Fourteenth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

While initially organized structured communities were created to provide protection and order, the communities’ ultimate goal evolved to promoting justice. Justice means rendering to each person their due and all people are equally due the right to a clean and healthy natural environment. Frequently, the enjoyment of this right to a clean environment is denied on the basis of race, ethnicity or income. To achieve this right to a clean environment, extra help and consideration is needed for minority and low-income communities who have had to bear a disproportionately high toxics burden. The environmental justice movement calls attention to government’s particular obligation to give special consideration to the environmental needs of environmental justice communities. Environmental justice is the fair treatment of all people regardless of race, color, national origin or income in the development and implementation of environmental policy. Environmental justice, because it addresses this environmental imbalance in society, is clearly rooted in the fundamental principal of equal protection of the laws and on the concept of equity, which is necessary for equality for all. While equality means that everyone is treated the same without regard to need or special circumstances, equity means that people are treated differently based on need. Equity means giving people what they need or giving proportionate to their need or their own circumstances. Equity means leveling the playing field. This paper examines and development in implementation of environmental justice policy in the United States; where it has succeeded and where it has failed and why.