Symposium # 12: The Role of Ecology in Environmental Justice.

Organized by: B. Nilon and C. Grant.
Sponsored by: Education Section and the Education and Human Resources Committee.
Monday, August 7, 2000
1:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Ballroom III - Cliff Lodge

Environmental justice is concerned with the distribution of environmental benefits and harms, and asks whether the procedures and impacts of environmental decision making are fair to the people they affect. This focus on distributional issues adds new layers of analysis to the fields of ecology and environmental science. Just as ecologists focus on understanding how human actions influence ecosystem structure and function, environmental justice focuses on how the environmental repercussions of human actions affect societal equilibrium.

Given that many of the major U.S. environmental organizations have ignored the environmental health and needs of communities of color and low-income communities, the environmental justice movement has been very critical of conventional environmental initiatives. However, making the connection between environmental justice and ecology goes straight to the heart of resolving many of the conditions that lead to the current array of environmental problems, both inequities and injustices. Understanding the connection between ecology and environmental justice is also important to ecologists seeking to insure that the discipline of ecology remains central to the fields of environmental health and environmental science. Absent the integration of ecological understanding into the environmental decision-making process will ensure that future decisions will be politically but not ecologically influenced. In this session, leading ecologists and environmental justice advocates will explore the relationship between ecology and environmental justice. Papers in the session will also explore how an awareness of environmental justice will change the face of ecology.