Environmental Justice

Who carries the burdens, and who gets a say.

Who ends up living with environmental burdens, how those patterns form, and who gets a voice in the decisions behind them.

• Burden distribution
• Public participation
• Policy equity
• Race & class

A Short History of Environmental Justice

Environmental justice grew out of Black-led community protests in the 1980s. Ever since, its central questions have been how race and class shape who lives with pollution and who gets a say.

Show the timelineHide the timeline 14 moments, 1979–2025

1. Roots of the movement
2. 1979

   Bean v. Southwestern Waste

   Houston residents use civil rights law to challenge the siting of a landfill in their neighborhood, one of the first lawsuits of its kind.

3. 1982

   Warren County protests

   Residents of a majority-Black county in North Carolina protest a PCB landfill, and hundreds are arrested. It's often called the birth of the movement.

4. 1983

   The GAO landfill study

   A federal study finds three of four hazardous waste landfills in the Southeast are in majority-Black communities.

5. 1987

   Toxic Wastes and Race

   A national study by the United Church of Christ finds race is the strongest predictor of where hazardous waste facilities are located.

6. Building a field
7. 1990

   Dumping in Dixie

   Robert Bullard documents how Black communities in the South bear the burden of polluting facilities, laying the groundwork for EJ research.

8. 1991

   Principles of Environmental Justice

   The First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit adopts 17 principles that still guide the movement.

9. 1994

   Executive Order 12898

   Federal agencies are directed to address disproportionate environmental impacts on minority and low-income communities.

10. Race, class, or both?
11. 1994

    Which came first?

    Vicki Been asks whether polluting facilities are sited in poor communities of color, or whether housing markets push lower-income residents toward them after they're built. The race-versus-class debate shapes the field for decades.

12. 2007

    Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty

    Bullard, Mohai, Saha, and Wright update the 1987 study with better methods and find racial disparities are even larger than first reported, even after accounting for income.

13. 2007

    Three dimensions of justice

    David Schlosberg's Defining Environmental Justice separates distribution (who bears burdens), recognition (whose concerns count), and participation (who decides).

14. 2014

    Toxic Communities

    Dorceta Taylor shows how residential segregation, housing discrimination, and land markets concentrate pollution in communities of color.

15. 2016

    Beyond the city

    Rural scholars show the same patterns of race and class play out in rural places too. More on the Urban–Rural Planning page.

16. Today
17. 2021

    Justice40

    A federal initiative aims to direct 40% of the benefits of certain federal investments to disadvantaged communities.

18. 2025

    Federal rollback

    A new executive order revokes Executive Order 12898 and other federal environmental justice orders.

In Florida

In Florida, the costs of growth and waste don’t land evenly. Some communities, often Black, Latino, or lower-income, end up hosting the facilities and land uses that others avoid, with less say in how those decisions get made.

1. 1968

   Overtown and I-95

   Interstate 95 is routed through Overtown, the historic heart of Black Miami. Its construction directly displaces about 8,500 households.

2. 1996

   "Mount Dioxin," Pensacola

   After years of organizing by Citizens Against Toxic Exposure, Black residents living beside the Escambia Wood Treating Superfund site win relocation for 358 households.

3. 2018

   Climate gentrification

   A Harvard study finds homes on higher ground in Miami-Dade gaining value faster than low-lying ones, raising concern that rising costs will push lower-income residents out of neighborhoods like Little Haiti.

Key Readings

• Been, V. (1994). Locally undesirable land uses in minority neighborhoods: Disproportionate siting or market dynamics? Yale Law Journal, 103(6), 1383–1422.
• Bullard, R. D. (1990). Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality. Westview Press.
• Bullard, R. D., Mohai, P., Saha, R., & Wright, B. (2007). Toxic Wastes and Race at Twenty: 1987–2007. United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries.
• Commission for Racial Justice, United Church of Christ. (1987). Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States.
• Fernandez, E. (2026). Urban-rural transfer and distributive environmental justice in biosolids land application: A geographic information systems (GIS) analysis of Florida. Journal of Rural Studies, 126, 104324.
• Schlosberg, D. (2007). Defining Environmental Justice: Theories, Movements, and Nature. Oxford University Press.
• Keenan, J. M., Hill, T., & Gumber, A. (2018). Climate gentrification: From theory to empiricism in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Environmental Research Letters, 13(5), 054001.
• Taylor, D. E. (2014). Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility. NYU Press.