There’s Something in the Water

This study guide was written by August Welles and edited by Katya Zabelski

Using settler colonialism as its overarching theory, this study guide will cover the legacy of environmental racism and its health impacts on Indigenous and Black communities in Canada, the grassroots resistance activities by Indigenous and Black communities against the pollution and poisoning of their communities, and an intersectional approach to addressing climate change.

In this book, Ingrid Waldron discusses environmental racism in African Nova Scotia and the Indigenous Mi'kmaw Communities. Environmental racism is “a subset of the larger environmental justice movement that originated in the United States... [it is the] environmental policies, practices, or directives that disproportionately disadvantage individuals, groups, or communities (intentionally or unintentionally) based on race or color” (p. 25). 

The history of conceptual environmental racism began when the Northeast Community Action Group consisting of African American suburban homeowners in Houston tried to prevent a landfill near their neighborhood in 1979. The group launched a civil rights lawsuit, Bean vs. Southwestern Waste Management, Inc, which was the first of many environmental racism activist movements to follow.

Waldron details five major sociopolitical factors that combine to enable environmental racism:

1. Industries tend to choose low-property value areas to site their industrial wastelands to lower production costs.

2. Environmental blackmail. This is when low-income and impoverished communities agree to host hazardous waste sites in exchange for an amount of money that seems to outweigh the potential risks. Typically, these communities won’t oppose or lobby in favor of environmental reform because they already experience unemployment and worry that if plants close, for example, there will be massive layoffs.

3. Lack of political power, representation, and resources. Policymakers are more likely to listen to middle and upper-income communities, and communities without representation are less likely to get involved politically. 

4. Lack of protection and enforcement. Environmental protection policy does more for reducing overall pollution levels and less for ensuring that reduction is evenly distributed among an entire neighborhood, district, or population of people.

5. Neoliberal policy reform exacerbates existing issues within the community, as it is rooted in unsustainable production, which creates conditions for further environmental racism. Some examples of neoliberal policy reforms are:

• Cuts to social services,

• Exploitation of marginalized communities,

• Rollbacks on environmental regulations and funding.

Navigate our study guide using the table of contents below.