Human Rights and the Environment: A Synopsis and Some Predictions

Georgetown International Environmental Law Review, Spring 2004 by Hill, Barry E, Wolfson, Steve, Targ, Nicholas

The purpose of this memorandum is to ensure your continued support and commitment in administering environmental laws and their implementing regulations to assure that environmental justice is, in fact, secured for all communities and persons. Environmental statutes provide many opportunities to address environmental risks and hazards in minority communities and/or low-income communities. Application of these existing statutory provisions is an important part of this Agency's effort to prevent those communities from being subject to disproportionately high and adverse impacts, and environmental effects.42

In addition, to ensure that the public understands and appreciates how the environmental statutes and their implementing regulations administered by the Agency can be used to address environmental justice issues and concerns, EPA's Office of Environmental Justice provided funds, through a cooperative agreement with the Environmental Law Institute, to produce two comprehensive reports: (1) Opportunities for Advancing Environmental Justice: An Analysis of U.S. EPA Statutory Authorities, which states that "a fuller understanding of EPA's authorities to promote environmental justice is important because the public has a vital role to play in the effective implementation of EPA's environmental protection program;"43 and (2) A Citizen's Guide to Using Environmental Laws to Secure Environmental Justice that "focuses on opportunities, legal rules, and tools that community residents have under environmental laws to protect their health, the health of their families and neighbors, and their environment."44 A companion video/DVD, Communities and Environmental Laws, to the Citizen's Guide, has also been developed. All are available to the public upon request.

Moreover, the Agency's Environmental Appeals Board (EAB) has issued several decisions that support the argument that the EPA can take environmental justice issues and concerns into consideration when they arise. The EAB has concluded that the Agency should consider environmental justice issues when reviewing permits issued under: the Clean Air Act,45 the Safe Drinking Water Act,46 and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.47

In sum, based upon these and other Agency activities, the proverbial "toothpaste is out of the tube": environmental justice, indeed, is imbedded in existing environmental laws and their implementing regulations.

D. THE LOGIC OF A RIGHTS-BASED APPROACH

In light of the evolutionary process proffered by Professor Ruhl, CIEL states that:

Sustainable development and environmental justice, thus, are symbolically related and should be pursued in tandem. Only then will sustainable development be achieved at the ground-level where all biodiversity reservoirs, carbon sinks, watersheds, forests, pasturelands, and coastal and marine resources are located, often in close proximity to hundreds of millions of human beings directly dependent on these vital resources for their lives and livelihoods.48