Environmental Justice Mapping / California v. the Global South

Environmental Justice Mapping

I examined a census tract near my home in Los Angeles, in a neighborhood where NPR’s Marketplace has taken a storefront just to follow the rapid gentrification of the area (http://yorkandfig.com/). The area is ranked around 50% on the CalEnviroScreen scale.

Google Earth Street View

This café, with its minimalist atmosphere and limited selection of offerings, came early in the wave of “hipster” hotspots that are now popping up at an increasing rate. Many of the newer businesses in the area do not seem to cater to the predominantly lower-income, Hispanic neighborhood.

Google Earth Street View

Still under construction in this photo, the corner of this block is now a gated park. It had been a barren, undeveloped lot for a while prior, and now hosts a variety of plants that increase the area’s biodiversity and provide green space for local residents.

Google Earth Street View

For a long time this was a small gallery with a warehouse full of junk art in back. It was here before the neighborhood was up-and-coming, and served as a focal point for local art nights.

Google Earth Street View

Stores like this are what is left of the original neighborhood, sprinkled in between boutiques and gourmet doughnut shops. While the addition of a park is environmentally beneficial to the neighborhood, improvements such as these do little good if the residents are then pushed out by increasing property values.

California v. the Global South

In some ways, the unequal effects of the drought and pollution in California are comparable those of climate change globally. As addressed in the New York Times article “Drought Frames Economic Divide in California,” by Adam Nagourney and Jack Healy, lower-income California residents struggle to reduce water consumption in the face of rising water bills, while wealthier residents can afford to maintain swimming pools and lush gardens, regardless of the costs. This might be made analogous to the disproportionate effects of climate change and environmental disasters on the Global South and poorer regions of the world, as discussed in the CNN article “Rich, poor and climate change” by Rachel Oliver. While many populations in developing countries are at risk of becoming environmental refugees, wealthier residents of more developed countries are comparatively unaffected. Oliver also addresses the environmental injustice in California, specifically the much greater exposure that African Americans living in Los Angeles have to both lead and air pollution.

While environmental inequity is a large part of this comparison, another key point is that of who is responsible for these effects. In the case of global climate change, Oliver points out that the wealthiest twenty percent of the world is responsible for eighty percent of the world’s carbon emissions since the Industrial Revolution. This applies to people within the Unites States as well, as more affluent residents of Los Angeles likely contribute to a greater portion of the pollution that disproportionately affects lower-income minority groups within the city. While wealthier Californians also consume much more water than their lower-income counterparts, this behavior is not actually responsible for the region’s drought. In this case, it is more an issue of some people not doing their part to conserve resources than it is of one group’s actions directly harming another group.

Regarding assistance, California seems to be closer to allocating responsibility to high-consumers than the developing world is as a whole. The tiered water-billing systems implemented by some cities and water companies aim to incentivize reduced water consumption, while placing a larger economic burden on those who fail to comply. As mentioned in the article “Adapt or die” from The Economist, France has implemented a tax on foreign flights that goes toward funding HIV/AIDS work in Africa, effectively making those who use high carbon-emitting transportation take a step toward offsetting their environmentally destructive lifestyle. The cap-and-trade agreements adopted by many developed countries to regulate corporate pollution has a similar effect as the tiered-pricing of California’s water, both allowing those with money to continue their consumer and emission habits so long as they can pay it off. In some cases, such as the European Union’s emissions-credit system, a portion of the money is allocated to aiding developing countries’ adaptation to climate change. However in California the billing of the rich does nothing to help the disproportionately affected poor.