Environmental disasters can be devastating to all communities, but some can be more harshly affected than others. Fortunately growing up, my beach town didn’t face many severe natural disasters. Unfortunately, that can’t be said for many other communities like New Orleans or Flint, Michigan which gained vast followings due to media coverage.
A common theme among these two cities is that during hardships brought about by environmental causes, both communities lacked adequate resources to fix the respective issue. The main resource they lacked being funding. Natural disasters come and go, but communities still have to pick themselves up and repair the damage each time. But to do so, these communities need more financial support.
Of course, there is a multitude of factors involved in environmental issues, making an already difficult task increasingly complicated. It would be easy to just say that we should provide more funding to these areas, but that poses a question of where that money is coming from. I think it is important to acknowledge that these communities should in fact be assisted financially, but I also think that money should be used to rebuild these communities.
For instance, in New Orleans hurricane Katrina was an unavoidable issue. Before the hurricane reached land, warnings and evacuations were issued to the area. However, lower income areas still had a disadvantage. Some families and individuals don’t have the means to evacuate. Whether that be a lack of transportation, medical conditions that make it difficult to leave on short notice, or a lack of place to retreat to, these communities still had road-blocks at every corner. However, relief provided by the government was a critical component in the aftermath. While the government did provide funding for rebuilding, the cleanup started in parts of the city that were better off financially. Leaving the poorer communities to fend for themselves until the other areas were adequately supported.
Above shows some of the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.
In Flint, Michigan, they suffered from contaminated water due to a lack of adequate treatment. In order to save money, the local government switched its water supply to the Flint River which contained high levels of lead from the lead pipes it traveled through. After people went to the courts to fight for proper water treatment, the government finally started providing bottled water to households receiving water from these lead pipes and started replacing the corroded pipes.
Above features water from the corroded pipes.
Looking at the demographics of both Flint, Michigan and New Orleans, it highlights the environmental injustice and racism that occurs all over the world. Using the data provided by the U.S. Census in 2019, we know that Flint has a poverty rate of about 39% and approximately 54% of the population consists of Black residents. In Louisiana, the poverty rate is about 24% and approximately 60% of the population consists of Black residents.
Systemic racism has always been an issue in America and continues to be prevalent in today’s society. Systemic racism can be many things, but the wealth gap, lower employment rates, and housing discrimination are the main contributors to environmental racism. What most people don’t know or realize is that these oppressions link back heavily to how these communities are able to deal with environmental issues. Environmental racism is just another piece of this larger puzzle.
While the areas I mentioned are only in the United States, environmental issues like these can occur all over the world. Undeveloped countries can be taken advantage of by developed countries. Large companies go to developing countries because labor is cheap and so is manufacturing costs. For instance, Apple manufactures most of their iPhones in China but still have factories in places like Thailand, India, and the Philippines. Leaving behind a plethora of environmental issues like waste and resource consumption. Still my point stands: if these communities had more funding and resources to combat environmental issues and disasters they would suffer less consequences.
Environmental injustices would not be as severe if governments put more funding into helping these low-income communities. Governmental agencies can be effective to combat, but it takes a large amount of commotion to get them to take action. Crowd-funding and protesting are just the first step to help dissolve environmental injustices. Now, I think we need to continue to put pressure on governments by using movements looking to bridge these gaps. Some environmental issues are avoidable, but those caused by natural processes are not. The more funding these low-income communities receive the better equipped they’ll be to handle these unpreventable environmental issues. Overall creating less environmental injustices in our communities.
