The Inseparable Relationship Between Systemic Racism and Environmental Injustice
By: Eurus Pan
The missing link between systemic racism and environmental justice is our key to fighting climate changes and social challenges. For decades, sustainability actions are being seen through a lens manipulates by institutions that develop prejudiced values towards minority groups. However, the truth behind sustainability challenges is the ecological aspect and the inequality among social needs, wealth distribution that yields environmental injustice results. In this article, we address the intersectionality between human and ecological imbalances by recognizing the rights of every homo sapiens living in the world to acknowledge justice for all.
The complex nature of socio-ecological relationships determines the various consequences of its long-term co-evolution history. We need to emphasize on influences of social challenges by examining the correlations between systematic racism and the pattern of urban ecology landscape from the lens of environmental justice. This paper argues understanding systematic racism is essential for breaking down the components of inequality in wealth, health, and environmental heterogeneity.
The Luxury Effect, Heterogeneous Biodiversity, and Public Health
The negative impacts of systemic racism on the unfair patterns in wealth, health, and environmental heterogeneity. In-depth, the role of the Luxury Effect as the product of uneven resource distribution from racial oppression policies during the 1930s to 60s, and how its impacts on the inequitable patterns of heterogeneous biodiversity in two types of racially and economically segregated communities are linking to levels of public health vulnerability.
Although the increasingly diverse demographic marks North America’s identity as a multicultural society, the current protests on environmental justice reflect the continent’s horrific scene from historic violence during the colonialism era. In this context, racial oppression integrates into the present social dynamics by the jurisdiction system and cultural values. Schell et al. (2020) bring a fresh perspective on systematic racism in wealth distributions. Proving by past research, the median household income is a significant variable for predicting urban ecological patterns (Schell et al., 2020). In other words, the Luxury Effect is the power of an individual’s wealth status on determining the vegetation biodiversity and cover, species abundance, and the distribution of abiotic attributes. Following the logic of accessibility, the well-off usually own more options in where they live and more financial resources in supporting their willingness to change their living conditions. Reflecting on the recent trends of the Green-lining effect in the social planning fields, the neighborhoods own higher proximity to green spaces, usually dominated by wealthy households. As the climate change challenges put more light spots on sustainability, the real-estate market uses the sustainability fascia for raising the prices of residential properties with higher accessibility to the natural zones. The biodiversity research by Schell et al. (2020) supports the Luxury Effect in green space from a neighborhood level to a city level, with the results demonstrating North American cities containing a higher percentage of affluent neighborhoods usually own better sourced urban park systems with higher biodiversity.
In summary, humans own the role of engineers in the urban context, meaning changing the spatial landscape and making decisions on the resources distributions. As a result, the structures of social dynamics should accommodate all the societal demands. However, systemic racism excludes individuals from the decision-making process based on race, ethnicity, and colours. In this case, society itself fails to function as a self-sufficient physical and social infrastructure to provide the needs of a diverse demographic. Simultaneously, the changes in social norms also influence the urban ecology structure in the city. As the society geographically and socially isolates the racially minoritized groups with planning tools and policies, this process also creates ecological fragmentations with patches that influence gene diversity and flow by unique physical environmental characteristics based on the degree of urbanization and anthropocentric activities. In other words, the underlying racial oppression creates environmental injustice for both wildlife and humans.
The racial segregation of residential neighbourhoods according to the ecological capacity and the degree of urbanization will affect the public health, social treatments, and economic opportunities of residents. Simultaneously, the local anthropocentric conditions also influence the degree of vegetation loss and the heterogeneous patterns of flora and fauna.
One distinguishing characteristic of urban ecology is the intermixing of green and built spaces, which determines the selective survivability of different species according to the conditions of patches, areas, and corridors. In this case, the geographic isolations of racially minoritized communities usually involve high fragmentations of wildlife habitats, creating soft and hard boundaries for the natural corridors. Consequently, the Redlining and other land-use policies related to segregations based on socioeconomic status can predict wildlife and certain vegetation species’ movements. Such a theory could apply to different urban spatial hierarchy levels with an increasing speed of changes: households, neighbourhoods, cities, and the globe. From a household level, the introduction to non-native species often associates with affluent households for aesthetic purposes, while the racially minoritized household locates near an industrialized area without much green space.
Going back to the environmental hazards in public health, the urban flows of air and water connect to greenhouse gas movements with natural sinks and sources. The environmental hazards in minority neighbourhoods include various air pollutants from surrounding sources such as Nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which impacts the public health of residents and alternates the different foundational atmospheric cycles that are supporting the ecological systems and services. For instance, the decrease of the tree canopy and vegetation cover turns into the source of GHGs with deforestation for urban developments. Furthermore, the loss of cooling capacity contributes to the urban heat island effect for racially segregated communities without proper infrastructure funding with cooling air conditioners. On the other hand, the affluent suburban neighbourhoods have higher proximity to the increase of green spaces. However, their transit mode often involves more motor-powered movement than neighbourhoods with high density, meaning an increase in GHG emissions. As a result, urban ecological research should focus on the necessary ecological restorations on Redlining neighbourhoods under the examined relationships with habitat fragmentations, patch stability, and social inequality. Simultaneously, the GHGs contributions also control the frequency of climate change events globally, such as heatwaves, storms, and flooding.
The inequitable treatments among different socio-economic groups stimulate the Luxury Effect, negative environmental externalities from the heterogeneous biodiversity, and the vulnerability to public health risks based on neighbourhood racial composition. Following the discussions on how Schell et al. (2020) challenges preconceptions about urban ecology. Finally, the inclusive social infrastructures and improvements on both green and social infrastructures help strengthen climate change events for the cities. Nevertheless, recognizing the complexity of socio-ecological relationships is crucial in fixing the current planning challenges and preventing potential social issues.
References
Schell, C., Dyson, K., Fuentes, T., Des Roches, S., Harris, N., & Miller, D. et al. (2020). The ecological and evolutionary consequences of systemic racism in urban environments. Science, 369(6510), eaay4497. doi: 10.1126/science.aay4497
Nardone, A., Casey, J., Morello-Frosch, R., Mujahid, M., Balmes, J., & Thakur, N. (2020). Associations between historical residential redlining and current age-adjusted rates of emergency department visits due to asthma across eight cities in California: an ecological study. The Lancet Planetary Health, 4(1), e24-e31. doi: 10.1016/s2542–5196(19)30241–4
