MAPPING THE MOVEMENT: THE FUTURE OF IDENTIFYING AND ADDRESSING CUMULATIVE IMPACTS

摘要

Charles Lee, long-standing activist, advisor, and policymaker, is in a unique position to assess developments within the environmental justice (EJ) movement by virtue of his nearly 40-year career dedicated to advancing EJ. Currently serving as the Senior Policy Advisor for Environmental Justice at the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), he leads the development and implementation of EPA's agencywide environmental justice strategic plans. In 1987, when the EJ movement was in its infancy, Mr. Lee served as the principal author of the seminal report Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States, the first national study to examine the relationship between the geography and demographics of hazardous waste sites, and one of the first studies to provide data supporting what had long been suspected by many: a pattern of disproportionate environmental burdens in low-income and minority areas. The Toxic Wastes and Race report spurred "an entire generation of social science researchers investigating the interplay between race, class and the environment[,]" generating academic research and scholarship on the relationship between race, class, and the environment that had not previously existed.