An article published this week in the scientific journal The Lancet revealed a clear link between racial discrimination and the health consequences of climate change.
“Racism kills. Climate change kills,” the authors unequivocally write. Their harmful effects combine and contribute to the growing marginalization of populations already vulnerable to health inequalities and environmental injustices, both in the North and in the global South.
The issue of social inequalities in the face of the climate crisis is certainly not new. It has been documented, in particular, by the IPCC and a multitude of other researchers and actors on the climate scene. In our country, however, public policies are lagging behind; decision-makers speak little of environmental inequalities, and even less of environmental racism — unsurprisingly, given the low propensity (understatement of the day) of the Quebec government to take note of problems of discrimination where they manifest themselves.
A collective work just published by Écosociété aims precisely to shed light on this blind spot.
The nature of injustice, co-directed by Sabaa Kahn, lawyer and Executive Director of the David Suzuki Foundation for Quebec and the Atlantic, and by Catherine Hallmich, environmental engineer, starts from an observation: the exploitation of nature has advanced hand in hand with exploitation of humans. Conversely, the exploitation of nature is facilitated by the exploitation of humans and, unsurprisingly, it is marginalized communities that pay the highest price.
The book thus proposes to dissect various manifestations of inequalities and environmental racism in Canada, Quebec and internationally. In a synthetic way, it defines environmental racism as being “the result of environmental policies or practices, intentional or not, which disproportionately affect racialized or indigenous communities”.
In a chapter devoted to the struggle of African Nova Scotian communities against pollution and the destruction of their living environments, Ingrid Waldron, professor at McMaster University, points out that the development of space, both rural and urban territories, is very clearly racialized. Space, she explains, is organized along socio-economic fault lines, but also (and even above all) racial lines.
The first fault line is inscribed in the colonial history of Canada. Activist Ellen Gabriel thus recalls how the country was built on the territorial dispossession of Indigenous peoples through the doctrine of discovery, and that this gesture of environmental racism is the foundation of Canadian society.
Today, again explains Mr.me Gabriel, Canada faces a paradox. It embraces international standards on human rights and the rights of indigenous peoples — in principle, at least — but its national laws remain committed to a “racist doctrine” that reproduces the dispossession of indigenous peoples.
Not only is the dispossession ongoing, whether it be the grabbing of resources or the destruction of natural environments supporting traditional ways of life, but indigenous territories are frequently exposed to toxic wastes and pollutants that no one does not want in his court. Moreover, the case of the illegal dumping of toxic waste in Kanesatake, which recently (re)made the headlines due to the long-standing inaction of the public authorities, is convincing.
“Canada hasn’t evolved,” notes Ellen Gabriel. The norm, state violence is still an underlying threat to Indigenous people on the front lines. »
Of course, non-Native communities also face their own challenges. As Jérome Dupras, professor in the Department of Natural Sciences at UQO, points out, in Canada, the greening of cities has given little importance to social inequalities.
Historically, he explains, urban forests have been designed primarily for their aesthetic function, without regard to ecosystem services and their social function. So much so that today, the urban canopy is biologically undiversified, disparate and inaccessible to marginalized populations.
Green spaces have been developed without attempting to stem the gentrification that this greening could induce. Green neighborhoods have been left to become ever less accessible, relegating less well-to-do populations to poorly vegetated areas. In Montreal, it is striking: the distribution of the canopy and heat islands is directly linked to the level of income.
In addition, forests in less affluent neighborhoods are more fragile because they have been less well thought out — so much so that they risk disappearing, further reducing access to green spaces in certain neighborhoods. Take the case of the few woodlots in the Assomption Sud–Longue-Pointe sector, in the east of Montreal, whose biological poverty is evoked to better justify their sacrifice to industrial exploitation…
The examples could go by for a long time. Besides, the book is full of them.
The demonstration is clear. Good “green” intentions are not enough to deal with the consequences of the climate crisis if we omit the social inequalities that it reproduces and exacerbates, like an infernal spiral. Public policies should not treat this question as a secondary consideration: it should be the starting point of all reflection.
Columnist specializing in environmental justice issues, Aurélie Lanctôt is a doctoral candidate in law at McGill University.