subjectivity in order to challenge the traditional discourse surrounding collective ethics. He positions novelist Elizabeth Costello as the mouthpiece that serves to reassess anthropocentric views of morality. Her main role is to reframe rationalist theology, and dissolve the ethical grounds sustaining human-centric values. Costello suggests that the foundation of humanist philosophy rests upon the use of reason as the main differentiator between human and non-human sentience. She proposes a critique of common modalities of thinking, and argues that principles of reason do not afford humans a privilege of superiority. In a lecture on the complexity of non-human rights, she tells her listeners that
“Reason looks suspiciously to me like the being of human thought; worse than that, like the being of one tendency in human thought. Reason is the being of a certain spectrum of human thinking” 1
The idea that reason itself is a product of the mind serves to destabilize its use as a guiding compass. The reduction of reason to the abstract sphere of a “spectrum” implicitly diminishes its intellectual significance. An inversion of rationalist theory may reveal that the fundamentals of reasoning are flawed in nature, and can be transformed to encapsulate logic beyond our own self- interest. Jan-Harm de Villiers’s research on animals’ “literary voice” touches on the tendency to use reason to support the notion of humanist superiority. He remarks on Costello’s awareness of the human ability to recognize animal suffering, whilst remaining morally passive to one’s own involvement in it.
“Costello locates the root of this passivity in the rationalist tradition’s privileging use of reason above all other human faculties as a capacity or criterion to justify subjugation” 2
It may be possible to rupture one’s personal indifference through the engagement of discourse that falls outside of the realm of traditional thought. In order to disrupt the framework upholding hierarchical structure, it becomes necessary to interact with the concept of suffering. The idea of mental and bodily suffering incurred by human action may serve to provoke a profound change in our views of land ethics. The question of whether or not humans can cultivate a sense of awareness strong enough to manifest an ecological conscience comes to the forefront of this discussion.
Redirecting Humanist Thought
The basis of rational thought must rest on the premise that humans and the natural world are deeply interconnected, rather than divided. In his essay, Land Ethic, author Aldo Leoplod evokes the significance of developing moral conscientiousness of the environment. He suggests that a collective disconnection to the land results in a lack of ethical regard for ecological systems, and creates stagnancy within the conservation movement. He posits that
“Obligations have no meaning without conscience, and the problem we face is the extension of the social conscience from people to land. No important change in ethics was ever accomplished without an internal change in our intellectual emphasis, loyalties, affections, and convictions.” 3
The notion that change must take place on a more intimate level conjures both an individual and collective call to action. A shift in “intellectual emphasis” must occur in order to bridge the boundaries between sustainable living and human indifference. Although many view the natural world through a hierarchical lens, it is important to acknowledge human reliance on the land. In order to materialize ethical consideration for the land, one must experience its complexity through personal immersion. In her essay, Compassionate Coexistence, Uta Maria Jürgens elaborates on the importance of recognizing the interdependent relationship between humans and the natural world. Her research on environmental psychology explains that “the one-on-one encounter with particular animals, plants, and landscapes that, collectively, constitute Nature is the mediating link between personal responsibility and actual land-ethical conduct” 4 In developing a degree of affinity with the land, one can begin to comprehend their own moral responsibility to care for it. This approach requires a massive transition in the way humans view non-human subjectivity. Jürgens comments on the significance of “personalizing” other beings: respecting their inherent right to exist and be perceived as autonomous. In order to mobilize moral responsibility for the land, it is necessary to establish non-human ecosystems as independent entities, and foster intentional relationships with the natural world. A fragmentation of the divisions between human and animal sentience may serve to catalyze this shift in thought.
II. The Core of Environmental Disconnection
The idea that animals possess consciousness must be integrated into social thought in order to destabilize the psychological boundaries that disconnect humans from the natural world. Coetzee pushes deeper into dissolving these philosophical demarcations, and offers the use of one’s “sympathetic imagination” as a conduit for engaging with the state of another being. Costello suggests that “to be alive is to be a living soul. An animal, and we are all animals, is an embodied soul.” 5 Through the use of the mind, humans can immerse in the experience of inhabiting the body of another. This practice allows for recognition of the idea that humans do not possess authority over our animal counterparts. She argues that there is “no limit to the extent to which we can think ourselves into the being of another.” 6 The “sensation of being” in itself constitutes a fundamental part of all life. The cognitive awareness of bodily existence pertains to both humans and animals, and can be seen as the equalizing agent of the two realms. This notion serves to diminish justifications for manipulating the environment on the basis of humanist superiority. It emphasizes that human intellect does not exemplify consciousness, and acts to invalidate the bounds between human and non-human ecosystems.
The main purpose of Costello’s claim to the power of embodiment is to engage with the concept of non-human consciousness, and unravel deeply-rooted rationalizations for environmental disconnection. The absence of an ecological conscience creates invisible barriers between human and non-human realms, resulting in chronic detachment from the land. Simultaneously, this separation generates a lack of ethical regard for natural biomes. Although the scarcity of land ethics may seem trivial, it translates to the root of various inadequacies embedded in environmental policy and regulation. This generational dysfunction manifests into major ecosystem degradation, involving extreme weather events and climate-induced displacement on a global scale. In her report The Silent Violence of Climate Change, María José Méndez expands upon this issue, and draws attention to the lack of legal protections currently in place for those affected by environmental disaster. She touches on the unobtrusive nature of climate suffering, and the way in which it prevents exceedingly vulnerable populations from receiving proper rights and recognition. Her field work exhibits that “asylum seekers must parade the psychological and physical wounds that scar their bodies or those of their loved ones, and even then, they are not guaranteed immigration relief.” 7 In order to be considered a refugee, an individual must supply compelling proof of imminent violence or persecution in their homeland.
Concurrently, there remains no official language that effectively defines and protects environmental migrants under international refugee law. The existing policies neglect the adversity of those experiencing devastating financial and agricultural losses due to the prolonged effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels and extensive drought. Méndez remarks on the sensationalist quality of modern thinking that drives legal policy, and inherently subdues less explicit forms of suffering. She finds that “asylum policy, like much mainstream news coverage, favors stories of brutal death or injury and suppresses the economic and ecological harms that also drive people to leave home.” 8 It can become immensely difficult to provide evidence of the acute rationale for climate migration, as these issues have developed and worsened over decades of time. The rise in population displacement and reduced human mobility will continue to intensify with increased environmental degradation.
Collective Outlook
The need for greater accountability and awareness falls on both private corporations and governmental institutions alike. In order to advance ecological responsibility, it is necessary to create a deeper sense of collective obligation to the environment, and those existing within biotically fragile regions. This idea reinvites Leopold’s conceptualization of a framework that prioritizes deeper commitment to the land, and favors an internal shift in our ways of thinking. Leopold brings us back to the assertion that ethical management of the environment must “reflect the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land.” 9 It is essential to reinvent global protection efforts in order to preserve the existence of both human and non-human realms. Through the facilitation of enhanced climate awareness, it is possible to redefine our connection to the natural world.
The evolution of environmental progress rests on the prospect of bridging the divide between human and non-human ecosystems. It is crucial to advance beyond egocentric thought in order to transgress socially constructed boundaries of consciousness, and compose a stronger sense of responsibility for the land. In developing an ecological conscience, we can generate a call for change to prevent ecosystem collapse, and ameliorate the health of both human and non-human environments.
Rachel Aronoff recently graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in English, and a specialization in Literature and the Environment. She is also certified in health and wellness coaching, personal training, and in the process of becoming a yoga instructor.
1. Coetzee, J M, and Amy Gutmann. The Lives of Animals. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2001. Print.
2. Villiers, J. H. (2019). Prolegomenon on the Role of the Polyphonic Novel for (Animal) Law: J.M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals, the Voice of Refusal, and the Subversive Performativity of the Novel. Law & Literature, 31(3), 2019.
3. Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1949. Print.
4. Jürgens, Uta Maria. “Compassionate Coexistence: Personizing the Land in Aldo Leopold’s Land-Ethic.” Sept. 2014. Journal of Evolution & Technology, vol. 24, no. 3.
5. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals, 33.
6. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals, 35
7. Méndez, M. J. (2020). The Silent Violence of Climate Change in Honduras. In NACLAReport on the Americas (Vol. 52, Issue 4, pp. 436–441).
8. Méndez, The Silent Violence of Climate Change in Honduras. (Vol. 52, Issue 4, pp. 436–441).
9. Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There.
Food is and always has been our most intimate connection to our natural environment—a source of security, spirituality, and sustenance. The emergence of modern agriculture is most commonly linked to the First Agricultural Revolution, marked by the domestication of grain in the Fertile Crescent, around 10,000 years ago. However, not only did this feat occur independently (and nearly simultaneously) in countless regions around the world, but human societies have been shaping and manipulating landscapes to produce food for a far longer period of history.
While the domestication of grain may have laid the foundation for our modern global food system—allowing for a rapid increase in centralized power, taxation, and even the beginnings of export agriculture—it was predated by a myriad of sustainable agricultural techniques that are still utilized by countless cultures around the world today, such as controlled burning or the “slash and burn” technique, pruning, and harvesting wild seeds and roots. Evidently, many histories have converged to establish the food systems we experience today. The Industrial Revolution catalyzed the mechanization of agriculture, agricultural processing, and distribution, while the discovery of the Haber-Bosch process and the subsequent Green Revolution of the mid-1900s allowed for the massive surge in large-scale monoculture and factory farming, thus establishing the chief characteristics of our current global food system.
But this food system is far from perfect. Despite the reality that roughly one-third of all food produced globally for human consumption (~1.3 billion tons/year)[1] ends up uneaten and decomposing in landfills, broad regions across the world still suffer from chronic hunger and food insecurity, a term defined by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) as “a lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life”[2]. Meanwhile, decades of agricultural intensification via monoculture and the use of synthetic fertilizers have led to crises of mass desertification, eutrophication, and groundwater depletion—challenges that disproportionately harm small farmers and marginalized groups rather than the large agricultural companies that instigated them. As the agricultural industry becomes more central to the discussion of climate change, due to both its use of fossil-fuel based fertilizers as well as the substantial methane footprint of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), the idea of sustainable or regenerative agriculture is emerging more in mainstream debate as a possible solution.
It is ironic that the principles and practices of groups that have historically been exploited and dismantled in the name of Western ‘progress’ may very well be the foundation for our path to salvation. In telling the story of one such group, the Navajo Nation, I hope to call attention to the central role that food plays in the conversation of environmental justice, and the necessity of dismantling historical structures of colonialism in order to build a sustainable future.
A Brief History of the Navajo Nation
The largest Native American reservation in the United States (US), the Navajo Nation spans about 16 million acres, or ~25,000 square miles, and extends into the states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.[3] Despite representing one of the first and only instances in history during which the US government allowed indigenous people to return to their ancestral land, the history of Navajo sovereignty is long and rife with violence.
In 1864, after the US defeated Mexico and gained control over the vast territory recognized today as California and the Southwest United States, Colonel Kit Carson established a “scorched earth policy”[4]: an order to burn all Navajo homes and crops, and to steal or kill their remaining livestock. Starved and outnumbered, members of the Navajo tribe were then brutally removed from their ancestral lands and forced to march at gunpoint in what is known as “The LonThe Navajo Nation: A Case Study on Food Colonialism and Environmental Justiceg Walk”: a series of 53 forced marches over the course of two years from Arizona to Bosque Redondo, New Mexico. The initial 18-day, 300-mile journey led to the deaths of at least 200 Navajo men, women, and children[5]. It is worthy to note that while “The Long Walk” consisted of seven different paths and at least 50 separate groups, the eventual journey of the Navajo tribe back to their homeland merged together to forge one large group that was said to trail for ten miles.[6]
Following four long years of imprisonment, a treaty signed with the US in 1868 permitted remaining Navajos to return to a designated portion of their ancestral land. The treaty declared Navajo Nation as independent from the US, and granted its population 3.5 million acres which, after the signing of a series of other treaties from 1878-1991, expanded to the 16 million acres Navajo Nation stretches today[7].The Navajo people call themselves Diné, which translates literally to “the people”[8]. Their independent government is broken down into executive, judicial, and legislative branches, all of which are largely informed by Diné Bibee Nahaz’aanii Bitsésiléi, or Navajo Fundamental Law—principles that have guided the tribe since long before colonization. To quote the Diné Policy Institute, “Earth, sky, plants and all living things in existence live according to Diné Bibee Nahaz’aanii Bitsésiléi… [which calls] for the appropriate respect, reverence and protocol of offering for the accessing of natural elements, including our food sources.”[9]
The Remnants of Colonialism and the Makings of a Modern Day Food Desert
At present, there are a total of 13 grocery stores on the Navajo Nation[10]. Despite being roughly the size of West Virginia and home to a population of 174,000 people, the availability of nutritious food on the Navajo Nation is rare. The average resident must drive upwards of three hours to reach the nearest grocery store[11]. Due to the difficulty this transportation barrier presents, many residents fill most of their caloric needs at local convenience stores or trading posts, which are filled with highly-processed, low-nutrition foods like chips and soda. The acute inaccessibility to nutritious food on the Navajo Nation also applies to traditional Navajo foods—a disconnect which is compounded by the historical loss of knowledge on how to grow and harvest traditional Navajo crops, as well as the difficulty of procuring both land and water on the Navajo Nation due to the complex web of tribal and federal land use policies.[12]
These substantial barriers to accessing healthy food, combined with high rates of unemployment and a predominance of low-wage jobs has led to a massive epidemic of food insecurity on the Navajo Nation. Whereas the Diné historically lived off the land using sustainable subsistence lifestyles, “decades of assimilation, forced relocation and dependence on federal food distribution programs”[13] have rendered the Nation a food desert, which the USDA describes as a region which “often [features] large proportions of households with low incomes, inadequate access to transportation, and a limited number of food retailers providing fresh produce and healthy groceries for affordable prices”[14]. As a result, in 2015 approximately 26,000 Navajo people (or 22% of the total population) were reported to be living with diabetes, and another 75,000 residents reported as prediabetic[15]. Obesity rates ranged in different regions of the Nation from 23-60%.[16]
Aside from the implications these conditions have for public health and equity in the US, the Navajo Nation’s food system is central to the discussion of environmental justice due to its clear association with colonialist frameworks, as well as the current exacerbating effects imposed by climate change. In the discussion of justice, terminology holds utmost significance, particularly in determining collective understanding and attitude towards the injustice at hand. It is important to note, then, that the term food desert contains appreciable flaws in defining the systems of environmental injustice on the Navajo Nation and elsewhere. Whilst the term implies that a region with “inadequate access to transportation, and a limited number of food retailers providing fresh produce”[17] arises as such in its natural state of being—deserts, after all, are naturally-occurring biomes around the world—it fails to encompass the very intentional history of invasion, displacement, segregation, and unjust zoning laws that have led to the existence of food deserts today.
Instead, I will subscribe to the term food apartheid, coined by physical therapist and food activist Karen Washington. The word apartheid references the government-sanctioned racial segregation in South Africa, and is therefore used to acknowledge the various intentional actions, decisions, and policies that have led to the inaccessibility to high-quality, nutritious food in marginalized communities. As Washington affirms,
“food apartheid looks at the whole food system, along with race, geography, faith, and economics. You say food apartheid and you get to the root cause of some of the problems around the food system. It brings in hunger and poverty. It brings us to the more important question: What are some of the social inequalities that you see, and what are you doing to erase some of the injustices?”[18]
Part Three: Collective Healing and Foundations for an Equitable Food System
After clarifying her definition of food apartheid, Washington goes on to discuss the path to a possible solution: the concept of food sovereignty. Washington notes that the term “was really founded by indigenous people in Central and South America when they were fighting for governance”. Specifically,
“the organization Via Campesina coined the term ‘food sovereignty’. They were fighting for land ownership and they were fighting for resiliency, so we should make sure that we pay respect to those indigenous people who have been fighting for so long.”[19]
The Diné Policy Institute has since defined food sovereignty as,
“the right of people to define their own policies and strategies for sustainable production, distribution, and consumption of food, with respect to Diné culture, philosophy, and values, and is considered to be a precondition for food security on the Navajo Nation. Diné Food Sovereignty empowers Diné people by putting the Diné people, cooks, farmers, ranchers, hunters, and wild food collectors at the center of decision-making on policies, strategies, and natural resource management.”[20]
While food sovereignty may very well seem to be a logically fixed component of Navajo sovereignty, underlying federal laws and allocation of resources have prevented this concept from becoming a reality. However, recent external forces—namely, the Coronavirus pandemic and the increasing stressors of climate change on drought conditions and soil health—have led to a renaissance of traditional Navajo farming on the Nation, and a subsequent push for greater Navajo Food Sovereignty.
Tyrone Thompson, a Navajo farmer determined to fuel a movement of food sovereignty on the Navajo Nation, explains that
“as we see the shelves [of grocery stores] emptying of food and toilet paper we kind of reconnect to our roots. Some of the tools that were given by our elders and our ancestors—our planting stick and our steering sticks—those are our weapons against hunger and poverty and sickness”[21].
Thompson has since taken to social media in order to spread the knowledge of traditional Navajo farming techniques, making it easier and more accessible for Navajo residents to yield their own fresh fruits and vegetables. This movement, spearheaded by Thompson and other Navajo leaders and community leaders, works to both fortify the security and independence of the Navajo Nation through a restoration of their traditional food sources, as well as to reconnect a new generation of Navajo residents to the cultural roots and practices that they have historically been separated from. Thus, food sovereignty is a tool to jointly combat both hunger and intergenerational trauma.
Similarly, Cynthia Wilson, Traditional Foods Program Director of the nonprofit organization Utah Diné Bikéyah, launched Seeds and Sheep in the spring of 2020. This is a program with the goal of getting drought-resistant seeds and female ewes (and potentially even lambs) into the hands of Navajo residents interested in returning to a subsistence lifestyle. In May, Wilson wrote that
“launching the ‘Seeds and Sheep’ program is an act of food justice to show the Earth and universe that we are shifting back to cultural solutions to address the COVID-19 pandemic, climate crisis, and oppression on our food systems…colonization, cultural appropriation, and assimilation has put our subsistent life ways into dormancy… restoring our flocks of sheep and expanding seed sovereignty is a way to reclaim our self-sufficient food systems, economy and connection to the land.”[22]
Wilson’s Seeds and Sheep initiative points to Navajo Food Sovereignty as a possible path towards a food system in Navajo Nation that is equitable, resilient to climate change, and incorporates both intergenerational healing and reclamation of cultural values. Beyond that, it indicates an encouraging grassroots movement of reconnection with sustainable practices and the utilization of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in order to combat systemic environmental injustice.
Conclusion
Today’s global food system has a long way to go in order to meet its foremost goals of worldwide equity, sustainability, and resilience. With climate change wreaking havoc on the agricultural industry due to rising temperatures and subsequent regional droughts or floods, it is crucial that we make a concerted effort to reinforce our methods of food production in a way that is both adaptive to our changing climate, and has minimal negative environmental effects such as desertification, eutrophication, and excessive greenhouse gas emissions. As new innovations in agriculture such as hydroponics and indoor farming gain more popularity and exploration in public discourse, I believe that we must give at least the same amount of attention and resources to restoring some of the traditional practices in sustainable agriculture that have been utilized effectively for millennia—including crop rotation, cover cropping, farming biodiversity, integrated pest management, and more.
With respect to the Navajo Nation, the greatest tools to counter the current system of food apartheid may simply be the vast stores of TEK and sustainable farming techniques that have been denoted in Diné Bibee Nahaz’aanii Bitsésiléi for generations. As Cynthia Wilson wrote, “the resources are already in our communities, and now the pandemic is showing us the need to rely on our culture more than ever”[23].
As climate stressors inevitably increase around the world in the coming years, challenges to small-scale agriculture such as increased drought or flooding will likely prompt more and more instances of climate change-induced migration, both domestically and potentially even internationally. Thus, it is important to view the food system in Navajo Nation not as an isolated circumstance, but as a representation of what may soon come on a much larger scale. It is imperative that we not only work to innovate and refashion our current agricultural practices, but also look to the vast quantities of indigenous knowledge in agroecology and sustainable agriculture in hopes of establishing a new global food system based on equity, cooperation, and longevity.
Eliana is Earth Refuge’s Archivist and sophomore at Stanford University majoring in Earth Systems, with minors in Arabic and Creative Writing. While on campus, Eliana could often be found planting, harvesting, and planning community events at the O’Donohue Family Stanford Educational Farm, where she serves as Vice President of Stanford RooTS.
[3] “Navajo Nation.” Navajo Area, Indian Health Service – The Federal Health Program for American Indians and Alaska Natives, www.ihs.gov/navajo/navajonation.
[9] “Good Laws, Good Food: Putting Food Policy to Work in the Navajo Nation.” Navajo Food Policy Toolkit, The Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic, May 2015, www.navajohs.org/uploads/PressRelease/fb31f5d091d74bac8e18ac02e46455e6/Navajo_Food_Policy_Toolkit_May_2015.pdf.
[10] Kreider, Matilda. “13 Grocery Stores: The Navajo Nation Is a Food Desert.” Planet Forward, 10 Dec. 2019, www.planetforward.org/idea/13-grocery-stores-the-navajo-nation-is-a-food-desert.
[12] “Diné Food Sovereignty: A Report on the Navajo Nation Food System and the Case to Rebuild a Self-Sufficient Food System for the Diné People.” Diné Food Sovereignty Report, Diné Policy Institute, Apr. 2014, www.dinecollege.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/dpi-food-sovereignty-report.pdf.
[13] Morales, Laurel. “Navajo Nation Sees Farming Renaissance During Coronavirus Pandemic.” NPR, NPR, 28 July 2020, www.npr.org/2020/07/28/895735482/navajo-nation-sees-farming-renaissance-during-coronavirus-pandemic.
[14] Dutko, Paula, et al. “Characteristics and Influential Factors of Food Deserts.” Economic Research Service – USDA, USDA, Aug. 2012, www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/45014/30940_err140.pdf.
[15]Navajo Food Policy Toolkit, “Good Laws, Good Food.”
[16]Navajo Food Policy Toolkit, “Good Laws, Good Food.”
[17] Dutko et al. “Characteristics and Influential Factors of Food Deserts.”
[18] Brones, Anna. “Karen Washington: It’s Not a Food Desert, It’s Food Apartheid.” Guernica, 10 May 2018, www.guernicamag.com/karen-washington-its-not-a-food-desert-its-food-apartheid/.
[20] Diné Policy Institute, “Diné Food Sovereignty.”
[21] Morales, “Navajo Nation Sees Farming Renaissance During Coronavirus Pandemic.”
[22] Wilson, Cynthia. “‘Seeds and Sheep’ Program in Response to Covid.” Utah Dine Bikeyah, 8 May 2020, utahdinebikeyah.org/seeds-and-sheep-program-in-response-to-covid/.
“Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.” ― Noam Chomsky
Transitional justice comprises the implementation of legal and non-legal measures in order to (1) address and acknowledge systemic human rights violations, (2) transition a society into a new manifestation of itself in which those violations no longer exist, and (3) render justice to victims of those previous violations[i].
This concept was likely not at the forefront of the minds of the architects of the Paris Agreement[ii]. Yet, the “spirit”, of transitional justice is imbedded in international environmental law. The international legal principle of common but differentiated responsibilities is premised on the notion that developed states must bear greater burdens in tacking climate change than developing states for two reasons: their greater historical responsibility for global warming, and their greater wealth[iii].
The Anthropocene is, however, not the first time humans have had to navigate complex historically rooted tensions about the ideal relationship between responsibility for past and future action. This article will provide an introductory analysis of the possible application of transitional justice mechanisms in addressing these tensions in the international climate context.
This article will analyse three fundamental mechanisms in the transitional justice toolkit, in the climate context: truth commissions, reparations and litigation.
Truth Commissions
Traditionally, truth commissions are instituted by new governments to establish their legitimacy by formally breaking with the past, and to create an opportunity for reconciliation or unification[iv]. Truth commissions can avoid some of the limitations and political difficulties of pursuing legal punishments for past actions. Their purpose is to investigate, document, and raise awareness of past harms as a form of acknowledgement, and to recommend strategies for addressing these harms, avoiding future recurrence, and supporting particular victims. Compared to prosecutions, truth commissions can more easily engage with systemic bases for harm. In the climate context, a possible avenue could be the creation of an UN-supported, but independent international climate truth commission, comprised of senior individuals in the climate policy and legal space to construct frameworks on historical responsibility[v]. In documenting experiences of climate consequences, representation would be key to the legitimacy of such a commission.
Reparations
Efforts to provide redress for historical atrocities and abuse are typically framed as “reparations”. Reparations can take many forms, and include material compensation, rehabilitation, symbolic gestures, and guarantees of non-recurrence[vi]. In the climate context, reparations could feasibly take the form of short-term investments in local well-being and development, and long-term investments in capacity building and technological advancements in order to mitigate the worst effects of ecological disaster[vii]. Non-material reparations may encompass formal apologies and acknowledgments and are linked to the truth-seeking institutions discussed above. It would be imperative for climate reparation framework to adopt a “bottom-up” approach to adequately identify and implement solutions for the needs of recipients, particularly those most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
Litigation
Legal remedies are not novel in the climate fight. Climate litigation is a growing phenomenon in domestic courts around the world[viii]. Climate change is driving activists and litigants to reimagine pre-existing legal norms in light of its many strands of contention and uncertainty. Increasingly, plaintiffs are advancing strong, rights-based arguments in the courtroom. A human rights-based approach is also a pillar of legal action in the transitional justice context[ix]. The importance of a rights-based approach goes beyond the mere winning of a case. It is also a “win” in this kind of strategic litigation when the publicity of a lawsuit elevates social consciousness regarding climate policy, steering attention on a mass scale towards the fundamental rights impacted by climate change.
Conclusion
However, strategic climate litigation aimed at expanding the Overton window is both vital and insufficient on its own. Without further fundamental and longer lasting reforms, it is unlikely that sufficient deterrence can be cultivated to ensure non-recurrence. Therefore, similar to the most effective examples of transitional justice policies, successful climate change mitigation strategies must implement a plurality of approaches in the pursuit of a sustainable society. Whilst transitional justice and climate policy do not correlate on an one-to-one scale, the international climate regime cannot afford to ignore ideas on how to build cooperation and effectively assign responsibility. Transitional justice may well be a relevant piece in solving that puzzle.
Earth Refuge Archivist and Human Rights Pulse core team member Vaughn Rajah is passionate about sustainability and human rights. His scholarship and writing focuses on international law, climate change and transitional justice.
[iv] I Robinson. Truth Commissions and Anti-Corruption: Towards a Complementary Framework? International Journal of Transitional Justice, Volume 9, Issue 1, March 2015, Pages 33 – 50.
[v] S Klinsky. The Global Climate Regime and Transitional Justice. Routledge Advances in Climate Change Research. 2018. Pages 95 – 100.
[vi] Climate Strategies. Why Explore “Transitional Justice” in the Climate Context? https://climatestrategies.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Why-Explore-Transitional-Justice-in-the-Climate-Context.pdf [Accessed 20 January 2021]. Page 3.
[ix] E Anderson. Transitional Justice and the Rule of Law: Lessons from the Field. Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, Volume 47, Issue 1, 2015, pages 305 – 317.
When it comes to the question of refugees and providing aid, the Global North is first in line with answers and propositions. However, when it comes to acting on the agreed upon policies and practices, the Global North is also first to counter-act with policies relieving the states from cooperation and burden sharing to protect their own interests (Behrman 2019:59). Over the past few decades, the world has witnessed a dramatic increase in refugee flows, to which states in the Global North answered by restricting entry to their territory. As we move into the 21st Century, the world now faces new challenges and the emergence of a new type of refugee: those fleeing their countries due to climate related issues. The Global North adopted restrictive policies when faced with the ongoing refugee crisis, which leads us to believe it will do the same throughout the 21st Century. This essay will thus be focusing on just that.
First, we will define the system of remote control and discuss the different border controls set in place within the Global North. We will continue by establishing the lack of governance within the international refugee regime, which eventually leads to a lack of accountability of the Global North with regard to refugees. Finally, we will discuss the role of public opinion in the refugee protection discourse.
Remote Control
Remote control is a “system of passports, visas, and passenger ship checks” that keeps people from leaving for certain destinations without having passed initial screening (Fitzgerald 2019:4). For instance, states have put in place pre-clearances in foreign airports to avoid having refugees reach their territories. The same governments also converge on global visa policies, carrier sanctions and liaison officers (Fitzgerald 2019:14-15). In addition, they campaign for remote control throughout the countries of departure, like the British government did in 1934. They successfully pressured the Greek government to pass a law prohibiting anyone without a valid passport or visa to leave from Greece to Palestine (Fitzgerald 2019:5). These policies of expulsion, and many others, are meant to keep asylum seekers away from the Global North (Fitzgerald 2019:1). Because of the non-refoulement clause of the 1951 UN Refugee Convention (Hatton 2020:82) that prevents refugees from being sent back to their persecutors once on the territory, states now result in the manipulation of territoriality (Fitzgerald 2019:9). It allows states the possibility to refuse entry to refugees by saying they did not actually step foot into their territory.
Border reinforcements of wealthier democratic states therefore suggest the following: While the respective governments do cooperate amongst themselves to exclude refugees and migrants, there is a lack of willingness to cooperate in the burden-sharing when it comes to the reception of refugees. Yet, more lenient border policies would further provide refugees with protection and aid by providing them basic human rights. This entails access to safety, to food, to shelter, to healthcare, to education and to work (Feldman 2012:391). However, given the current geopolitical context, it does not seem that recipient states would enact such policies due to the fact that they perceive refugees as an economic strain (Behrman 2019:59).
Refugees can first be perceived as an economic strain because of the expanses spent by host countries to provide them with the necessary protection, which is with national resources and services, as previously mentioned. This would result, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates, in refugees costing countries of the European Union 0.1% of their GDP (Shellito 2016:16). In addition, refugees might also disturb local economic markets, from food to housing, thus altering prices. For instance, Turkey has faced a sharp increase in rental pricing because of the refugee crisis, which hurts Turkish families with relatively low incomes (Shellito 2016:17). And so, because refugees can negatively impact host countries’ economy, said countries are less inclined to adopt lenient border policies.
Lack of Governance
The international refugee regime has always lacked a clearly defined system of global governance, allowing states of the Global North to avoid their responsibilities. It remains restrained as it contains no binding obligation on states to cooperate or ensure the functioning of the regime (Betts and Milner 2020:1-4). In turn, this weak governance has prevented important forms of dialogue, political engagement and cooperation, which are necessary to facilitate international cooperation or the realization of the regime’s core objective: solutions for the protection of refugees (Betts and Milner 2020:4), including those affected by climate change.
The United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees (“UNHCR”) the regime’s primary institution, was founded to provide this protection; it also supervises the application of conventions and develops international refugee law (Goodwin-Gill 2020:2). However, the UNHCR’s financial structure was designed to make it dependent on Western states as it relies mostly on the donation of those governments (Parekh 2020:28). Its role is to supervise the international refugee regime and publish non-binding guidelines on the application of international refugee law. Because the UNHCR does not hold power to enforce any rule of law (Goodwin-Gill 2020:40), it constrains its ability to resist or influence the actions and interests of more powerful states (Betts and Milner 2020:2). Thus, as nothing prevents governments of the Global North from prioritizing their own interests above their responsibility to help refugees, they have no incentive to cooperate with the international refugee regime any more than they already do (Parekh 2020:23).
Finally, states of the Global North measure their success in the refugee regime in their ability to control refugees by containing them in their regions of origin (Betts and Milner 2020:7) or monitoring their movement through remote-control policies (Behrman 2019:48). And so, as long as refugees remain in the Global South, whether in their home region or refugee camps, governments will neither be motivated to cooperate empathetically, nor feel the pressure to assume their share of the burden (Betts and Milner 2020:7).
Lack of Accountability
States within the Global North have a duty to rescue due to the superior means they possess over developing countries. However, because they are not the cause of the problem, nor have they initiated the events that forced refugees to flee their countries of origin, they minimize their obligations toward refugees (Parekh 2020:23). Although their duty to protect and rescue comes second to their own interests, states of the Global North are still seen as rescuers. As a result, they are somewhat excused from taking on too much of the burden of refugees (Parekh 2020:24). As it is not clear who should be responsible for the protection of displaced persons, those who fail to rescue are rarely held accountable.
However, if wealthier states with actual resources to help cannot be blamed for not upholding their duty of rescue, they can be blamed for being co-contributors to a system that structurally prevents the majority of refugees from seeking refuge because of the aforementioned remote-control policies (Parekh 2020:27). If not held accountable for their actions, governments will continue to allow the perpetuation of human rights violations refugees face.
For example, in 2010, following the destructive earthquake that occurred in Haiti, Haitians have been granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS); it allowed them to work legally in the United States (US). Unfortunately, in 2017, the Trump administration attempted to end TPS for Haitians (Macdonald 2019). Although it did not succeed, this kind of behavior is a clear indicator of the current US president’s stance toward refugees, bringing us to believe that cooperation and burden-sharing will not be increased in the near-future. And consequently, without accountability, governments might try to further minimize their role within the international refugee regime.
Public Opinion
Finally, while governments of the Global North have been struggling between their own interests and their moral obligations to refugees, the rise of nationalism has only added fuel to the push back against refugees (Parekh 2010:23). Although populist political parties might not always get elected in office, they still shift the agendas of other political parties towards a more anti-immigration stance (Hatton 2020:87). In fact, general public opinion has shifted dramatically against immigrants all across the Global North, due to the overall climate that surrounds refugees and asylum seekers more specifically (Hatton 2020:88). For example, because public opinion is strongly against unauthorized entry; an increase in the number of arrivals has induced hardened attitudes towards immigrants as a whole (Hatton 2020:89).
As the decisions of the democratic governments in the Global North normally reflect the majority of the populations’ point of view towards a contentious topic, the rise of nationalism across the Global North has the ability to reveal the poignant possibility that the burden-sharing and cooperation of Western governments and related institutions within the international refugee regime will not increase in the decades to come.
Flora Bensadon is a recent graduate of History and International Development from McGill University, Canada. Through her studies, her culturally diverse background and her travels, Flora has taken a profound interest in the problems of migration, specifically those of climate refugees.
Alexander Betts and James Milner. May 2019. “Governance of the Global Refugee Regime,” World Refugee Council Research Paper No. 13: 1–14.
David Scott FitzGerald. 2019. “Never Again?” In: Refuge Beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers, 21–40. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
David Scott FitzGerald. 2019. “The Catch-22 of Asylum Policy,” In: Refuge Beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum Seekers, 1–20. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The view that poverty leads to pollution and environmental destruction, or that poorer people care less about the environment, was for a long time firmly embedded in traditional views of environmentalism. Western environmentalists sought to conserve the natural environment in selected protected zones or areas, often displacing local communities that had lived on the land for centuries. This approach not only had limited success in addressing wider ecological challenges, but also caused social injustices and further marginalisation of vulnerable groups. A similar approach underlies some development models, according to which a community or state must first reach a certain level of economic development before they could (or should) be concerned with addressing environmental destruction.
Yet in reality, poorer people often live closer to the land and have a more direct interest and concern in environmental protection. For example, while wealthy people can afford to move to clean, pollution-free areas, economically and socially marginalised people often suffer the health and quality of life consequences of environmental destruction and waste generated by the wealthy.
Furthermore, we live in what the chemist and Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen has termed the Anthropocene; an epoch where no part of the world remains unaffected or untouched by negative human influences and destruction. This destruction ranges from polluting 88 percent of the ocean surface with plastic waste, to causing an estimated 1 million species to be threatened by extinction, to even changing the chemistry of the air. Today it is clear that the “pollute now, clean up later” model which most developed countries followed, is no longer a feasible option. At the same time, consumption and inequality, and thus the asymmetrical consequences of environmental destruction, continue to rise.
Intersecting Social and Environmental Vulnerabilities
In recognition of this reality, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by the world’s governments at a special UN Summit in 2015 under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Agenda 2030 and the SDGs serve as the current blueprint for the future of humanity. Comprising 17 Goals, the SDGs cover all aspects of human wellbeing, from peace to clean water, gender equality to climate action. Under the slogan of “leave no-one behind” the SDGs aim to eradicate poverty and hunger, reduce inequality within and among states, and provide a “plan of action for people, planet and prosperity”. It recognises that ecological sustainability and environmental protection cannot be reached without addressing people’s basic needs and ensuring a more equitable sharing of the limited planetary resources. Conversely, it also recognises that people can only “fulfil their potential […] in a healthy environment”.
However, the idea that the people who suffer most from social and economic injustices are also the worst affected by environmental degradation and destruction, has a longer history. The Environmental Justice (EJ) movement emerged in the United States in the 1980s, when a predominantly African American neighbourhood in Warren County, North Carolina, was identified by the government to host a toxic landfill. This started a national movement of people speaking out against environmental injustices targeting communities based on their “race and economic status”. Despite its origins in the US, EJ has a lot in common with the “environmentalism of the poor” as it developed in other parts of the world around the same time. From India, to Brazil, to Nigeria, local groups have risen up in protest over oil extraction, dam construction, mining, and monoculture production affecting marginalised groups. Broadly conceived, the term EJ could be applied to this wide range of activities all rejecting the “unequal distribution of ecological costs and benefits”.
Synergies and Complementarity of SDGs and Environmental Justice
There are many ways in which the aims and principles of EJ and the SDG targets overlap, especially in the inseparability of social and ecological concerns, in the recognition of the need to address inequality and intersecting vulnerabilities, and in addressing patterns of consumption which underlay inequality and degradation.
They also complement one another in that the SDGs set concrete targets for achieving these common aims, such as ensuring that all people have access to clean water and sanitation (Goal 6), affordable and sustainable energy (Goal 7), sustainable industrialisation (Goal 9) and inclusive, safe and resilient cities (Goal 11).
SDG Goal 16 is also closely related to the ambitions of EJ, in that it explicitly aims to achieve access to justice for all. SDG 16 in particular “calls for non-discriminatory laws and policies for sustainable development – to ensure that the SDGs leave no one behind”. It also requires of states to provide for inclusive processes for decision-making, access by the public to information and equitable access to justice, thereby empowering people to direct the various elements of development above.
EJ on the other hand affirms “the right to be free from ecological destruction”. This language of “rights” supplements the language in the SDGs which in the setting of “goals” and “targets” does not have the same strong component of entitlement and enforceability.
The areas of overlap between the SDGs and EJ in their aims and underlying principles allow them to be applied in a way that is mutually reinforcing. While the EJ is very much a grassroots movement, the SDGs are a globally orchestrated development plan implemented at the highest levels. Drawing on the strengths of each – local level advocacy and community mobilisation and participation of the EJ and the broad strategic aims of the SDGs – the two systems may strengthen the common goal of ecologically sustainable and equitable human development.
Elsabé is a human rights lawyer by training and currently works in human rights at the African regional level. She is specifically interested in issues related to extractive industries, socio-economic rights, sustainable development and transitional justice. She is a co-editor of an edited volume: Governance, Human Rights and Political Transformation in Africa, and is excited to edit content for this inspiring initiative.
When President Donald Trump issued a tirade of tweets berating late Maryland congressman and civil rights advocate Elijah Cummings, the media and public were quick to condemn the remarks.
Some cited Carl A. Zimring’s Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism in the United States in order to explain the racist roots of lodging those specific criticisms against a majority-Black city. Zimring’s book, widely released the same year that Donald Trump was elected, provides an incisive look at how whiteness, waste, and sanitation have been entangled since the emergence of the United States (US). Now, after four years of the Trump presidency and the deaths of over 400,000 Americans due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is arguable that Clean and White offers critical new insight into the current crisis. How might the same legacy of environmental racism in those tweets be at play in the politics of the pandemic?
Environmental Fear-Mongering
When Trump and right-wing pundits call COVID-19 the “Chinese virus”, but make sure to describe the new variant of the virus as “first identified in Britain,” this is not simply the result of differing international relations. Throughout his administration, Trump has evoked fears of foreign filth as a way to pander to white nativism.
In doing so, Trump preyed on the same underlying anxieties about environmental hygiene and sexual pollution that Zimring argues have been stoked since the mid-19th century. He writes that “during the [Civil] war, fear of germs and fear of social order without slavery produced fears that would endure and intertwine”. The early 20th century influx of immigrants and Black southerners to northern cities, Zimring explains, would demand new methods for whites to uphold both racial purity and superiority, two mutually supporting ideas. The sanitary maintenance of these growing industrial cities was just the ticket.
As Zimring shows, non-white citizens have long been over-represented in “dirty” jobs like laundry, waste hauling, and scrap recycling. Jewish immigrants, once barred the white middle-class, were able to “ascend” the racial hierarchy by moving from scrap-scavengers to junkyard managers. Black, Asian, and Latinx residents were, as a result of restricted economic mobility and the supposed biological impurity of their skin color, kept tied to waste. Ideas of “who would deserve to be clean and who should do the cleaning” that were codified in the 1850s were solidified within the 20th century urban order.
A Dirty Legacy
Cleanliness in the years 2020 and 2021 has taken on new meaning, but the costs to non-white communities fall in line with the history that Zimring lays out. Immigrants and non-white communities are overly represented among essential, frontline workers, and fewer than 1 in 5 Black workers are able to telework. One Harvard study found that healthcare workers of color were more likely to care for patients with COVID-19, to report using inadequate or reused protective gear, and nearly twice as likely as white colleagues to test positive for the coronavirus. As non-white nurses, bus drivers, warehouse workers, and cleaning service people continue to be exposed to COVID-19 at dramatic rates, we see the contagious new consequences of centuries-old environmental racism.
But understanding America’s history of environmental racism is not just about survival. It is also about resistance. Despite record-breaking numbers of protesters at Black Lives Matter protests this past summer, high rates of mask wearing and social distancing led to no noticeable increases in COVID 19 cases. While it is too early to tell whether the Capitol riot will prove to have been a ‘superspreader’ event, images of the dense, maskless, and overwhelmingly white crowds demand a new look at how race and hygiene are once again colliding. As Zimring highlights, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated after delivering his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech in support of the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike. The political entanglement of masks, “dirty things” and racial justice is not one of happenstance. It is simply the newest iteration of a history of struggle.
Looking to the future
Almost fourteen years ago to the day, then senator Joe Biden filed the paperwork to launch his bid for president of the United States. Later that afternoon, speaking in reference to fellow candidate senator Barack Obama, Biden remarked: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.”
Clean and White sifts through the dirt and grime of 244 years of American history to prove that understandings of race – and the perpetuation of racism – have always been about who has been deemed to be “clean,” and who has not. As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on and Joe Biden steps up to replace Donald Trump as president, the legacy of environmental racism and hygiene in the United States is more pressing than ever. Whether Joe Biden and white Americans will pay attention remains to be seen.
This book review was published as part of our January 2021 collaboration with E&U for the Climate and Human Rights Pulse on Environmental Justice and Human Rights.
Aubrey Calaway is writer and researcher who has investigated issues of climate change, human trafficking, and community resilience. She currently works as a research fellow at Human Trafficking Search.
It is undeniable that the effects of climate change disproportionately impact the poor. Climate change interferes with the full exercise of multiple fundamental human rights—like the rights to health, water, food, and housing—through its adverse effects on ecosystems, natural resources, and physical infrastructure.
Since the evolution of Homo sapiens, the earth’s dynamic climate has played a pivotal role in the accumulation, distribution, and preservation of natural resources and wealth. In order to survive and develop, societies have had to constantly adjust behaviours to the climate. Adaptability determines humanity’s ability to cope and recover from events. The largest distinction in adaptation strategies lies between developing and developed countries.
According to the Global Climate Risk Index, eight of the ten countries most affected by extreme weather events from 1998 to 2017 were developing nations. These countries are vulnerable not just to frequency of events but also in their limited capacity to deal with impact. With an increase in intensity and duration of adverse weather events, time and resources available to rebuild will decrease. The impacts of climate change, however, far exceed these broad terms. Effective public health infrastructure underpins the social and economic development, and climate change starkly affects water and sanitation, prevalence of disease, food availability, population growth, and migration.
Water and Sanitation
Over two billion people are dependent on drinking water contaminated with faeces. Water availability and sanitation is an existing issue that will intensify quickly with an increase in the global temperature. Access to reliable sources of drinking water is a fundamental human right entwined in article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the right to a standard of living adequate for health and wellbeing. However, this basic need is not met in many parts of the world. Contaminated water can transmit a myriad of diseases, like polio, typhoid, cholera, and dysentery as well as more-familiar diarrhoea—an illness that is laughed off in the West but causes 485,000 deaths per year in developing countries due to contaminated water. As rainfall and temperature change over time, the provision of clean water, adequate sanitation, and drainage will become even more strained.
Although rainfall is projected to increase in the moist tropic regions and higher latitudes, it is forecasted to decrease in middle latitudes and semi-arid low latitudes. In the regions experiencing reduced rainfall, river levels will drop and warmer temperatures will degrade water quality as dilution of unfavourable contaminants decreases, oxygen dissolves at a slower rate, and micro-bacteria become more active. Climate change exacerbates conditions in already drought-stricken regions, reducing access to clean water and generating drier conditions that strain agriculture and lead to more wildfires.
Disease
The effect of climate change on global disease patterns will intensify existing vulnerabilities across the world. Transmission rate and spread of rodent-borne and vector-borne diseases is expected to increase with the temperature—for example, experts have seen the rate at which pathogens mature and replicate within mosquitos accelerates with temperature. Insect population density and bite frequency also rises. A study by the University of Princeton found that mosquito abundance increases 30 – 100% with every 0.5 degree increase in temperature in the East African Highlands. According to the World Health Organization, over 405,000 people die of malaria annually with the vast majority (>97%) of deaths occurring in developing countries of Africa and Southeast Asia. As habitat distribution of mosquitos changes with the climate, human populations with little or no immunity to infections may be at risk, finding themselves in new transmission zones.
The human right to the “highest attainable standard of health” is implicated by climate change through increased spread of disease and the resulting decreased capacity of health care facilities to cope. This will disproportionately impact the poor through access to quality healthcare, both cost and availability. Malaria can be prevented through spraying DDT, using mosquito nets, taking medications, and through education surrounding stagnant water sources near the dwelling. Malaria can be treated, but most of these solutions are not available to developing countries.
Food Insecurity will Grow With Climate Change
The Climate and Food Vulnerability Index found that the ten most food-insecure countries in the world generate under half a tonne of CO2 per person—collectively 0.08% of total emissions. Crops, forestry, livestock, fisheries, and aquaculture will all be affected by rising temperatures, changes in precipitation regimes, and increased concentrations of CO2. This includes changing patterns of plant and livestock disease, affecting crop yields and agricultural production. Increased frequency of extreme weather events will destroy crops; flooding and rising sea levels will contaminate fresh water sources and agricultural land or cause salinisation and the elimination of nursery areas for fish.
Regions where subsistence farmers, Indigenous people, and coastal communities undertake small-scale food production are particularly vulnerable. This is often due to lack of access to optimal land, adequate agricultural inputs, and access to trade. Approximately three-and-a-half million annual deaths of mothers and young children can be attributed to malnutrition, low birth weights, and non optimal breast-feeding. Growth stunting due to chronic undernutrition affects one in every three children under five-years-old born in developing countries.
It is likely that some agricultural regions will benefit in productivity with the warming climate, but this is almost entirely in high-latitude developed countries that do not already have large proportions of malnutrition. The impacts of climate change on food security and malnutrition are expected to be colossal. Access to food has been recognised as a fundamental human right, and climate change can threaten this through availability, accessibility, adequacy, and sustainability of food—all elements that are already reduced in developing nations.
Migration and Resulting Conflict
Population growth is occurring in conjunction with climate change, intensifying established issues with shelter, water, and food insecurity. With more environments becoming flooded, arid, or inhospitable, large-scale population migration is likely. The UN projects that global populations will reach 9.8 billion by 2050, with roughly 83 million new additions per year. The majority of this increase can be attributed to a small number of countries. It is expected that by 2050, half of the world’s population will reside in India, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Tanzania, the United States, Indonesia, and Uganda. Eight out of nine of these are Global South nations. Most developed countries are predicted to stay in similar numbers and would even decline slightly if not for the expected migration from developing countries.
Drought increases and desertification of arid environments will cause population migration into urban areas from drought-hit, rural areas. Sea levels are rising as a result of both ice-cap melt and oceanic thermal expansion associated with climate change and will be a prominent driver of large-scale population displacement all around the world.
Impacts will be felt most severely in densely-populated, low-lying river deltas including the river delta of Bangladesh. The IPCC reports that nearly one million people will have to migrate by 2050, growing to over two million by 2100 due to sea level rise.
For some countries it is quite simple: elevate or relocate. But both of these solutions bring a myriad of problems, especially on a large scale.
Responsibility of Developed Nations
The wealthy countries of China, the United States, and the European Union are the world’s top emitters of fossil fuels and contribute over half of global emissions. The reality is the countries that will suffer most gravely are those that have contributed least to the problem. These top emitters contribute 14 times the emissions of the bottom 100 countries. Without substantial action from these countries, the world will struggle to tackle climate change. Questions must be raised about international justice and the violation of human rights.
The disproportionate responsibility of climate change across the world must be represented at an international political level. And the pressure must be put on those key players. This is the focus of some UN initiatives including the Paris agreement and Sustainable Development Goals. Industrialised, wealthy nations are not spared the effects of climate change. On the contrary, climate change exacerbates inequities here as well. Ultimately, climate change gives Western nations a heavy hunch of responsibility. We have the resources, science, and technology to change the trajectory; the Global South often does often not.
Corporate responsibility must also be addressed. Worldwide, 100 fossil fuel corporations are responsible for 71% of all industrial emissions. Even if corporations agree to emissions reduction targets, they often fail to include the emissions associated with the entire life cycle of products—from upstream emissions associated with extraction, production, and processing to the downstream emissions of product use and disposal. Some companies will only include emissions associated with their own facilities, which can be an extremely small proportion of the total. The devil is in the details. It should be a requirement for all corporations to accurately measure emissions and report them with full transparency. These should be reviewed externally and held to accord in emission reduction targets.
Individual actions are important for the climate movement, but corporations have the ability to influence consumer habits, drive policy change, and respond quickly and boldly to the climate crisis. We must hold them accountable.
At this stage in time, industrialised nations are demanding developing countries spend their scarce resources on adaptation and coping strategies to survive. These resources should be spent dealing with existing problems, not those exacerbated by climate change. Aotearoa, as one example, must step up to put pressure on corporations as well as other developed nations to do the same. The Zero Carbon Act was a significant step in Aotearoa, accounting for a climate commission, periodic risk assessments, and national adaptation plans; however, it fails to make the unequivocal link between climate change and human rights—a valuable tool that could escalate action. We have set emission reduction targets, we have raised expectations, but it is still not reflected in a demonstrable, measurable reduction of CO2.
Measurable progress speaks louder than targets, and emissions must be reduced to net zero. Only then will we gain the respect and leverage necessary to encourage significant action in other Western countries. Empathy is an innate human attribute, and if we could prevent the incomprehensible suffering of millions, would we not? Those in developed nations will still find that climate change will cause disruption and discomfort, at best; but the poor will suffer gravely.
I use the terms Native and Indigenous interchangeably throughout this book review. These terms refer to the Indigenous communities across the United States whose land was stolen during European colonisation of the Americas. I am eternally grateful to be living and studying onAbenaki Land.
Dina Gilio-Whitaker, of the Colville Confederate Tribes, creates a compelling narrative centred upon the environmental justice of the centuries-long Indigenous fight against the United States’ (US) cultural andlegal systems. Systems that, to this day, are deep-seated in white supremacist and settler-colonial frameworks of oppression. The author provides a range of case studies surrounding more contemporary environmental justice issues such as the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and extractive development expansion, to the industrial revolution’s impact on environmental and cultural degradation. An underpinning theme is the paradigm shift required within environmental justice; away from one “defined by norms of distributive justice within a capitalist framework” (Gilio-Whitaker, 2019, pp. 12), to one that “can accommodate the full weight of the history of settler colonialism…and embrace differences in the ways Indigenous peoples view land and nature” (pp.12). She argues that the eradication of Indigenous worldviews through the imposition of dominant Christian settler-colonial ideas still permeates today, and that a deeper understanding of the Indigenous worldview that “there is no separation between people and land, between people and other life forms, or between people and their ancient ancestors” (pp. 138) would pave the way for freedom from environmental harms and injustices for Indigenous communities.
Legal frameworks should protect people, their health and wellbeing, and that of the environment. However, Gilio-Whitaker highlights that the US legal system is embedded in settler-colonial understandings of Indigenous cultures, which continues to cause harm. The first example of this is the Obama administration’s endorsement of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) (pp.32). Whilst sanctioning for Indigenous peoples’ rights, the government’s “dictatorial and colonial” (pp. 33) approach functions like a backhanded compliment. It claims to support “rights to Indigenous self-determination” (pp. 32), but drowns the document in disclaimers, which shows the lengths to which administrations are willing to go in order to maintain a false pretence of supporting Indigenous peoples. A second example is in passing the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978), which outlawed the ban on Indigenous religious expression, but still provided legal backing for the destruction of sacred sites (pp. 140). The examples of unsuccessful cases, such as Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association (pp. 140) and San Francisco Peaks (pp. 141-142), assumes the fundamental misunderstanding of Indigenous religion within Western agendas. This stems from the historical imposition of Christianity that still infiltrates today despite US secularity. This lack of understanding or compassion has forced Indigenous communities to pursue alternative approaches, such as pointing out human health implications (pp. 142), in hopes of establishing legal agency within jurisdictions. In order to decolonise the system, Gilio-Whitaker argues that we must divorce the legal system from a dominant Western religion in order to better protect Indigenous peoples and their cultures.
The need for coalition-building between Native and non-Native peoples is another strong undercurrent of Gilio-Whitaker’s book. However, in order to achieve productive collaboration for environmental justice, an understanding of histories and cultures is required by non-Natives, in order for us to act as better allies and collaborators. One such critical understanding that Gilio-Whitaker promotes through the history of national parks is the social construction of nature originating from the “virgin wilderness hypothesis” (pp. 39), or The Pristine Myth, which physically manifested into national parks. These parks were created in the name of “preservation”, but in reality, the only thing preserved was “white supremacy and settler privilege” (pp. 95) through relentless erasure of Indigenous peoples. In order to move forward in the environmental movement, non-Natives must disentangle ourselves from and decolonise the way we think about nature by for instance, re-imaging the way we think and talk about “wilderness”, particularly in the US. Another critical understanding was brought to the surface in Gilio-Whitaker’s account of the demonstrations organised by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against DAPL and the culture clash that arose from the requirement for women to wear skirts. It highlighted the importance of traditional understanding and respect when supporting Indigenous communities. At first, I could understand why women stood by their views on wearing a skirt, which was embedded in the historical oppression or conditioning of women. However, Gilio-Whitaker makes a strong argument for why such clashes occur, which made me rethink my own stance. This shift in understanding came from looking at the changes in cultural systems as only benefitting white communities, and ultimately promoting white privilege. This reframing of the non-Native women’s belief as “white cultural superiority” (pp. 124) solidified for me how this culture clash still promotes an inherently racist agenda.
On the whole, I found Gilio-Whitaker’s analysis of Indigenous environmental justice crucial and thought-provoking. However, I felt that there was a political bias which, albeit understandable, convoluted the narrative and was at times contradictory. For instance, in her introduction, the same paragraph claims that Democrats and their values both do and do not support the movement for Indigenous social and environmental justice (pp. 11). Furthermore, the author goes on to argue that President Obama and his administration were more supportive of Indigenous peoples (pp. 33). Yet, throughout the book Gilio-Whittaker highlights the ambivalence of the Obama administration on Indigenous rights through examples such as the UNDRIP endorsement (pp. 32-33) and San Francisco Peaks legal battle (pp. 141). I would argue that instead of this conflicted approach towards a single administration, holding all political parties and leaders accountable would further benefit the environmental justice movement.
Gilio-Whitaker’s holistic account of Indigenous environmental justice structured within contemporary and historical timelines highlights the work that is still required to decolonise knowledge production and for the US to finally divorce itself from deeply racist ideologies that dictate social, environmental and legal systems.
This book review was published as part of our January 2021 collaboration with E&U for the Climate and Human Rights Pulse on Environmental Justice and Human Rights.
Ella Kiyomi Dobson is a senior at Dartmouth College majoring in Environmental Studies and minoring in studio art. They are particularly interested in the intersection of environmental and social issues pertaining to ecological and fisheries conservation. With previous experience working in the field at marine research labs, they are curious as to how to mitigate the consequential social injustices that stem from biological conservation and related policies.
Gilio-Whitaker, D. (2019). As Long as the Grass Grows: The indigenous fight for environmental justice, from colonisation to Standing Rock. Boston: Beacon Press.
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