Скачать или смотреть Environmental Justice: An Anti-Racist Movement and Principles for Practice

On October 26, 2020, the Energy and Environmental Law Society at the University of Maine School of Law hosted a discussion with leading environmental and climate justice scholars–hailing from Hawaiʻi and New England–working at the intersection of racial and class inequality, environmental law, energy and climate change, and public health.

Championed primarily by African-Americans, Latinos, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans, the environmental justice movement was built on a statistical fact: residents of America's most polluted environments are commonly people of color and the poor. Environmental justice advocates have shown that this is no accident. The environmental justice movement fights for the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people in the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policy. Climate justice, deeply intertwined with the environmental justice movement, seeks to shift the discourse on climate change from a strictly scientific arena into a social justice and civil rights one, recognizing that effects of climate change often have disproportionate effects on historically marginalized or under served communities.


Panelists from the Yale School of Law, Northeastern University, Vermont School of Law, and the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa, explored the birth and history of the environmental justice movement, its implications for climate policy, the incorporation of environmental and climate justice principles in the practice of law and policy creation, and our professional and ethical obligation to identify and fight against environmental racism. Students, practicing attorneys, policy-makers, municipal leaders, urban planners, business and nonprofit leaders, social justice activists, and interested community members joined the event via Zoom.


The event was sponsored by the Energy and Environmental Society at Maine Law, and generously co-sponsored by the University of Maine Graduate School of Business, the University of Maine Graduate and Professional Center, Maine Conservation Voters and the Environmental and Energy Technology Council of Maine.