31 Elsabé Boshoff
Poverty and Environment
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.
This article was originally published by Human Rights Pulse on 31 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.
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.
