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| Image: Steve Greenberg |
The following is an excerpt from...
Why Canada needs a law to combat environmental racism
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At a time when health and environmental crises dominate the public conversation, Black History Month in February was a stark reminder of the pervasive environmental struggles racialized communities, past and present, disproportionately face.
This month, there may be good news on the horizon. Nova Scotia Liberal MP Lenore Zann has introduced Bill C-230 in the House of Commons, the National Strategy to Redress Environmental Racism Act. It’s scheduled for a March vote.
The historical link between the civil rights and environmental justice movements is widely acknowledged, yet these struggles have become increasingly isolated over time. While environmental laws and regulations have grown exponentially since the NIMBY protests of the 1970s, the concerns of racialized communities have rarely, if ever, been at their forefront.
Instead, environmental governance and zoning regulations have often been deployed against the interests of Black, Indigenous and immigrant communities in North America. Well-known Canadian cases include Ontario’s chemical industry cluster that surrounds the Aamjiwnaang First Nation and Nova Scotia’s hazardous waste siting in historical Africville.
Environmental injustice is just one aspect of the systemic racial discrimination that continues to plague Canada from coast to coast to coast.
In December, researchers Amanda Giang and Kaitlin Castellani from the University of British Columbia published research showing that the cumulative air pollution burden in Canada’s three major cities (Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal) disproportionately affects racialized communities. In Montreal, immigrant residents consistently experience higher cumulative air pollution, while in Toronto, this burden falls on low-income residents. In Vancouver, it’s Indigenous residents. These disparities in exposure to air pollution are just one dimension of the generalized pattern of environmental injustice affecting historically marginalized groups: Indigenous Peoples, racialized newcomers and the urban poor.