Evolution of the environmental justice movement: activism, formalization and differentiation

The US has been at the frontier of environmental justice scholarship and activism from the movement's roots in the tactics and ideologies of the Civil Rights Movement, to its contemporary institutionalization within government agencies and academic institutions. The year 2014 marked not only the launch of an online, interactive international Environmental Justice Atlas² , but also the 20th anniversary of Executive Order 12898 on Environmental Justice (Clinton 1994), the US's formal recognition of the need to assess the environmental justice implications of government programs, plans and activities. As environmental justice frames extend to new contexts and expand to include transnational issues and actors, work remains to be done domestically. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognized the 20th anniversary by implementing Plan³ EJ 2014, a strategy to help integrate environmental justice into the EPA's day-to-day activities.

During the last three decades, grassroots activism around environmental justice has been effective in the United States, as evidenced by the number of court battles won by local communities, and the significant increase in attention gained from media, academics, and policy makers (Bullard and Wright 2012, Taylor 2014). This has bolstered growth in the number of organizations whose mission statements reference the fight against environmental injustices (Faber and McCarthy 2001). Having reviewed the vast literature about the history of the environmental justice movement in the United States, we conducted in-depth interviews with 31 prominent environmental justice activists, scholars, and community leaders across the US. This yielded rich insights from a wide range of actors within the movement, to better understand how practices such as community organizing, media attention, and changing institutional relationships with academic institutions, regulators, and funders, have catalyzed change for environmental justice groups and communities.

This paper briefly summarizes the history of environmental justice in the United States, outlines the processes of formalization and our methods for studying it, presents results, and concludes with a discussion of the evolution of the environmental justice movement in the United States. We focus in particular on the types of strategies environmental justice groups have used in order to face the financial and political challenges that have emerged during the last 30 years.

Originally framed as 'environmental racism,' the early movement focused on the unequal distribution, both social and spatial, of environmental burdens, an issue that was often ignored by the mainstream environmental movement (Taylor 2009, 2011, Arriaga 2010). There are a few benchmark events widely recognized as the founding moments of the environmental justice movement. The public debate about 'environmental racism' that emerged after the 1982 wave of grassroots protests in response to the siting of a PCB landfill in a predominantly African–American community in Warren County, NC, became the inspiration for two major studies that would solidify the environmental justice movement (US General Accounting Office 1983, United Church of Christ 1987). Confirming patterns of environmental injustice already clear to residents in polluted zones (Lerner 2010), both studies concluded that race was the single most important factor in predicting the location of hazardous waste facilities (Bullard and Johnson 2000, Mohai et al 2009). In the following years, the movement both broadened and formalized with hundreds of new studies that examined the relationship between minority communities, institutional power, and environmental hazards (Bullard et al 2007).

Environmental justice was institutionalized as a central priority of the federal government in 1994 through an Executive Order by President Bill Clinton. Following this order, federal agencies began to include environmental justice considerations in policy implementation and assessment processes (Mitchell and Dorling 2003). In 1991, the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit convened in Washington DC and authored the Seventeen Principles of Environmental Justice (Bryant and Mohai 1992). This moment represented an expansion of the scope of environmental justice concerns to include social issues such as transportation, housing, gender issues, and educational disparities (Bullard et al 2007).

A significant transformation that environmental justice groups in the US have experienced in the last 30 years is an increasing number of groups adopting formal legal status. In the US, becoming a registered organization is a two-step process, requiring first incorporation at the state level and then applying for 501c3 federal tax-exempt status (SEARAC and Mosaica 2009). If an organization chooses to incorporate and become a legal entity, it must then follow a set of rules allowing it to maintain assets and liabilities, raise limited amounts of funding, and retain liability for the actions and debts of the organization. While incorporation at the state level allows an organization to gain institutional and public recognition and credibility, as well as clarify the mission and structure of the organization, create broader accountability and limit the liability of individuals within the organization, it does have its disadvantages. Through incorporation, organizations lose some flexibility in determining what to do and how to do it, must comply with state regulations, pay a filing fee, spend time on tasks needed to manage a legal entity and concede individual control to a Board of Directors (SEARAC and Mosaica 2009). Advantages stem from the fact that applying for 501c3 federal tax-exempt status allows the organization to receive tax-deductible contributions and obtain funding through grants (SEARAC and Mosaica 2009). Additionally, many states allow 501c3 organizations to be exempt from sales and property tax. For many organizations, the increased legitimacy and survival prospects resulting from incorporation are worth the constraints (Meyer and Rowan 1977, Silber 2007).

Research demonstrates the enormous impact of different types of environmental justice groups including community groups, religious institutions, indigenous groups, youth organizations, and community development corporations on environmental justice victories across the country (Arriaga 2010). However, further research is needed to understand the roles and responses of environmental justice groups when they transition into registered non-profit organizations and hence face both planned and unanticipated consequences of that shift. For the purpose of this paper, we refer to this type of formal organization as registered environmental justice organizations (REJOs), and define them as a registered non-profit organization (with 501c3 status) whose core mission involves protecting people of color, low-income communities and indigenous organizations from environmental and health hazards and advocating for equal access to the decision-making process⁴ .

Literature written about the movement has identified how changes within the organizational structure of some environmental justice groups relate to the evolution of the environmental justice movement. Meyer and Whittier argue that each distinct social movement is part of a larger continuum of activism and that an individual social movement does not die out but rather carries over into new movements (1994). As they explain it, 'the ideas, tactics, style, participants, and organization of one movement often spill over its boundaries to affect other social movements' (Meyer and Whittier 1994, p 227). The environmental justice movement has been particularly successful at employing this 'spill over' effect to achieve major political and activism victories in a very short period of time (Taylor 2000, 2014). Social movements have been defined not just by their origins but by the challenge they present to the dominant cultural, economic, and political order. In this view, one of the central questions that emerge related to the role of REJOs in shaping environmental justice as a social movement is how communities and activists use organizational structure to claim legitimacy and power.

The environmental justice movement brings together a diverse group of impacted communities. Kurtz (2005, pp 79–88) asserts that: 'the term environmental injustice refers to both distributive and procedural bias against politically disadvantaged groups in society; the concept of environmental justice, is intended to be inclusive of a variety of site specific grievances'. More formal organizational structures have grown in the environmental justice movement in large part because community groups have turned to network building as a strategy to share strategic knowledge (Mix 2011). Minkoff (1994, p 944) theorizes that, once a few organizations have found success with a more formal structure others follow their example and 'over time, new organizations tend to be constructed with reference to a dominant structural form'. He further notes that foundations, media, and political authorities are more familiar with certain types of organizational structure and more likely to consider groups that adhere to that structure as legitimate. Subsequent work has shown this perception of legitimacy remains important for REJOs to gain access to resources, especially considering the rapid proliferation of new environmental justice groups in a short period of time (Stretesky et al 2012).

The emerging trend of environmental justice organizations (EJOs) adopting more formal legal status is not unique to the environmental justice movement. In a recent article, Fogarty (2011, p 207) analyzed how non-governmental organizations (NGOs), of which EJOs are a subset, have to make choices related to their organizational structure, noting: 'some NGOs bureaucratize their organizations and seek access to (and influence in) [...] insider strategies—i.e. lobby and seek accreditation at multilateral institutions, [...] while others reject formalization as betraying the social movement network ethos and inviting co-option'. According to his results, NGOs that bureaucratize their organizations are more successful in gaining access to those insider strategies, regardless of NGOs' budgets, age, or ideology. Indeed, environmental NGOs with international conservation mandates have been the subject of scathing critique (Chapin 2004) and much debate about whether their development of boards, trustees, donors, and public–private partnerships has cost them earlier more authentic connections to indigenous groups within conservation sites, rendering them more like private corporations in their institutional cultures and organizational strategies (Hardin 2011).

Although the success of the environmental justice movement is widely recognized and can be seen in the increasing number of environmental justice groups that have been able to achieve major activism victories, there is still a long way to go. Noted environmental justice scholars Robert Bullard and Glenn Johnson have observed (2000, p 573): 'although environmental and civil rights laws have been on the books for more than three decades, all communities have not received the same benefits from their application, implementation, and enforcement'. Indeed, one legal scholar and activist noted that much of his work is now spent on ensuring that progressive Acts bolstering poor families' abilities to retain their land are passed into law on a state by state basis, flagging the recurring challenge for the environmental justice movement; although its engagement with environmental expertise and issues is varied and strong, its engagement with the justice system still faces many challenges at many jurisdictional scales⁵ .

Having briefly summarized the history of the environmental justice movement in the US and discussed the processes of REJO formalization, this paper will now outline our methods, present results, and conclude with a discussion of the evolution of environmental justice groups in the United States. We focus in particular on the types of strategies such groups have used in order to face the financial and political challenges that have emerged during the last 30 years.

Our goal was to obtain the insights of recognized experts and leaders in the environmental justice field through in-depth semi-structured interviews. Our first step was to draw a sample of these leaders. To be systematic in our approach, we identified potential respondents by examining the participation lists of several national environmental justice conferences, membership lists of past and present national environmental justice advisory committees, and names listed in prominent environmental justice reports, such as Toxic Waste and Race at Twenty (Bullard et al 2007) and Environmental Justice Milestones and Accomplishments 1964–2014 (Bullard et al 2014). We began with some of the most frequently cited names. These experts and leaders are well-known inside the movement and in academia and to each other. Through snowball sampling, we elicited further respondents' names from our initial interview respondents, thereby building from interview to interview on the networks that link experts with local community based activists. We thus included several types of actors we deemed important from the standpoint of internal organizational transformation but who might not appear in our initial rosters. Altogether we netted 31 in-depth interviews. This group of research subjects yielded rich insights on how practices such as community organizing, media attention, and changing institutional relationships with academic institutions, regulators, and funders, have catalyzed change for environmental justice groups and communities.

In order to capture both long range overviews of the movement and more localized experiential knowledge, we developed two sets of interview questions, one for activists, and another for academics (see appendix). We refer to these as expert-specific questions. However, for all respondents we first asked if they agreed with our definition of a REJO. The majority of our respondents agreed with the definition we provided. In addition, responses to this question allowed us to evaluate where this new, more formalized structure fits in the traditional grassroots environmental justice movement.

Questions designed for academics focused on analyzing comprehensive trends of the movement. Most academics had their respective specialties within the environmental justice field that allowed us to see several different evolutions, sub-issues and trends within the larger movement. Questions designed for activists focused on understanding how their individual and collective participation in the movement, the activism tactics of their organization, and their understanding of the environmental justice movement had evolved over time. These questions helped us evaluate the historic and contemporary relationships between community-based environmental justice groups (both REJOs and non-REJOs), NGOs, and government decision makers.

Additionally, we developed questions designed for activists involved in REJOs as well as non-REJOs. If in a REJO, questions included:

• What made your organization decide to become a formally registered non-profit?
• How did that decision impact your relationship with the community?
• What is your relationship with other environmental organizations and EJOs and how has this changed over time?If not in a REJO, questions included:
• Has your organization considered applying for nonprofit status? Please explain.
• What do you feel are some of the benefits and disadvantages of being a REJO?
• What is your relationship with other environmental organizations and EJOs and how has this changed over time?

For all respondents we asked personal work histories of their specific affiliation and engagement with the environmental justice movement and how this has evolved over the years. We also asked respondents about the relationship between academia and grassroots organizations, and their views on whether and how such linkages have been either beneficial or detrimental to the movement, or both.

Each interview was approximately one hour long, consisting of three main parts: an introduction of the project as well as of our goals for the interview, expert-specific questions, and then solicitation of additional contacts with whom we might continue our research. In order to fully capture the knowledge, expertise and experiences of each respondent, we requested permission to record the interviews and took extensive notes. Recordings and transcriptions allowed us to obtain data that could be easily analyzed, and labeled to correspond with the professional monikers we use here in lieu of names in order to identify informants while protecting confidentiality. We promised all our individual respondents at the beginning of the interview that their names would not be revealed.

During the last 30 years, academic research literature has made considerable progress in evaluating the environmental justice movement, and there is an upsurge in interest internationally for the conceptual frame of environmental justice in understanding and comparing various forms of environmental conflict across sectors and national boundaries⁶ . However, there is a need for further understanding the endemic state of environmental justice activism in the United States as well as how activism has catalyzed change and responded to the challenges faced by both environmental justice groups and communities. This study found that, over the past 30 years, environmental justice communities and groups have responded to growing financial and political pressures in highly innovative ways. Based on interviews with prominent environmental justice leaders and activists we outline below three main categories that help describe this evolving response: (1) adoption of formal legal status, (2) emergence of partnerships and networks, and (3) broadening of missions. These findings based on expert insight contribute to emerging efforts to offer a deeper understanding of how the environmental justice movement in the US has evolved alongside the growth of environmental justice groups.

Before discussing these responses, we provide a brief overview of the principal challenges faced by EJOs noted by our respondents. The most common challenge mentioned was scarce financial resources. Funding deficiencies slow the growth and potential influence of organizations. As one respondent explained, it is difficult for a successful organization to survive on volunteers alone. Stable long-term funding allows activists to immerse themselves in the movement while being able to sustain themselves financially. At the same time, seasoned activists note concern about the infusion of new corporate funding sources for particular events or processes, such as that offered by coal companies for the anniversary march on Selma this past year⁷ .

Linked closely with financial challenges is the competition for political influence in the midst of a field dominated by large NGOs. A key element to understanding the evolution of the environmental justice movement is the increasing role of environmental justice groups and organizations in legislation and public discourse. Some respondents expressed that making environmental justice central in discussions at the local, state, and federal level is still a major challenge. Many believe that closer connections to political channels represent a means of increasing the influence of environmental justice in policymaking, leading to systemic change. The Executive Director of a state-based EJO, highlighted the importance of creating partnerships to expand connections as a way of navigating this difficult political context often driven by an anti-regulation agenda. In some of our respondents' views, if there are no policies to support communities' activities, efforts of organizations can be futile. However, we also heard from several respondents, especially those connected to more established REJOs, that the increasing role of environmental justice groups in legislation and public discourse is one of the most important success stories of the movement.

4.1. Adopting formal legal status

4.2. Emergence of partnerships and networks

4.3. Broadening of missions and broadening of reach

In our study we sought a deeper understanding of the evolution of the contemporary environmental justice movement in the United States through in-depth interviews with 31 prominent environmental justice activists, scholars, and community leaders across the US. This study found that, over the past 30 years, environmental justice communities and groups have responded to growing financial and political pressure in innovative ways. Our interviews looked at insider testimonials of how environmental justice groups and communities have responded to various challenges, representing a vision of the evolution of the environmental justice movement through the lens of activism. These strategic changes have enabled environmental justice groups and communities to gain and maintain a relevant position in the fight against environmental injustices within their communities and elsewhere.

Based on the interviews with prominent environmental justice leaders and activists we identified three primary categories that help describe this evolving response: adoption of formal legal status, emergence of partnerships and networks, and broadening of missions and reach. These findings based on expert insight offer a deeper understanding of how the environmental justice movement in the US has evolved alongside the growth of environmental justice groups.

Although both the literature and respondents recognized that there is still a long way to go and many challenges to be faced, our respondents have helped us understand how, by never detaching themselves from the roots of the environmental justice communities, the environmental justice movement (comprised of both REJOs and non-REJOs) has maintained a kind of mission hybridity (sociopolitical and environmental) that keeps them more honest, more accountable, more capable of continued respect from original stakeholders, making them less susceptible to the kind of critiques international conservation NGOs have received.

Our interviews with recognized experts from the environmental justice movement also gave us some insights into where the movement is going in the near future. The evolution of the environmental justice movement has led to growing partnerships and networks, continual advancement in political legitimacy, and growing 'intersectionality' of key academic fields and disciplines required for robust EJ research and advocacy agendas. One of the strongest common responses we found was around the expansion of organizational goals for the movement as a whole. Further, opinions converged around three primary new directions: climate change, food justice, and environmental health. The growing focus on climate change and international effects of climate change on environmental justice communities has many respondents believing that this will be a determinate for establishing new goals for REJOs and non-REJOs both domestically and internationally. In addition to climate change, environmental health disparities will also be influential in creating future goals of the movement. Many see the continued expansion of the health focus in environmental justice work as creating key new avenues for institutional and scientific partnership. Such strengthening of existing and new partnerships and networks will play an essential role in the fight against environmental injustices across the United States, as competition for both financial and political resources is expected to continue to grow, representing a key constraint for both REJOs and other forms of EJ organizations.

Although in this paper we have focused on how the grassroots activism around environmental justice in the United States has evolved to address the challenges facing the movement, the fight against environmental injustices is a global phenomenon. As globalization exacerbates cross-border and cross-cultural environmental challenges, environmental justice is increasingly an international movement (Speth 2003, Rootes 2005). In many developing countries, questions of the North–South divide in environmental inequality have inspired new activism (Anand 2003, Bullard 2005). At the same time, international environmental organizations are entering the realm of 'cross-movement' activism connecting environmental concerns to international development, corporate globalization, poverty alleviation, indigenous rights and feminism (Carmin and Bast 2009). As the environmental justice movement has grown and evolved to take on new global dimensions, a central question remains how international trends in justice advocacy will interact with and connect to the US domestic environmental justice movement.

Introduction

• Research goals and objectives

• · Interviews with EJ activists and academics is central to our research and better understanding the circumstances that lead to the formation of EJOs and their influence.

• Additional information to provide to interviewees:

• · The purpose of this research is to gain a deeper understanding of EJOs, as one of the many types of environmental justice groups.  For the purpose of this interview, we are defining an EJO as a registered non-profit organization whose core mission involves protecting people of color, low-income communities and indigenous organizations from environmental and health hazards and advocating for equal access to the decision making process.
• · We acknowledge that EJOs are just one of many actors within the environmental justice movement. Much research has been done demonstrating the enormous impact of other types of environmental justice groups (including community groups, churches, indigenous groups, youth organizations, community development corporations, etc) on EJ victories across the country. Much less has been written about the role of EJOs and we are hoping to explore these types of groups further in order to understand their place in the wider EJ movement.

• For academic: Do you think this definition is accurate? Is there anything you would change/add? Do you have any questions before we get started?
• For activist: We consider you an active actor within the environmental justice movement. According to our definition your organization is/is not considered an EJO. But, do you agree with our definition? Do you consider your organization to be an EJO? Why or why not?

Activists specific interview

• Affiliation with the environmental justice movement

• · Name and current job title.
• · How you first became engaged in the EJ movement?
• · How has your role within the movement changed over the years?

• Tell us about your organization/community group:

• · When and why was it first formed?
• · What are some of the major issues it has been involved in over the years?
• · What would you consider the biggest successes of the organization?
• · What have been some of the most significant challenges?
• · To what extent of your organization involved in policy decision making and political advocacy? Do you think there is a trend of increasing involvement in policy within Environmental Justice community?
• · Moving forward what are the organization/groups goals for the next 5 years?
• · Can you speak a bit about the structure of your organization and how that relates to the activism you are involved in? (type of leadership, has structure of your organization changed/how?, how many people?, has this changed over time?)

• If an EJO:

• · What made your organization decide to take steps to become a formal registered nonprofit?
• · How did that decision impact your relationship with the community?
• · How did it impact your activism approach to core issues?
• · What is your relationship with other environmental organizations and EJOs? How has your collaboration with those organizations changed over time?

• If not an EJO:

• · Has your organization considered applying for nonprofit status? follow up Why?
• · What do you feel are some of the pros and cons of being a registered organization?
• · How do you think an EJ group's decision to formalize might impact its relationship with the community? If at all?
• · What is your relationship with other environmental organizations and EJOs? How has your collaboration with those organizations changed over time?

• Academia and grassroots relationship:

• · In what ways does your organization collaborate with the academic community? How often do you work directly with EJ scholars (students or professors) and in what capacity?
• · Do you have any recommendations for other people we should interview for our research?

Academics specific interview

• Affiliation with the environmental justice movement

• · Name and current job title
• · How you first became engaged in studying the EJ movement?
• · What is your primary research focus and how has that changed over the years?

• Structural changes of EJ organizations/groups

• · Intro: As we mentioned before there are several types of environmental justice groups that have helped shape the movement. As the movement has progressed, the diversity of groups and the way in which they have organized has also evolved
• · Based on your expertise, what do you think have been the most significant changes to these groups over time?
• · Do you feel that EJOs (registered nonprofit organizations) are becoming more prevalent?
• · If yes, how do you think this has impacted the broader EJ movement? Relationships between activists and communities? Role in policy advocacy?
• · How do you think the EJ movement and the prevalence of EJOs will progress in the next decade?
• · Do you feel as an EJ scholar that you have strong ties to the activism community? How often do you interact with organizers? In what ways?
• · How do you think indigenous environmental justice groups are unique from other EJ groups and organizations?

• Academia and grassroots relationship

• · What do you feel is the relationship between academia and the EJ grassroots community?
• · Many larger EJOs carry out community-based participatory research as a way of building bridges between academia and local communities. What do you feel are the strengths and weaknesses of this grassroots based research?
• · Do you have any recommendations for other people we should interview for our research?