Dear Sam,
What does sustainability have to do with social justice?
Janet
*****
Hi Janet,
Sustainability Sam here! Let’s talk about what makes up sustainability. Most often we think about environmental protection. However it is made up of three pillars; social equity, economic viability, and environmental protection. In other words, people, profit, and planet. The past two months have been especially difficult and telling of the state of social inequity within our community and world at large. Social equity is often pushed to the fringe of conversations surrounding sustainability.
Sustainability is an important topic as communities grow and evolve. The social equity pillar must be included when discussing sustainability, otherwise the voices of some groups of residents will go unheard and consequently unanswered. When planning for sustainable growth, for instance, conversations need to happen and measures must be taken to offset the effects of limiting the supply of housing or increasing land and housing costs. Without this, marginalized communities get pushed out of resource-rich parts of a city and into areas with fewer community and environmental resources.
Historically, the voices not being heard in Minneapolis have been those with disabilities, seniors, Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), and residents with financial challenges. As a result, these communities are found to be disproportionately exposed to pollution and environmental hazards even though they tend to create less pollution as their housing and transportation carbon footprint are often lower. Consider the location of our waste transfer stations and the garbage incinerator in our own city. Or, think about how the inequitable distribution of green spaces and tree canopy create heat islands in some parts of our city. These are examples of environmental racism and they demonstrate how social equity has been left out of or ignored in city planning and sustainability conversations of the past. They illustrate how sustainability and social justice need to go hand-in-hand to create environmental justice.
Sustainability is a global issue that touches all themes of the social justice dialogue that are currently circulating, dialogues that include gender and racial inequality, economic development, food insecurity, and homelessness. As a community, we have been redefining our values surrounding sustainability. We’ve seen that income inequality, racial tension, and lack of community resources are not sustainable and inevitably creates social unrest. As a neighborhood association, Tangletown is taking strides toward education surrounding these issues and will continue to do the work toward protecting the environment and the people within it, throughout greater Minneapolis.
Here are a few places to start if you would like to learn more about sustainability and environmental justice:
- Read the summary of the Fourth National Climate Assessment
- Follow the Green Voices of Color list on Twitter to learn about the links between racism and the environment from BIPOC voices
- Often called the Father of Environmental Justice, Dr. Robert Bullard’s Twitter feed is full of good articles and commentary on environmental racism in the U.S. and worldwide
- Read about how 5 communities across the US, including North Minneapolis, are working for Environmental Justice in this short article
- Check out the NAACP list of recommended Climate and Environmental Justice Films. I especially recommend The Story of Plastic which explores the environmental racism of plastics and how it is is poisoning communities around the world.
- Watch the TPT documentary, Jim Crow of the North, for a look at how the redlining and city planning of the past helped create the environmental racism that exists in Minneapolis today
Sincerely,
Sustainability Sam