31 Development’s Downsides
Thus far in the module, we’ve seen several examples in which development has increased health and quality of life. However, development can also reduce health and quality of life. Oftentimes, when development has these downsides, it is for reasons related to the environment. When development impacts the environment in ways that harm certain groups of people, it raises issues of environmental justice.
First, let’s consider some connections between economic development, human health, and justice by completing the following reading assignment:
Reading Assignment: Walker, “Health Disparities in Black and White”
Walker, Bailus Jr. 2007. “Health Disparities in Black and White.” Crisis July/August.
A scanned copy of the article with images can be downloaded as a PDF here: Walker, Health Disparities in Black and White
An easier-to-read text only html version of this article (Walker, Health Disparities in Black and White) is also available through the Penn State Library system.
Here are some questions to consider as you read this article:
- What are some of the main causes of poor health within the United States?
- What are some of the relationships (correlations) between health and race and class in the United States?
- What are some pieces of legislation that have been passed to try to deal with these patterns?
- While the correlations between health and race are clearly understood, what are some of the challenges in showing causation (proving that African American communities are targeted to live with these facilities, for example)?
The fact that poor, and often minority, populations are more likely to live within close proximity to facilities that have negative health effects has helped establish the environmental justice movement. Research on environmental justice has shown that political and economic systems structure the conditions that contribute to poor health and help explain variations within societies in the rates of non-communicable chronic diseases such as diabetes or cancer.
Within the United States, the environmental justice movement has worked to show how the byproducts of development, such as chemical factories, waste facilities, and toxic chemicals, create hazardous conditions for people living near them. Here’s one example of environmental justice in the United States; watch this video about Fighting for Safe Water in Flint (13:25 minutes):
But environmental justice is not just a domestic American issue. It is also a global issue. The globalized nature of our economy and our environment causes pollutions and other environmental indignities to become concentrated in certain world regions. Quite often, those regions are the regions of the poorest and least powerful of the world’s people. This can be seen in the following video on e-waste (or electronic waste) in Accra, Ghana’s capital city (4 minutes):
Computer Recycling West Africa Style
When you no longer want an electronic device that you own, what do you do with it? Where does it end up? Does it end up causing harm to other people? What kind of harm can it cause? Who are these people? Do they deserve to be harmed by your e-waste? And what can you do about it? These are all difficult questions raised by our ownership of electronic devices. Furthermore, similar questions are raised by other items that we own and activities that we pursue.
Finally, it is noteworthy that environmental justice is not only about which populations suffer from the burdens of economic development (also known as environmental bads), but also about who has access to environmental goods: that contribute to human health. For example, poor communities and populations of color are often denied access to parks, open space, full service grocery stores, and hospitals. The environmental justice movement, therefore, has expanded to ask critical questions about which human populations suffer the burdens of economic development, and which benefit the most from it.
Consider This: Mapping Environmental Justice
Scientists, activist organizations, and stakeholders from different arenas have been working together to map out global environmental justice. The Atlas of Environmental Justice(link is external), for example, is a platform that visualizes hotspots of environmental justice across a wide range of fields (e.g., coal extraction and processing, landfills, deforestation, etc.). It is also a database of case studies of communities that grapple with and struggle against the disproportionate distribution of environmental “goods” and “bads.”
