The BIPOC Struggle: Victims of Climate Change and White Environmentalism
By: Conscious Mode
Tags: Racism, Climate Action, BlackLivesMatter, Environment, Climate Change

Credit: Vlad Tchompalov (@tchompalov) on Unsplash

Environmentalism is unsurprisingly, undeniably, and profoundly white. Beyond its racist origin, the movement continues to be led by and associated with largely white representation. Even embedded in academia, one of the most cited essays on environmentalism, The Tragedy of the Commons, was written by “a racist, eugenicist, nativist and Islamophobe.” Recently, the pervasive effort to maintain environmentalism this way was publicly demonstrated when Vanessa Nakate, a Ugandan youth climate activist, was removed from a photo featuring young activists at the Fridays for Future movement to only show white activists like Greta Thunberg. “I was not on the list of participants. None of my comments from the press conference were included… like I wasn’t even there” Nakate said.

Environmentalism has not been particularly welcoming to Black, Indigenous, and people of colour (BIPOC). Environmental movements have a tendency to frame climate change as the “Great Equalizer” that affects everybody, a narrative that is often accompanied by the insinuation that BIPOC should care more about climate change. However, what is omitted from this narrative is that climate change is far from being the “first” or “only” crisis that impacts BIPOC communities. Investing time and emotional and physical energy into more than one existential crisis is difficult, especially when the movement does not fully accept or welcome you. Recently, with the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, Black climate activists are finding it hard to “concentrate”, and understandably so. As Ayana Elizabeth Jones asks, how can Black folks and communities be expected to prioritize other issues such as climate change when racism continues to be a ‘life-shortening’ threat on the streets, in their communities, and even within their own homes?

The assumption that BIPOC do not care about the environment is not only incorrect and ignorant, but also dangerous. Not only are these communities disproportionately facing the impacts of climate change, but research also shows that they are in fact more concerned about climate change than their white counterparts. Thus, it is clear that the real problem is that the movement as a whole has failed to provide enough or adequate space for BIPOC and their communities.

Our understanding of climate change is shaped by the intersecting, overlapping, and underlying social, historical, economic and political systems. Within the work of shaping these foundational individual and societal values, representation really matters. The current state of environmentalism, with its lack of intersectionality, has forced many to perceive the movement as separate from other social issues. In fact, this is one of the most vocal criticisms of the Green New Deal of the United States, that the Deal’s objectives of going beyond simply emissions reductions, to cover other social justice issues, are going too far. But climate change is and should be about more than reducing greenhouse gases.

When (white) environmental movements approach climate change as the issue of the Great Equalizer, it automatically isolates it from other persistent social issues like racism. But the truth is that climate change is actually a threat multiplier that multiplies and worsens existing problems. An important element of climate action is therefore reforming the very system that has allowed challenges to disproportionately affect the most vulnerable, marginalized populations. Intersectionality must be at the core of this overarching climate movement.

Infrastructure that is known to cause environmental degradation like power plants and waste management facilities have been historically built in BIPOC communities and have led BIPOC to suffer from more health problems than their white counterparts as a result. This is deeply linked with other socioeconomic aspects of their lives and perpetuates a cycle of hardship and insecurity. This is not a standalone problem, but a specific example of the broader lack of BIPOC representation and consideration in policy- and law-making processes that has resulted in irreversible environmental consequences in the most under-privileged communities. The impacts of climate change seen today are symptoms of structural racism.

Systemic racism in Canada has caused asymmetric environmental harm to its BIPOC communities. Ecojustice provides a number of compelling examples on this issue; in British Columbia, those who dump waste on Indigenous reserves are subject to a fine of $100, in comparison to penalties ranging from $2,000 to $1 million for perpetrating the same action on “Crown land.” In Ontario, the region near Sarnia known as Chemical Valley has disproportionately affected the Aamjiwnaang First Nations populations living nearby. Similarly, countless court battles have taken place over the mercury poisoning caused by Grassy Narrows in the 1960s, resulting in 90% of its Indigenous population suffering from mercury poisoning today. Racialized communities have long been subject to soil contamination, waste sites, and industrial land use, as shown in the case of Toronto. As well, there are over one hundred drinking water advisories “at any given time” in First Nations communities across Canada. There are exacerbated socioeconomic and health challenges to living without access to clean drinking water and sanitation, especially in times of pandemics and crises.

The climate crisis is often referred to as a forthcoming threat in the global North, yet it is happening right now in the global South and in BIPOC communities. What should be more alarming is that our systems have proven to “either abandon [BIPOC communities] or turn even more sharply against” them in such crises. Climate disasters have devastating and lasting impacts on BIPOC populations; New Orleans’s Black middle class never fully recovered from Hurricane Katrina, and Houston’s Latino and Black populations have been among the slowest to recover from Hurricane Harvey.

Fighting climate change requires transformative collective action. This means shifting away from the notion that there is just one right way to fight climate change and instead actively providing the rightfully and desperately deserved spaces for BIPOC voices in environmentalism. Dany Sigwalt urges us to place those who are experiencing the heightened effects of climate change and environmental racism at the center of creating “the climate movement we deserve, the one that we need to win,” and I wholeheartedly agree. Failure to revoke the exclusion of BIPOC views will only continue to encourage poor policymaking that directly and indirectly contributes to not only climate change, but its disproportionate effects on certain communities.

The current COVID-19 pandemic, as Yohana Agra Junker remarks, has exposed the prevalent and growing inequalities “inflicted by white supremacy, neocolonialism, [and] capitalist extractivism.” Within and outside of BIPOC communities, marginalized trans, queer, elderly, and disabled folks are also among the most vulnerable. In return, this has attracted more attention to the nexus of environmentalism and intersectionality. There has always been agency to change, but now there is finally the momentum for change, and we have to ride out this momentum.

The future of environmentalism is bright. Beyond Nakate, countless BIPOC environmental activists who, in the words of Nylah Burton, “intimately know the ways that military, industrial, imperialist, and colonialist endeavours have directly led to the current environmental degradation,” are changing the world today. As Burton puts it, “[t]heir perspectives are not just “interesting” or “diverse” — they are life-saving.”

*Disclaimer: this op-ed was written as a university course assignment and initially published on the class blog.