Environmental Problems Is A Racial Problem

And the blame can be put on the heads of non-whites. At least that is the way some people might construe the remarks of a Toronto City Councilor or is just a way of dredging up more funding for the social in-activist cottage industry.

City must address 'eco-apartheid' reality
April 30, 2007
Peter Gorrie Environment writer

Yesterday's public forum on Toronto's climate change plan illustrated a major challenge facing the city as it attempts to become the greenest in North America.

The 225 or so people seated at round tables for eight in a cavernous room at Exhibition Place were mainly familiar faces in the environment movement or students of the issue. And they were almost all white-skinned.

In a city where half the residents are visible minorities, the monochromatic participation shows how far Toronto must go to get all of its 2.3 million people involved in climate change, smog and other environmental issues.

The problem isn't unique to this area.

Last weekend, Chicago held a Green Festival, similar to the three-day Green Living trade show that closed here yesterday, next door to the forum in the Direct Energy Centre.

In Chicago, black and Hispanic people are a clear majority. Yet, only a handful from those communities were among the thousands who wandered the crowded aisles, among booths promoting energy efficiency, non-toxic household products and health aids.

The gap has spawned two new terms: "eco-apartheid" and "environmental justice."

The first concerns how the white middle class dominates the environment movement and, in some cases, shuts out others. The second recognizes pollution and other environmental ills tend to hit hardest at the poor, who – particularly in the United States, but also here – are more likely to be non-white.

The problem didn't escape the notice of Councillor Paula Fletcher. She chairs the parks and recreation committee which, on June 18, is to receive and consider the next version of the climate-change plan, incorporating ideas from the forum. "We need to go deeper into the community," she said in an interview after the forum.

The people at the event "are those who have generally thought a lot about the issue already," she said.

Some members of ethnic minorities are involved in city programs, and university environmental studies classes are "very diverse."

But it's not enough, she said. "If we're going to be successful, we can't just be a white, middle-class movement. We need to include all of Toronto.

"The mayor has made it clear that we have to have an outreach to people (who) might not be coming down to the Direct Energy Centre."

Fletcher said she'll try to include the minorities in consultations before the June 18 meeting, both in terms of what would help them to get involved and to solicit their ideas.

But six or seven weeks clearly won't be enough time to "bridge the gap," she said.