Environmental Health & Justice

Catalog description

Environmental justice denotes the existence of equal rights or conditions of a healthy environment for all persons, irrespective of their neighborhood type, race, gender, income-class, type of work, place of origin, country of residence, citizenship among other factors. Scholars and community activities have, however, shown the existence of disparities in exposure to environmental health hazards among people of different social, demographic and economic classes, both in the US and other parts of the world. Such hazards have affected the well-being (health and economic) of several communities in the US, especially predominantly low-income and minority neighborhoods, indigenous communities, low-wage workers, women, children and the elderly. The inequalities do not occur in a vacuum; environmental injustices emanate from systematic forms of discrimination (such as racism, segregation, workers exploitation, etc.) perpetrated by people in places of power against the powerless in the US and world over. With the premise on environmental health disparities, this course will draw from several disciplines such as geography, public health, sociology, etc., to understand how humans interact with the environment and how hazards in the environment can affect the health and safety of people. Students will learn about various resources and issues of human-environmental interaction such as food, water, air, climate, industrial locations, housing, transportation, crime, etc., and their distribution and impact on communities locally and internationally. The course will also expose students to the response of communities disadvantaged by environmental issues, especially the historical and contemporary context of environmental disparities and the response of the environmental justice movement to such injustices in the society. Offered: periodically.