Counteracting power relationships when planning environmental education
✍ Scribed by Barbara McDonald
- Book ID
- 102684911
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1996
- Weight
- 865 KB
- Volume
- 1996
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1052-2891
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Low-income and minority communities are ojten denied opportunities to help design environmental education programs relevant to their environmental experience and needs. As the weaker partner in government-initiated programs, community activists ofen struggle to find their voice in the planning process.
Counteracting Power Relationships When Planning Environmental Education
Barbara McDonald
The right to have knowledge about one's physical environment has recently emerged as an issue in communities of color and those characterized by low incomes and other social, economic, and political disadvantages. These communities have been shown to bear a disproportionate share of the nation's environmental pollution. In 1987, the United Church of Christ's Commission for Racial Justice released findings on the demographcs of populations living near toxic waste sites (cited in . The commission reported that communities with one or more commercial hazardous-waste facilities also had a significantly higher proportion of racial minorities than communities without such facilities. Similar studies published in the 199Os, as well as conferences, summits, and meetings on what is now known as environmental justice, continue to highlight the severity of the problem and to galvanize action to address the issue. In 1992 the Environmental Protection Agency published a report recommending the involvement of racial minorities and lowincome communities in environmental policy making (cited in Sexton, Olden, and Johnson, 1993). In 1993 President Clinton issued Executive Order No. 12898, which directed all federal agencies to address environmental justice in low-income and minority communities . Although some researchers prefer the term environmental racism to highlight the disparity between the environmental risks borne by predominantly nonwhite communities compared to predominantly whte communities, most have adopted the term envirqnrnental justice to focus attention on the need for all citizens to attain environmental equity . One strategy that