[X] CLOSEMAIN MENU

  • Archives

  • Categories

    • air pollution (8)
    • Announcements (607)
    • Antibiotic Resistance (46)
    • Antimicrobial (22)
    • Aquaculture (31)
    • Aquatic Organisms (39)
    • Bats (10)
    • Beneficials (64)
    • Biofuels (6)
    • Biological Control (35)
    • Biomonitoring (40)
    • Birds (26)
    • btomsfiolone (1)
    • Bug Bombs (2)
    • Cannabis (30)
    • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (13)
    • Chemical Mixtures (13)
    • Children (128)
    • Children/Schools (241)
    • cicadas (1)
    • Climate (37)
    • Climate Change (100)
    • Clover (1)
    • compost (7)
    • Congress (24)
    • contamination (164)
    • deethylatrazine (1)
    • diamides (1)
    • Disinfectants & Sanitizers (19)
    • Drift (20)
    • Drinking Water (20)
    • Ecosystem Services (25)
    • Emergency Exemption (3)
    • Environmental Justice (174)
    • Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (577)
    • Events (90)
    • Farm Bill (26)
    • Farmworkers (211)
    • Forestry (6)
    • Fracking (4)
    • Fungal Resistance (8)
    • Goats (2)
    • Golf (15)
    • Greenhouse (1)
    • Groundwater (17)
    • Health care (32)
    • Herbicides (53)
    • Holidays (40)
    • Household Use (9)
    • Indigenous People (6)
    • Indoor Air Quality (6)
    • Infectious Disease (4)
    • Integrated and Organic Pest Management (75)
    • Invasive Species (35)
    • Label Claims (51)
    • Lawns/Landscapes (257)
    • Litigation (350)
    • Livestock (10)
    • men’s health (5)
    • metabolic syndrome (3)
    • Metabolites (10)
    • Microbiata (26)
    • Microbiome (32)
    • molluscicide (1)
    • Nanosilver (2)
    • Nanotechnology (54)
    • National Politics (388)
    • Native Americans (4)
    • Occupational Health (18)
    • Oceans (11)
    • Office of Inspector General (5)
    • perennial crops (1)
    • Pesticide Drift (167)
    • Pesticide Efficacy (12)
    • Pesticide Mixtures (18)
    • Pesticide Residues (193)
    • Pets (36)
    • Plant Incorporated Protectants (3)
    • Plastic (11)
    • Poisoning (22)
    • President-elect Transition (3)
    • Reflection (3)
    • Repellent (4)
    • Resistance (125)
    • Rights-of-Way (1)
    • Rodenticide (35)
    • Seasonal (5)
    • Seeds (8)
    • soil health (32)
    • Superfund (5)
    • synergistic effects (28)
    • Synthetic Pyrethroids (18)
    • Synthetic Turf (3)
    • Take Action (615)
    • Textile/Apparel/Fashion Industry (1)
    • Toxic Waste (12)
    • U.S. Supreme Court (4)
    • Volatile Organic Compounds (1)
    • Women’s Health (31)
    • Wood Preservatives (36)
    • World Health Organization (12)
    • Year in Review (3)
  • Most Viewed Posts

Daily News Blog

17
Jan

Reflections on Martin Luther King Day, Prioritizing Environmental Justice Given Disproportionate Existential Threats

Martin Luther King Day recognizes his achievements and asks the nation to assess what the country can do to ensure environmental justice.

(Beyond Pesticides, January 17-20, 2025) Martin Luther King Day recognizes the achievements of a remarkable civil rights leader while asking the nation to assess what more the country must do to ensure equality and environmental justice, as well as protection for those who suffer disproportionately from toxic chemical exposure. Advocates and disproportionately affected communities acknowledge the historic nature of the Biden Administration’s commitment to elevating environmental justice in the decision-making of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

However, according to Willy Blackmore, writer for Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder (“the oldest Black-owned newspaper in the state of Minnesota and one of the longest-standing, family-owned newspapers in the countryâ€), “[T]he more systemic change that [Administrator] Regan’s EPA tried to bring about was stonewalled by legal challenges that threatened to undermine the agency’s strongest tool for righting environmental injustices.â€

Black communities across the nation face disproportionate impacts to petrochemical infrastructure and toxic chemicals, including pesticides and fertilizers. A 2021 study published in BMC Public Health found that biomarkers for 12 dangerous pesticides tracked over the past 20 years were found in the blood and urine of Black participants at average levels up to five times those in White participants. A University of Michigan study found that African American women are 40 percent more likely to die from breast cancer than women of any race. This same study found that triple-negative cancer (basal-liked breast cancer) is approximately three-fold higher in non-Hispanic Black women compared to non-Hispanic White women.

In the context of disproportionate harms and imagining a world free of toxic petrochemical pesticides, Dr. Martin Luther King’s Christmas Eve Sermon of 1967 at his home church of Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia demonstrates his perspective on adopting a holistic approach to solving seemingly insurmountable challenges of our time.

Dr. King said, “It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.â€

As the nation faces the dual occasions of inaugurating a U.S. president known for stoking division while simultaneously celebrating the legacy of a life-long organizer and titan of environmental, economic, and racial justice, Beyond Pesticides looks to reflect on the track record of the Biden Administration to apply these lessons to renewed public interest in transformative change in our communities with organic as an environmental justice solution.

Environmental Justice (EJ) under the Biden Administration

Throughout the Biden Administration, Beyond Pesticides, through the Daily News and Action of the Week, called on the Administration to implement its groundbreaking environmental justice commitments as outlined in various Executive Orders, legislative actions, and executive agency actions to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

See Daily News here from February 5, 2021, analyzing the initial rollout of Executive Orders that intertwined environmental and racial justice by aiming to comprehensively reform the Office of Management and Budget operations, restore scientific integrity, and develop a “whole of government†approach to addressing the climate crisis and disproportionate impacts on frontline and disadvantaged communities.

Office of Budget and Management: Politics of Pricing Greenhouse Gas Emissions

There is a long history of incorporating the social cost of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGe) into budgetary analysis, regulatory actions, and federally-funded projects. See here for a regulatory tracker developed by Harvard Law School Environmental & Energy Law Program for a longer history of the Biden Administration’s track record through 2023, as well as the history of GHG pricing beginning in the Obama Administration.

In January 2024, World Resources Institute conducted a climate action progress tracker, finding the Biden Administration to have made several pivotal achievements, including:

Meanwhile, the same analysis found that the Administration was off track for taxing pollution. Beyond Pesticides raised concerns throughout the Biden Administration about the co-option of climate-smart funding and programs by pesticide industry actors to incorporate pesticide products as a necessary component of holistic climate solutions. (See Daily News here and here for examples to debunk these myths.)

On the subject of scientific integrity, advocates see that little has changed in ensuring sound science in EPA decision-making on pesticide and chemical regulations. There was a public comment period that closed earlier this year (see the Action of the Week here) in response to the Presidential Memorandum on Restoring Trust in Government Through Scientific Integrity and Evidence-Based Policymaking.

As of today’s publication, EPA has not published a final draft of the updated Scientific Integrity Policy. According to its website, “The updated Scientific Integrity Policy is expected to be released this year [2024] and will be posted on the Scientific Integrity Website with corresponding outreach and training materials.†Given the direction of the incoming administration, the future of resolving scientific integrity appears to be stalled indefinitely.

Whole-of-Government Approach : Justice40 in Context

Another Executive Order signed on January 27, 2021, “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad,†put into place commitments to put teeth into these EOs, leading to the creation of the Justice40 Initiative. The goal of Justice40 was transformational in that it aimed to dedicate “40 percent of the overall benefits of certain Federal climate, clean energy, affordable and sustainable housing, and other investments flow to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized by underinvestment and overburdened by pollution.â€

An independent analysis by Resources for the Future, “an independent, nonprofit research institution in Washington, D.C,†of 445 Justice40 covered programs released by the White House in April 2023 finds a mixed bag for implementation of EJ commitments in a programmatic sense.

For example, 30 percent of the programs (133 programs) reviewed are “not making information about their activities available to the public.†However, 98 of the programs are considered to fall under the category of “full implementation and achievement of the 40 percent goal,†representing the second highest category. It remains to be seen what the full impact of Justice40 has been moving forward.

An additional action the Biden Administration took through this EO was the establishment of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC) with the goal of “bring[ing] greater visibility to EJ issues across the federal government but will provide EPA’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) with an excellent partner for providing horizon-expanding EJ advice and recommendations to our government’s leadership.” While it remains unclear the full extent to which WHEJAC pushed the needle on environmental justice under the Biden Administration, advocates believe the creation of this Council is critical in mounting pressure within and across executive actions. (See here for the full list of WHEJAC recommendations.)

EJ Moving Forward

Principles of environmental justice, including diversity, equity, and inclusion, will be on the chopping block in the second Trump administration, given the track record of the first administration and rhetoric among key Trump advisors.

The Trump-affiliated Project 2025 represents significant risks of exacerbating continuing disproportionate harms to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities across various federal agencies.

For example, there is a proposal to “[s]hift responsibility for evaluating misconduct away from its Office of Scientific Integrity, which has been overseen by environmental activists, and toward an independent body.†It says EPA’s “scientific enterprise, including the ORD [Office of Research and Development], has rightly been criticized for decades as precautionary, bloated, unaccountable, closed, outcome-driven, hostile to public and legislative input, and inclined to pursue political rather than purely scientific goals.†Environmental and public health advocates view the irony of Project 2025 given that it recommends placing political appointees across EPA and other federal agencies. See Daily News here for extensive commentary on Project 2025 implications for environmental law moving forward.

Advocates are not surprised by Project 2025 given what they view as the lackluster track record of the previous Trump Administration on regulatory and scientific integrity. For example, the EPA under Trump 1.0 announced in an eleventh-hour move the finalization of what advocates dubbed the “Secret Science†rule, which would have significantly restricted the scientific research EPA uses in developing regulations to amplify public health, biodiversity regeneration, and climate action.

Additionally, EPA under the first Trump Administration established the Navigable Waters Protection Rule, a precursor to the eventual SCOTUS decision in Sackett v. EPA (2023) in which Clean Water Act protections are only applied to contiguous “Waters of the United States†(WOTUS), excluding groundwater, ephemeral streams, and critical wetland ecosystems that do not connect directly to waterbodies that are not clearly defined under the WOTUS definition. Recent research conducted by Yale University and the University of Massachusetts determined that the Sackett decision “endangered the drinking water sources of at least 117 million Americans by stripping protections from over half of the nation’s wetlands, as well as up to nearly 5 million miles of rain-dependent and seasonal streams that feed into rivers, lakes, and estuaries.†[See Daily News here for an analysis and the initial reactions to the Sackett ruling from environmental and public health advocates in 2023.]

There were various other actions that raised concerns, including the eleventh-hour approval of various toxic pesticides. There was the reapproval of the previously canceled insecticide aldicarb (see Daily News here), the reregistration of bee-toxic flonicamid, and the disinfectant ethylene oxide (see Daily News here), as well as continuing the registration of chlorpyrifos (see Daily News here). According to an analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity, at least 100 new pesticide products were approved in the first administration that were either banned in other countries or were in the process of a phaseout. The Trump-led EPA also promulgated a rule that would have weakened pesticide buffer zones, having direct implications for farmworkers and frontline communities living in agricultural areas (see Daily News here). Ultimately, a federal court blocked this rule from moving forward (see Daily News here).

The legacy of environmental justice falls on the shoulders of, among other members of Congress, the ranking members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate Agriculture Committees, Representative Angie Craig (D-MN) and Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), respectively. In the upcoming Farm Bill negotiations, their plate will include funding the twenty “orphan†Farm Bill programs without guaranteed funding, including three organic programs: Organic Cost Share, Organic Data Initiative, and Organic Certification Trade and Tracking program. (See here for the National Organic Coalition’s press release.)

Given President-elect Trump’s pledge in a C-Span interview in late 2024 to “… eliminat[e] 10 old regulations for every new one,†there is a renewed commitment to invest in local actions and push local elected officials to protect public health, biodiversity, and climate resilience. See Daily News here for reflections on the importance of protecting democracy and the ability of communities to protect themselves from cascading crises.

In the face of deregulatory actions likely to exacerbate disproportionate risks and impacts of petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers, as well as industrial chemicals, on communities of color across the nation, there are Black-led organizations that are advancing the mission of eliminating petrochemical dependence by advancing food and land management systems that move toward organic principles and practices.

Consider supporting SAAFON (Southeastern African American Farmers Organic Network). SAAFON was founded in 2006 to partner with Black farmers in the Southeast to attain USDA organic certification, while advocating for their needs in the broader sustainable agriculture movement. Also consider supporting Black Farmers Index, which offers a directory of Black-owned and operated farms around the country, including certified organic farmers and resources for farmers interested in going through the organic certification process.

Join Beyond Pesticides in taking action through the holiday weekend! >> This Martin Luther King Jr. Day, tell Congress to protect our farmworkers and those at disproportionate risk from toxic chemicals.

All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.

Image Credit: Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., speaks in Alabama, Feb. 1968. (AP Photo/Charles Kelly)

Sources: Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, World Resources Institute, Resources for the Future

Share

Leave a Reply

  • Archives

  • Categories

    • air pollution (8)
    • Announcements (607)
    • Antibiotic Resistance (46)
    • Antimicrobial (22)
    • Aquaculture (31)
    • Aquatic Organisms (39)
    • Bats (10)
    • Beneficials (64)
    • Biofuels (6)
    • Biological Control (35)
    • Biomonitoring (40)
    • Birds (26)
    • btomsfiolone (1)
    • Bug Bombs (2)
    • Cannabis (30)
    • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (13)
    • Chemical Mixtures (13)
    • Children (128)
    • Children/Schools (241)
    • cicadas (1)
    • Climate (37)
    • Climate Change (100)
    • Clover (1)
    • compost (7)
    • Congress (24)
    • contamination (164)
    • deethylatrazine (1)
    • diamides (1)
    • Disinfectants & Sanitizers (19)
    • Drift (20)
    • Drinking Water (20)
    • Ecosystem Services (25)
    • Emergency Exemption (3)
    • Environmental Justice (174)
    • Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (577)
    • Events (90)
    • Farm Bill (26)
    • Farmworkers (211)
    • Forestry (6)
    • Fracking (4)
    • Fungal Resistance (8)
    • Goats (2)
    • Golf (15)
    • Greenhouse (1)
    • Groundwater (17)
    • Health care (32)
    • Herbicides (53)
    • Holidays (40)
    • Household Use (9)
    • Indigenous People (6)
    • Indoor Air Quality (6)
    • Infectious Disease (4)
    • Integrated and Organic Pest Management (75)
    • Invasive Species (35)
    • Label Claims (51)
    • Lawns/Landscapes (257)
    • Litigation (350)
    • Livestock (10)
    • men’s health (5)
    • metabolic syndrome (3)
    • Metabolites (10)
    • Microbiata (26)
    • Microbiome (32)
    • molluscicide (1)
    • Nanosilver (2)
    • Nanotechnology (54)
    • National Politics (388)
    • Native Americans (4)
    • Occupational Health (18)
    • Oceans (11)
    • Office of Inspector General (5)
    • perennial crops (1)
    • Pesticide Drift (167)
    • Pesticide Efficacy (12)
    • Pesticide Mixtures (18)
    • Pesticide Residues (193)
    • Pets (36)
    • Plant Incorporated Protectants (3)
    • Plastic (11)
    • Poisoning (22)
    • President-elect Transition (3)
    • Reflection (3)
    • Repellent (4)
    • Resistance (125)
    • Rights-of-Way (1)
    • Rodenticide (35)
    • Seasonal (5)
    • Seeds (8)
    • soil health (32)
    • Superfund (5)
    • synergistic effects (28)
    • Synthetic Pyrethroids (18)
    • Synthetic Turf (3)
    • Take Action (615)
    • Textile/Apparel/Fashion Industry (1)
    • Toxic Waste (12)
    • U.S. Supreme Court (4)
    • Volatile Organic Compounds (1)
    • Women’s Health (31)
    • Wood Preservatives (36)
    • World Health Organization (12)
    • Year in Review (3)
  • Most Viewed Posts