Environmental racism, ecological racism, or ecological apartheid is a form of racism leading to negative environmental outcomes such as landfills, incinerators, and hazardous waste disposal disproportionately impacting communities of color, violating substantive equality. Internationally, it is also associated with extractivism, which places the environmental burdens of mining, oil extraction, and industrial agriculture upon indigenous peoples and poorer nations largely inhabited by people of color.
People protesting the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, which disproportionately affected people of color and low-income communities
Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. coined the phrase "environmental racism"
A large quantity of gases released from a factory near apartments.
The reconstructed Africville Church in Nova Scotia
Environmental justice or eco-justice, is a social movement to address environmental injustice, which occurs when poor or marginalized communities are harmed by hazardous waste, resource extraction, and other land uses from which they do not benefit. The movement has generated hundreds of studies showing that exposure to environmental harm is inequitably distributed.
Low-income workers in Ghana recycling waste from high-income countries, with recycling conditions heavily polluting the Agbogbloshie area
Highway marker in Afton commemorating the 1982 North Carolina PCB landfill protests
Council member Debora Juarez gives a speech at the designation of May 5th as Seattle's Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
Cattle in the River Ganges with pollution on the bank