Category: Environmental Justice

Vera Chang and I presented about our experiences at Terra Madre last week, but I’ll elaborate here as well. We attended the Slow Food international Terra Madre conference in Torino, Italy October 25-28. The conference was a gathering of the world’s food communities—thousands growers, producers and eaters all converged to discuss the issues facing our food system, learn from world leaders, and celebrate our unique but interconnected food cultures and traditions.

Last Thursday, Dale Jamieson returned to Carleton to give a talk on climate change and environmental justice. Jamieson, who was formerly the Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Dimensions of Global Change at Carleton and is now the chair of the Environmental Studies Department at NYU, called climate change the “most complex, profound, and important” environmental justice issue that exists today.

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A dinner fundraiser for the Chico Mendes Reforestation Project in Cantel, Guatemala, at St. Olaf College last Thursday illuminated some of the struggles and triumphs of sustainable development. Stories from Carleton and St. Olaf students who had visited the reforestation project during a study abroad program helped give a human face to these difficult international issues.

The Chico Mendes Reforestation Project was founded in 1999 in response to a dwindling groundwater supply because of decades of deforestation. As a result, Cantel only has access to water for a few hours a day. The project has planted hundreds of thousands of trees, including 65,000 last year alone. Planting trees in Cantel is considered a subversive political act, a defiant stance against the government that allows this deforestation to continue–a sharp contrast, the students noted, to the idea of connecting to the earth and holding hands and singing Kumbaya. Here, planting trees is a necessity to the continuity of community life, and a politically subversive one at that.

Under Guatemalan law, there must be a certain number of trees planted to replace those that are cut down. The loggers usually do a pretty hasty job of replanting and then leave the seedlings alone. This is not an effective solution. As the students learned in Cantel, it takes a lot of love to make just one tree grow. The Chico Mendes Reforestation Project actually devotes the time and care to the trees they need to thrive.

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Two years after Hurricane Katrina drastically accelerated the already-in-place systematic marginalization of communities of color on the Gulf Coast, those communities are still fighting for a just and sustainable recovery, while also creating innovative work that combines environmental, social, and economic justice.

The devastation following Hurricane Katrina, and the government’s failure to respond to a disaster affecting a mostly African-American area, is our prime contemporary example of environmental racism. Communities affected were already working for social change and address environmental injustice before the hurricane. Now, the work continues, but the problems are greatly exacerbated.

Environmental racism is an issue we cannot ignore, explains Rosina Philippe of Grand Bayou Community United, a grassroots group in an Atakapa and Creole fishing village. “If it doesn’t affect you today, it’ll affect you tomorrow, personally or economically. We have to start thinking globally, and get away from ‘them and us.'”

Reading about communities’ response to the disaster, two years later, is both powerful and disturbing. Somehow, Katrina has been all but forgotten and the Gulf Coast left behind. How should environmentalists respond to Katrina, two years later?

The Gulf Coast holds valuable lessons for environmentalism about diversity within the movement and about the power of underprivileged communities fighting injustice at the grassroots level. As Derrick Evans, director of the Turkey Creek Community Initiatives, an African-American community grassroots group, says:

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Last week, several vans of Carleton students journeyed up to Minneapolis to participate in the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy’s conference, Lessons from NAFTA: Building a New Fair Trade Agenda. Citizens of Mexico, the United States and Canada gathered to reflect on the tragedies that NAFTA hath wrought and share hope for change in the future.

According to the USDA’s website, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) began to remove barriers to trade and investment among Canada, the United States and Mexico with the strike of the clock on January 1, 1994. Many tariffs were removed immediately, while others were phased out in a process that ends in 2008. The goals of NAFTA include reducing barriers to trade, increasing cooperation and working conditions throughout North America, creating jobs, creating a safe tri-national market and mutually advantageous trade rules and stimulating investment. Many argue though that NAFTA has had intensely negative impacts on small family farmers and consumers, while reversing many previously high standards for labor, the environment and food safety and sovereignty as the investment-stimulating aspect of NAFTA has been taken advantage of by multinational corporations.

Acclaimed liberal writer John Nichols of The Nation gave the keynote address of the conference, beginning with a sweeping criticism of North American media and the danger of general American (or perhaps Unitedstatsian) ignorance about the world beyond their borders. Moving into the topic at hand, Nichols stated, “The missing factor in debates about trade policy is people rather than elites.” He stated that trade should be “based on humans and human values” before diving into a critique of each Democratic Presidential candidate’s stance on the issue, essentially concluding that no candidate but the “fringe” candidates are willing to be critical of Free Trade. He highlighted the core problems with trade as a campaign issue, noting first that campaigns are financed by “Wall Street, not Main Street.” Additionally Nichols noted that political parties don’t like trade issues because they don’t bring in contributions and they vary significantly by region across the country.

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“Try this experiment. Go knock on someone’s door in West Oakland, Watts or Newark and say: ‘We gotta really big problem!’ They say: ‘We do? We do?’ ‘Yeah, we gotta really big problem!’ ‘We do? We do?’ ‘Yeah, we gotta save the polar bears! You may not make it out of this neighborhood alive, but we gotta save the polar bears!’ ”

If this key communication disconnect continues, Jones, a visionary Oakland-based activist, explains, we will never find solutions to either social inequality or environmental destruction. Instead, we need a “green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty.” Green For All, based out of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, seeks to bring “green collar” jobs to urban areas. If young people of color start installing solar panels now, explains, Jones, they’ll become managers in five years, owners in ten, and eventually inventors.

The publicity this initiative has been enjoying the past week (New York Times and The Nation) speaks to the revolutionary nature of the program, and a revolution people have been waiting for. Van Jones believes these two movements have been separated for too long, and his passion is contagious. The fight to curb climate change has literally been a fight to maintain the environmental status quo, a conservative approach that turns off many people who do not benefit from the way things are. Van Jones’ environmental revolution provides hope for both sides of the double helix—-hope for a more inclusive, diverse environmental movement, and hope to lift people of color out of poverty.

After several years of discussion and planning, the ENTS Department and the Environmental Advisory Committee have unleashed some wild new creatures upon Carleton’s campus: Sustainability Assistants! Charged with the task of working with staff and students to bring a better understanding and implementation of sustainability to the Carleton community, these four students work one-on-one with heads of Dining Services, Facilities, Grounds, and Intercultural Life and are assigned to be resources for individual dorms. And now, introductions:

Becky Dernbach is working with the Office of Intercultural Life on social and cultural sustainability. She is very concerned that American environmentalism is often seen, and with good reason, as a privileged movement, so she is thrilled, though daunted, to take on the seemingly insurmountable task of trying to mend that chasm at Carleton this year. Building bridges, making connections, and hopefully inciting compassionate revolution are among her goals for the year. Becky is the sustainability assistant for Burton, Davis, and Sevy.

As the Sustainability Assistant focusing on Carbon Neutrality and Energy, Eliza Berry is working with Rob Lamppa, the Director of Energy Management in Facilities. This term, she hopes to publish a Code of Sustainable Conduct for all members of the Carleton community that will list easy ways in which students, faculty and staff can support sustainability in their daily lives. She is also researching the energy saving capability of the “Vending Misers” that have been proposed for the Sustainability Revolving Fund. “Vending Misers” are small devices that use motion detectors to put vending machines into a hibernation mode when there is no one around (such as late at night), thus hopefully cutting energy costs. Eliza has been really excited to learn all that that Facilities is doing to help create a greener campus. She is the Sustainability Assistant for Musser and Watson.

Katie Blanchard loves food and is therefore perfectly placed as the Sustainability Assistant with Joe Winegardner in Dining Services. She is currently working to increase awareness about the new Carleton Composts program and get it off to a good, efficient start. Additionally, she will be promoting local foods that are served in the Dining Halls and general understanding about all that it takes to serve thousands and thousands of meals every week at Carleton. Katie dreams of a Carleton Community Farm and Fair Trade bananas in the Dining Halls. She is the Sustainability Assistant to Goodhue and Evans.

As an STA working with Buildings and Grounds in the Facilities Department, Laura Oxtoby will be looking into chemical use on campus (lawn maintenance and snow removal are examples), helping to expand and improve Carleton’s composting program, and exploring the feasibility of clean energy maintenance equipment. She is especially excited to work on is landscaping at Carleton. Thinking about physical spaces and considering ways that outdoor areas can serve different purposes (enhance campus beauty, provide habitat for local wildlife, reduce runoff) is incredibly important to living more sustainably as a community. She loves sustainability because it’s a holistic, healthy mindset that inspires us to think of others and to think ahead. Laura is the Sustainability Assistant for Meyers and Nourse.

Together, the Sustainability Assistants are hoping to improved communication between faculty, staff, administration and student organizations about sustainability issues and projects.