There’s Something in the Water

Summary, part 1

Critical Environmental Justice Theory

Waldron anchors There’s Something in the Water to Critical Environmental Justice (CEJ) theory while delving into the nuances of how CEJ can expand into solidarity-driven action. To succeed in social justice, we need to unpack the larger socio-spatial systemic inequalities, and we must ground our action in theory that acknowledges environmental racism. 

Four pillars of Critical Environmental Justice (CEJ) studies framework

The Critical Environmental Justice  (CEJ) framework theorizes that “environmental racism is a form of state-sanctioned racial and gendered violence through which violent control over Indigenous and racialized bodies, space, and knowledge systems work to harm the economic, political, and social well-being of these communities. It is a framework that is absent from most environmental justice scholarship” (p. 19).

CEJ is broken up into two main ‘generations’ of theory:

• First-generation CEJ: concerned primarily with analyzing the inequalities of environmental forces on low-income, racialized communities.

• Second-generation CEJ: moves beyond “distributive injustice” to look more deeply at the other intersection points such as gender and sexuality (groups exposed to marginalization, erasure, and discrimination).

Waldron points to the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests as an example of intersectionality and CEJ activism. CEJ asserts that an intersectional approach to BLM means acknowledging that the movement “must be inclusive of not just race but also class, gender, sexuality, immigration status, citizenship, age, ability, and other social identities” (19). In addition, intersectionality is foundational to BLM’s demands surrounding environmental issues such as divestment from fossil fuels, investment in community-based sustainable energy solutions, etc. Read Radical in Progress’s study guide on intersectionality here.

Waldron introduces the four pillars of CEJ to provide a conceptual basis which is further explored throughout the book:

Pillar I: While the author uses a CEJ lens to look at race to foreground the understanding of environmental racism, a more intersectional approach must be taken.

Pillar II: Progressive and transformative change must move beyond addressing the issue through high-level legislation and institutional reform and instead, build towards an anti-authoritarian agenda. Traditional reformist activists and scholars work with the agencies responsible for sanctioning environmental racism in the first place, but in working with these agencies, activists and scholars are just reinforcing their legitimacy. Therefore, we need to recognize the need for Indigenous and Black communities to engage with a transformative anti-authoritarian plan instead of a reformist one. 

Pillar III: We must challenge the notion that marginalized groups exposed to environmental threats are inferior, dirty, or dangerous. This stems from the concept of “racial expendability,” which is when the state and legal system’s perception of racialized communities as deficient, criminal, or threatening and deserving of violent discipline (p. 21).

Pillar IV: Multi-scalar approach: not only must environmental justice researchers understand environmental issues at the local, regional, national, or transnational scales, but they must also understand the impacts from the cellular or bodily level, or the larger global level and back.

Beyond the pillars of CEJ, this book requires readers to understand how white privilege benefits and grants advantages to white people based on their skin color. Waldron needs readers to challenge this notion when discussing issues of race: white is a race too, and we must recognize that when making decisions. In addition to white privilege, Waldron explores the idea of “racial procrastination” in Canada, which is when racial issues are not addressed unless absolutely necessary. White people’s silence on racial matters impacts how racism gets taken up in systems of power.