Pollution Prevention and Participatory Research as a Methodology for Environmental Justice
By Bunyan Bryant
INTRODUCTION
Environmental justice requires solutions that go well beyond actions to remedy the disproportionate exposure of minority and low-income communities to toxic and hazardous waste. Solutions to these problems require changes in the structural underpinnings of society that give birth to environmental and social degradation. Critical to understanding environmental justice is the differential impact of unemployment on certain segments of society. Long-term unemployment leads to poverty which not only gives rise to environmental injustice, but also to despair, spousal and child abuse, alcoholism, drug dependency, suicide, and the destruction of one's self-concept. Investment in technology contributes to this cycle by eliminating jobs, exacerbating existing poverty, and ultimately increasing the amount of pollution borne by minority and low-income communities.
Although the debate about jobs is an important part of environmental justice, this paper addresses it only tangentially. The purpose of this paper is to explore the differential impact of environmental pollutants on certain segments of society and, further, to examine pollution prevention and participatory research as an alternative research methodology.
Traditional methods of scientific research, referred to as positivism in this paper, have generally failed to produce evidence of a causal relationship between increased toxicity and increased incidence of health effects in people of color and low-income communities. Without such evidence, decisionmakers are rarely willing to provide the funds necessary for costly pollution control or prevention. This paper therefore advocates participatory research as an alternative problem-solving method for dealing with the disproportionate levels of pollution in people of color and low income communities.
Environmental justice requires solutions that go well beyond actions to remedy the disproportionate exposure of minority and low-income communities to toxic and hazardous waste. Solutions to these problems require changes in the structural underpinnings of society that give birth to environmental and social degradation. Critical to understanding environmental justice is the differential impact of unemployment on certain segments of society. Long-term unemployment leads to poverty which not only gives rise to environmental injustice, but also to despair, spousal and child abuse, alcoholism, drug dependency, suicide, and the destruction of one's self-concept. Investment in technology contributes to this cycle by eliminating jobs, exacerbating existing poverty, and ultimately increasing the amount of pollution borne by minority and low-income communities.
Although the debate about jobs is an important part of environmental justice, this paper addresses it only tangentially. The purpose of this paper is to explore the differential impact of environmental pollutants on certain segments of society and, further, to examine pollution prevention and participatory research as an alternative research methodology.
Traditional methods of scientific research, referred to as positivism in this paper, have generally failed to produce evidence of a causal relationship between increased toxicity and increased incidence of health effects in people of color and low-income communities. Without such evidence, decisionmakers are rarely willing to provide the funds necessary for costly pollution control or prevention. This paper therefore advocates participatory research as an alternative problem-solving method for dealing with the disproportionate levels of pollution in people of color and low income communities.
