Volume 53, Issue 2

 

LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

 

ARTICLES

Advancing Environmental Health and Justice: A Call For Assessment and Oversight of Healthcare Waste

Tiffany Canate, Michele Okoh, Crystal Dixon, Natalie Sampson, Kandyce Dunlap, Fatemeh Shafiei, Jay Herzmark, Lindsay Tallon, Na’Taki Osborne Jelks, Theodora Tsongas, Denise Patel, Olivia Wilson, Eric Persaud, Omega & Brenda Wilson, Vincent Martin, Kelly McLaughlin, & Margarita Asiain

Healthcare waste adversely impacts society in ways that people have overlooked for decades, and the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this issue significantly. This Policy Statement addresses the human impacts that occur as the healthcare industry processes, transports, landfills, or incinerates healthcare waste. With limited federal tracking and lack of regulation, patterns of environmental racism persist. Communities of color and low-income communities most often experience the greatest environmental health burdens through disposal of waste in their communities. Many communities have called for action for decades, as our massive healthcare industry contributes greatly to these harms. Centering these communities, public health professionals must advocate for: (1) evidence-based federal policies with transparent, accessible data about healthcare waste generation, type, and fate; (2) leadership within the healthcare industry—from hospitals, accrediting bodies, professional organizations, medical health professionals, and healthcare administration training programs—to address environmental health and justice issues related to waste; (3) health impact assessments, cost-benefit analyses, and circular economy research with healthcare systems and communities to identify cost-effective, feasible, and just solutions; and (4) federal initiatives to prioritize funding towards mitigation of cumulative exposures and impacts, reparation for harms, and investment in well-being for communities fence-line to waste—healthcare or otherwise. Some public health experts anticipate that we may be entering a “pandemic age,” which suggests that without intervention, intersecting issues of infectious disease, climate change, waste, and environmental health and justice will remain and reoccur.

 

Greening the Green Rush: How Addressing the Environmental Impact of Cannabis Legalization Can Enhance Social Equity and Remediate the Harms of the War on Drugs

Jose Garcia-Fuerte & William Garriott

The legalization of cannabis in the United States has focused on creating regulated, for-profit commercial markets modeled on alcohol to replace the prohibition regime that held sway for most of the 20th Century. Like the fabled gold rush of the 19th Century, this new market opportunity has been a magnet for entrepreneurs and prospectors of all kinds seeking to make their fortune. And just like its predecessor, this new rush—the green rush—has left many people behind. Those left behind in the green rush have come disproportionately from the communities most likely to have been harmed by cannabis prohibition and the broader War on Drugs. Poor people and people of color, in particular, who continue to make up a disproportionate number of those subject to marijuana enforcement, have been both formally and informally excluded from the opportunities offered by legal cannabis. To remedy this situation, there has been a push to make social equity a central feature of cannabis legalization and market regulation. Proponents of social equity hold that those disproportionately harmed by cannabis prohibition should disproportionately benefit from legalization and that the current approach has been engineered to leave such people behind. In this Article we provide a brief overview of social equity and highlight its current emphasis on expanding industry access, criminal record expungement, and tax revenue allocation. We then highlight an issue that is currently not part of the social equity conversation but should be: cannabis legalization’s environmental impact. As we show, there is growing evidence that the commercialization of cannabis comes with a significant environmental cost. This cost is once again born disproportionately by poor communities and communities of color. It overlaps with longer histories of environmental injustice, including environmental racism and the inequities inherent to racial capitalism. As we show, integrating an environmental justice framework into the social equity paradigm holds the promise of addressing cannabis’ environmental impact in a way that remains mindful of equity concerns. It likewise has the capacity to enhance current social equity efforts by providing new pathways and mechanisms to remediate the harms of the War on Drugs.

 

NOTES & COMMENTS

Leveraging Foreign Investments to Support Climate Change Adaptation in the Global South: Certifying Climate-Nexus Investments and Conditioning Protections

Zachary Pavlik

Climate change poses increasingly grave risks to Global South states lacking the extensive capital and robust economies necessary to effectively adapt. The international investment regime may offer a path forward for resource-exporting Global South states willing to redraft international investment agreements to leverage resource demand and secure vital capital for climate adaptation. This Note suggests that Global South states might accomplish this by incorporating a mandatory investment certification scheme into international investment agreements targeting “climate-nexus investments,” investments that exacerbate the adverse effects of climate change. This approach could provide a source of capital for Global South host states without threatening extant systems of international trade. Climate justice demands that capital-exporting Global North states play a role in providing Global South states that are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis with the means to confront its adverse impacts, and the international investment regime provides an optimal vehicle to do so.

 

Rights of Nature in Hawaiʻi: Preserving the Relationship Between National Resources and Cultural Significance

Karli Uwaine

Haunani-Kay Trask encapsulated the essence of this Comment when she wrote: Despite American territorial and economic control of Hawaiʻi since 1900, Hawaiians are not Americans. Nor are we Europeans or Asians. We are not from the Pacific Rim, nor are we immigrants to the Pacific. We are the children of Papa – earth mother – and Wākea – sky father – who created the sacred lands of Hawaiʻi Nei. From these lands came the taro, and from the taro, came the Hawaiian people. As in all of Polynesia, so in Hawaiʻi. Younger siblings must care for and honor an elder sibling who, in return, will protect and provide for the younger sibling. Thus, Hawaiians must nourish the land from whence we come. The relationship is more than reciprocal, however, it is familial. The land is our mother, and we are her children. This is the lesson of our genealogy.

 

Environmental Justice in Pollution Hotspots and Sections 7 &15 of the Charter: The Case of the Aamjiwnaang Community in “Chemical Valley” 

Alexandra Guillot

“Chemical Valley” in Sarnia, Ontario, the site of almost half of Canada’s chemical industry, is one of the most polluted areas in the country. It is also home to the Aamjiwnaang First Nation, whose community members, as a result of their proximity to this cluster of polluting facilities, experience much higher risk and actual harm to their health than other Canadians. The lack of cumulative impact assessments for major industrial projects under Ontario’s environmental laws has created and perpetuated a “sacrifice zone” in Chemical Valley, where the residents experience environmental injustices. As the understanding of environmental injustices experienced by the Aamjiwnaang First Nation has evolved, the Constitution has become a focal point for advancing environmental justice in “Chemical Valley” and in similarly situated communities. Inspired by the Charter claims in the Lockridge v. Ontario lawsuit brought by Aamjiwnaang residents against the Ontario Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, this Note examines the potential for sections 7 and 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to address and remedy the environmental injustices impacting the Aamjiwnaang First Nation due to the cumulative impacts of long- term exposure to air pollution from multiple facilities. To better understand how the Charter can serve as a tool to combat environmental injustices in “Chemical Valley” and other pollution hotspots, this Note applies sections 7 and 15 to environmental justice claimants in pollution hotspot cases, drawing upon the experiences of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation in “Chemical Valley.” It argues that sections 7 and 15 of the Charter can help address the kinds of environmental injustices experienced by the residents of “Chemical Valley” as a result of the Ontario government’s issuance of permits to major industrial projects without requiring a cumulative impact assessment.

 

Transmission: A New Hope: The Implications of the Biden Infrastructure Act on Corridor Designation

Eddie Kelinsky

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 amended Section 216 of the Federal Power Act and permitted federal agencies to designate an area of land as a National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor (NIETC). Designating an NIETC was meant to give federal agencies the authority to preempt state siting law and issue construction permits to build new transmission lines. The new transmission lines could then create high value connections that might otherwise be blocked by third parties, e.g. transmission lines running from State A to State C through State B. The corridor program received swift political backlash and was all-but eliminated by two important federal circuit court decisions. To this day, no federal agency has successfully designated an NIETC using Section 216. In the recent past, extreme weather events have demonstrated how the ongoing climate crisis is wreaking havoc throughout the United States. The Biden Administration has responded to these climate issues, in part, by passing legislation to prioritize the protection and construction of new electrical transmission. The so-called Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act explicitly amended Section 216 and indicates Congress’s willingness to revitalize the NIETC program. This Note explores how the Biden Administration’s new legislation could finally empower federal agencies to designate and site new transmission corridors under Section 216. It also explores challenges with and new alternatives to the siting process, including internal agency reformation through rulemaking and standardized state takings laws.