Environmental Justice?

This month, the TBB program group culminated their studies of environmental issues in Vietnam by hosting a Student Environmental Conference.  On December 31st, more than 60 Vietnamese university students from schools throughout Ho Chi Minh City attended the conference.  TBB students, along with the three Vietnamese university students who participated in the month's activities, led the four-hour conference, presenting their learning, allowing the attendees to share their work, and facilitating small group discussions of Vietnamese and TBB students to explore the issues presented and possible solutions.   It was an enlightening exchange of information and ideas.  The following is a speech that was presented at the conference by David Snyder.  It was written by Katie Cromack, Katie Robson, and David Snyder.

We stand at a crucial point in history.  The world has reached full capacity, and humans can no longer continue to waste our planet’s precious resources.  The people who are primarily responsible for the destruction of the earth are the ones who are currently being affected the least.  Those who can afford to purchase products made in factories that contaminate the environment are not the ones who are suffering. The people who are the most directly effected by pollution are the people living downstream of the polluted river, who can’t afford housing removed from the sources of contamination, and who are unable to institute change in their environment.  These are issues of environmental justice. From what my classmates and I have gathered from our lives in the United States and our brief experience in Vietnam, we believe that these universal problems are dire, but they can be solved.
   
Most waste disposal facilities in the United States are located in poorer districts.  Nobody wants to live near garbage; so those who can afford to live farther away do so. The same situation applies to power plants, factories, and any other facilities that decrease the health of that region.  We have found a similar phenomenon here in Ho Chi Minh City, where landfills and factories tend to be located far from the urban areas. These regions are often comprised of poorer families who are having their air and water contaminated by methane and toxins that leach into the soil and water supply. This method of dealing with waste and hazardous material, in both the United States and Vietnam, is an example of the “out of sight, out of mind” philosophy.  If something isn’t directly in front of us, then that problem is much easier to forget and ignore.  However, we have also seen that in Vietnam many governmental branches and independent Unions are taking the first step toward eco-friendly waste management. In District Six, we met with a workers’ union that is working to sort and recycle their material, and in Quy Nhon, we visited a waste management facility that composts its organic material and resells the compost to farmers. These types of projects are growing all over the world, but are they enough?  
   
Especially in terms of Global Warming, can our generation do enough to correct the mistakes of the past? Global warming is a more urgent problem everyday. It affects everyone, but it affects certain regions more than others.  For example, rising ocean levels will devastate the Mekong Delta.  This agricultural region produces the majority of the rice that Vietnam exports as well as other types of produce.  This area emits a smaller amount of green house gases than other areas, but will be one of the places struck first and most severely by global warming.  Similarly, in New Orleans, urban planning determined that the poorer inhabitants of the city were situated in the areas with greatest risk of flooding.  This resulted in the total submersion of the ninth ward, one of the city’s poorest areas, when Hurricane Katrina struck the Mississippi River Delta. Who is to say that this won’t happen again when ocean levels rise?  These two important Deltas, which are home to thousands of people, are still at risk. Can we learn from Hurricane Katrina or will we maintain this system of environmental injustice?

If every society achieved true environmental justice, then no area would be saddled with more pollution and risk than any other.  Even if this system existed, would it be fair? My classmates and I believe that a more realistic and fair definition of environmental justice is when everyone is responsible for the waste that they produce.  The percentage of waste you produce should equal the percentage of responsibility you shoulder.  Even if this ideal is accomplished, we need to change the “out of sight, out of mind” mentality and finally come to terms with the reality we have created.
   
The scope of this problem is greater than we can imagine.  It will take more than policy and action to change it.  It will take a vast psychological and systematic transformation of society.  The fact that we are all here today is indicative of the fact that people realize the need for change.  Every generation has a cause to fight for, something that distinguishes them.  Our generation is facing something greater than an enemy across an imaginary border.  Our war is with our own lifestyle.  We need to address the root cause of our insatiable consumption in order to remove ourselves from an unsustainable path.
   
This conference can be the first step for all of us in creating a world that is sustainable and eco-effective, meaning that humanity affects the earth in a positive way. We want to know what you think about environmental justice, global warming, and urban planning.  You are the experts of Vietnam, and this exchange is what we are here for.  We believe it could be the start of a discussion of global issues that will shape our collective future.