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( 5) from the 2009 volume of this journal.
#Frame subsume update#
What we offer here is an update on the story of the theory and practice of EJ, following up on a previous review by Mohai et al. The point of these two opening examples-major stories in late 2015 and early 2016-is to illustrate that the concept of EJ continues to be relevant to our everyday lives, reaching from tainted tap water in one city to the single most important international policy agreement of this young century. Clearly, much more needs to be done to attain anything resembling justice as we experience and respond to climate change, but the discourses of environmental justice (EJ) and climate justice have become central motivating factors for, and organizing themes of, the agreement. Equity is a key principle throughout, and the importance of climate justice is explicitly noted. The agreement reached notes the importance of impacts on the most vulnerable, on indigenous peoples, on small island states, and on future generations. Major actors in the process leading up to the COP, such as the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, both demanded attention for climate justice and declared the outcome a victory ( 4). One could argue that the recognition in Paris of the importance of the concept of climate justice helped to bridge some gaps between rich and poor countries. Although some have cynically (and incorrectly) argued that concerns for climate justice have hampered progress toward agreement at past meetings ( 3), the reality in Paris was that conceptions of environmental equity and climate justice were key motivators.
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In late 2015, in Paris, there were sighs of relief when the Conference of Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change-at the twenty-first COP meeting-came to an agreement that addresses the mitigation of carbon emissions, development of adaptation pathways, process for dealing with loss and damage, financing of mitigation and adaptation, and necessity of both technology transfer to developing states and capacity building for those most vulnerable.
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The event, and the ongoing inevitable impacts of lead poisoning on young people, has been thoroughly discussed through the lens of environmental injustice-the inequitable exposure of communities of color, and communities in poverty, to environmental risks due primarily to their lack of recognition and political power. Flint's population is also 56.6% African American, compared with 14.2% of the state as a whole ( 2). Over the course of the year and a half that the city sourced water from the Flint River, research shows that the percentage of children with elevated blood levels of lead increased from 2.4% to 4.9%, more than doubling at-risk exposure in one ward, the rise was nearly 15%.įlint's household income is half of the state's median, and 41.5% of residents are below the federal poverty level.
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Residents and others brought attention to the issue, but the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality downplayed the danger, tested water in a way that minimized potential detection, and ridiculed employees and experts who insisted the danger was real ( 1). Although Escherichia coli was found in the water and The City warned residents to boil water before use, the larger problem was that the water contained corrosives that ate away at the city's aging pipes, resulting in significant amounts of lead coming out of the tap. Immediately, numerous residents complained about the smell and taste of the water coming out of the tap. In 2014, the city of Flint, Michigan, shifted the intake of its water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River.