Chronicles from the Environmental Justice Frontline.

Chronicles from the Environmental Justice Frontline

J. Timmons Roberts and Melissa M. Toffolon-Weiss. 2001. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. ISBN: 0-521-66062-9 (hc) $90.00, 0-521-66900-6 (ppr) $30.00, 292 pp.

From Love Canal to Environmental Justice: The Politics of Hazardous Waste on the Canada-U.S. Border

Thomas H. Fletcher, 2003. Broadview Press, Peterborough, ON. ISBN: 1-55111-434-8 (ppr) $26.95, 239 pp.

Both of these books are focused on North American environmental justice case studies. They provide comprehensive reviews of a variety of situations where the idea of environmental justice has been invoked by participants (Roberts and Toffolon-Weiss) or as a way to assess particular events (Fletcher). The North American focus is not surprising, since the concept of environmental racism and justice is generally acknowledged to be an outgrowth of the American civil rights and the anti-toxics movements. Fletcher's book reviews several cases along the Canadian-American border, in the Niagara region as well as in the Detroit-Sarnia area. What is interesting about Fletcher's book is that he applies an environmental justice framework to Canadian cases (in South Cayuga and Sarnia, both proposed hazardous waste facilities)--something rarely attempted. He opens the book by reviewing the proposal by the City of Toronto to bury garbage in the Adams Mine in Kirkland Lake, Ontario as well as summarising the details of the case that generated the anti-toxics campaign--Love Canal.

Roberts and Toffolon-Weiss review four cases in Louisiana, a state considered a pollution haven in the United States. These authors give a particularly chilling account of the political-economic climate in Louisiana in which race and economics have always been complexly intertwined, dating back to the era of slavery. Once slavery was nominally abolished, the lot of poor African-Americans was hardly improved and many stayed on as field-hands, often indebted to the plantation owners. Many eventually established homes and communities around the periphery of the plantations. In more recent times, many of these plantations have been bought out and redeveloped as petroleum and chemical processing plants and these have encroached ever closer to the African-American communities. In the context of inconsistent state and federal level protection and regulation and the deep pockets of transnational corporations, the book details the upward battle faced by four communities as they fight to stop new development or to clean up contaminated sites.

Both books would be quite accessible to a wide range of readers, in fact Roberts and Toffolon-Weiss assert that their book was specifically designed to be read by a general audience. Toffolon-Weiss do not make any attempt to contribute theoretically to the environmental justice literature, but instead present a basic overview of the development of the movement and its key characteristics. Their main focus is to unearth the power-laden web of interconnections between the state and capitalist production and to document the incredible journey undertaken by small communities to fight and redefine these agendas and structures. However, as they note in their conclusion, entitled 'The Empire Strikes Back', even successfully fought battles often lead to further retrenchment and regrouping of the dominant players.

Fletcher's book takes a somewhat more rigorous analytical approach by first reviewing the work of Ulrich Beck (the latest guru of risk) as well as the social and environmental justice literature. These are solid reviews, but not particularly innovative. More interesting is Fletcher's deconstruction of the justice aspect within this literature and connections to the work of such writers as John Rawls, David Harvey and Iris Marion Young. This allows him to invoke ideas of distributive and process-oriented justice and the equity concepts that flow from those concepts--such as geographical equity, social equity, intergenerational equity and so on. These equity concepts become the criteria that he uses to evaluate each of the case studies. Unfortunately, this theoretical discussion is quite brief and its depth and breadth could easily be expanded. Less convincingly, he also attempts to demonstrate the links between environmental justice and a body of literature called industrial ecology that attempts to recast waste management as a production issue, rather than primarily as a problem associated with a pre-existing waste stream. While I agree that more emphasis needs to be placed on reduction at source, I did not find that the arguments made provided substantial new insights, but merely pointed out that even engineers have their own version of a green agenda.

What I found more problematic with Fletcher's book, and to a lesser extent the Roberts and Toffolon-Weiss work, was the dizzying array of details that were provided about each of the many case-studies. Especially in Fletcher's book, where he talks about several cases concurrently, the cases began to meld together in my mind. Now I realize that some of this may be attributable to the limitations of my poor, overworked assistant professor's brain--but I do believe some of this can also be blamed on the organization of the chapters! I also found his analysis of the cases, despite having established a plausible set of criteria, rather brief; the book left me wanting more evaluative analysis and less detailed description.

Overall, if you are looking for some good examples of environmental justice cases, I would certainly recommend both of these books, just have pen and paper ready to keep track of the myriad details. However, if you are looking for a critical review of, or innovations to, the environmental justice theoretical literature, I don't think either of these books would be particularly strong candidates.

Reviewed by Brenda L. Murphy, Geography, Wilfrid Laurier University, Brantford, ON, N3T 2Y3.