Category: North America

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The Navajo Nation: A Case Study on Food Colonialism and Environmental Justice

4 March 2021 – by Eliana Stern

Introduction

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.

References

[1] FAO. 2011. Global food losses and food waste – Extent, causes and prevention. Rome

[2] “Definitions of Food Security.” USDA ERS – Definitions of Food Security, www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/food-security-in-the-us/definitions-of-food-security.aspx.

[3] “Navajo Nation.” Navajo Area, Indian Health Service – The Federal Health Program for American Indians and Alaska Natives, www.ihs.gov/navajo/navajonation.

[4] Indian Health Service, “Navajo Nation.”

[5] “Navajo Sovereignty Day.” Navajo Code Talkers, 1 Oct. 2014, navajocodetalkers.org/navajo-sovereignty-day/.

[6] Navajo Code Talkers, “Navajo Sovereignty Day.”

[7] Navajo Code Talkers, “Navajo Sovereignty Day.”

[8] Indian Health Service, “Navajo Nation.”

[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.

[11] Kreider, “13 Grocery Stores.”

[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/.

[19] Brones, “Karen Washington.”

[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/.

[23] Podmore, Zak. “Seeds and Sheep Program Is Distributing Drought-Resistant Seeds to Native American Families in San Juan County.” The Salt Lake Tribune, 14 May 2020, www.sltrib.com/news/2020/05/14/seeds-sheep-program-is/.

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A Tale of Two Cities: The Complexity of Climate Migrants in North Carolina, USA

2 March 2021 – by Ben Chappelow

Due to its low elevation and vulnerable barrier islands, North Carolina is one of the more at-risk areas in the United States (U.S.) when it comes to sea level rise. It has the largest estuarine system on the U.S. Atlantic Coast, with over 2,300 square miles (3700 sq. km) of coastal land vulnerable to a one-meter rise in sea level. Current projections place more than 789,000 North Carolinian properties at risk in the next thirty years. In some places, tidal flooding has increased by 100 percent since 2000. Even before flooding, many residents will experience heftier down payments and inequities in insurance, which could increase household debt. Either way, North Carolina will experience an exodus of people moving westward. For some communities, a managed retreat is not so simple. Coastal areas like New Bern and Princeville can illustrate the pain and complexity U.S. climate migrants face due to rising sea levels.

New Bern

In 2018, Hurricane Florence swept through the coastal city New Bern, a storm that meteorologists claim was intensified by climate change. Flooding engulfed more than 800 homes, including multiple public housing complexes. Displaced residents in New Bern applied for temporary housing assistance and property loss reimbursements from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), but for many of them, this didn’t solve the problem. Most FEMA reimbursements only last a few months, whilst opening new low-income housing is a multi-year process. Many New Bern locals ended up in shelters, crashing on floors, and renting motel rooms with their FEMA checks. 

The search for new homes isn’t a simple one. Private parties can prey on low-income migrants for a profit, and there are fewer affordable housing projects available to households with mixed income. In the state of North Carolina, it is legal for landlords to discriminate against applicants with ‘section 8’ vouchers (a federal subsidy on housing intended to ensure safe private housing for low-income residents). In Trent Court, New Bern’s housing project, landowners decided to demolish the damaged buildings despite former residents continuing to inhabit their old homes. 

Increasing storms and floods are displacing those who cannot afford to stay. Public housing residents, along with other poor, disabled, elderly, and vulnerable people are forming one of the first waves of climate migrants in the U.S. According to a 2017 report, 9 percent of public housing units and 8 percent of privately owned federally subsidized housing units in the U.S. sit in a floodplain. This is close to 500,000 units and approximately one million people. Many residents of government-subsidized housing in New Orleans, Miami, Houston, and Puerto Rico have already become climate migrants. With sea levels on the projection to rise, New Bern is posed to be one of the canaries in the coal mine for American citizens living in public housing. 

Princeville

For many communities, the problem is not only finding a new home but leaving their current one behind. Princeville, a small town of approximately two thousand people, was a symbol of resilience. It is believed to be the oldest town chartered by freed slaves, originally named Freedom Hill and established by freed slave and carpenter Turner Prince. Residents dealt with Jim Crow-era vigilante violence directed at a self-sufficient all-Black town. Its population remains 96 percent Black. 

Situated along the Tar River, Princeville experiences frequent flooding. This was one of the main reasons Black people in the 19th century were able to settle the land in the first place—white landowners did not want it. The relegation of Black people to flood-prone land and hazardous areas exposes them to greater levels of environmental threats. This inequality became clear when the town has battled two supposed “100-year storms” within the span of twenty years (i.e., Hurricane Floyd in 1999 and Hurricane Matthew in 2016). Homeowners faced a difficult decision: either remain in an increasingly hazardous floodplain or sell their homes to FEMA and risk an end to their community. 

Selling their property to FEMA would have prevented anyone from building again on their flood-prone land and led to a reduction in the town’s tax base. Many residents have relocated, but FEMA has helped fund multiple projects to rebuild county infrastructure for the locals who remain. In December of 2020, Princeville developed a comprehensive plan for redevelopment. Only time will tell if the town can withstand an increasing rate of storm surges and flooding.

For many of its residents, Princeville stands as more than their home, but as a land tied heavily to their history and culture. Uprooting their lives means more than a loss of property. For many groups, especially Native or Indigenous communities, the loss of one’s home can be harmful to one’s identity, and relocation may not be a remedy for that loss.

Current State of Migration in NC

For the financially well-off households impacted by natural disasters, western migration might be a smoother process. Real estate agents are more likely to flag down climate migrants who bring substantial financial resources with them to Western North Carolina. They will offer properties that will only increase in price with the influx of potential buyers. Wealthy out-of-state buyers have already been flocking to these mountains for years in search of second homes, and when surveyed, the vast majority of buyers claimed climate issues were a strong motivator. When more low-income households must move west, the limited supply of available property will likely skyrocket due to increased demand. Those who cannot afford the inflated prices will have a difficult time finding a place to live.

It is hard to say if the available resources North Carolina has to offer will ensure the safety of its citizens. The state does not have the best track record when it comes to confronting sea level rise. In 2012, NC-20 lawmakers passed a controversial bill that, according to policy manager Tancred Miller, “put a moratorium on using any official numbers, rates of sea level rise for state-level planning or state-level regulation.” In other words, the bill did not allow state and local agencies to base policy decisions on models that include the rapid accelerating effect of global warming. Instead, decisions had to be based on outdated historical data that places sea level rise projections much lower than what scientists claim. According to the Columbia Undergraduate Law Review, this bill “ignores crucial scientific evidence and has the potential to harm North Carolinians on the coast.” The North Carolina Coastal Federation claimed the bill “may result in unintended consequences for coastal property owners.” Current policies now fit later scientific reports, but the bill paints a picture of NC lawmakers’ hesitation to face the encroaching issues climate change brings. 

The many complexities of climate migration only magnify on the global scale as international communities seek refuge across national borders. Leaving one’s country carries with it further conflicts of culture and identity. If the U.S. hopes to lead in the effort to combat climate-induced displacement, it needs to learn from the issues face by its own citizens.  

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.

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“Clean and White” Revisited: What Zimring Teaches Us About Environmental Racism Today

28 January 2021 – by Aubrey Calaway

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.

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The Inequality of Climate Change

brown tree on dried ground at daytime

26 January 2021 – By Veronica Rotman

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. 

This article was originally published by Human Rights Pulse on 22 January 2021 as part of our January 2021 collaboration with E&U for the Climate and Human Rights Pulse on Environmental Justice and Human Rights.

Veronica is a marine scientist with interests in the interrelationship between human rights, climate change and the environment.

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Book Review of “As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonisation to Standing Rock” by Dina Gilio-Whitaker

19 January 2021 – by Ella Kiyomi Dobson

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 on Abenaki 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 and legal 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. 

References

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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The Criminalization of Climate Migrants Webinar

high-angle photography of stair

15 December 2020 – by Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality and Anti-discrimination

The Immigrant Justice and Climate Refugee Working Group at the Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality and Anti-discrimination are a group of academics and activists across the 6 continents working to address issues of inequality and discrimination.

There are two seemingly disparate trends building momentum across the globe that have yet to be examined in relation to one another. The first is climate change. Acknowledgment and awareness of climate change has steadily increased, although with more controversy in some nations than others. The second trend is the use of prisons to deter migration. At the same time that leaders are exploring ways of addressing climate change, countries that have tended to receive more of the world’s migrants are increasingly relying on criminalization and imprisonment to deter migration. These two challenges may be related, and each has its own racial justice and equality implications.

This interdisciplinary conversation explores the potential relationship between these problems and aims to create a foundation to inform the development of strategies to simultaneously address these problems and further equality, immigration justice, and solutions to climate change.