Despite significant improvements in environmental protection over the past several decades, over 1.3 billion individuals worldwide live in unsafe and unhealthy physical environments. The environmental justice movement has its roots in the United States. However, in just two decades, this grassroots movement has spread across the globe. The environmental justice movement is largely a response to environmental racism.

Anatomy of Environmental Racism. Environmental racism as practiced around the world is not only immoral, unjust, and illegal, it is also costly. The highest price paid is that of threats to public health. Environmental racism refers to any policy, practice, or directive that differentially affects or disadvantages (whether intended or unintended) individuals, groups, or communities based on race or color. The systematic destruction of indigenous peoples' land and sacred sites, the poisoning of Native Americans on reservations, Africans in the Niger Delta, African-Americans in Louisiana's "Cancer Alley," and Mexicans in the border town and colonias all have their roots in economic exploitation, racial oppression, devaluation of human life and the natural environment, and corporate greed.

Globalization. Increased globalization of the world's economy has placed special strains on the eco-systems in many poor communities and poor nations inhabited largely by people of color and indigenous peoples. Globalization makes it easier for transnational corporations and capital to flee to areas with the least environmental regulations, best tax incentives, cheapest labor, and highest profit. This is especially true for the global resource extraction industry such as oil, timber, and minerals.

Transboundary Waste Trade. The last decade has seen numerous developing nations challenge the "unwritten policy" of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries shipping hazardous wastes into their borders. In response to the growing transboundary waste trade, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the G-77 nations passed the Bamako Convention and amended the Basel Convention. Nevertheless, loopholes still allow transboundary shipment, export, and trading of banned pesticides, hazardous wastes, questionable recyclables, toxic products, and "risky" technologies.

Economic Blackmail. Environmental racism manifests itself in the substandard treatment of workers. Workers of color are especially vulnerable to economic blackmail because of the threat of unemployment and their concentration in low-paying, unskilled, nonunion occupations. Economic blackmail extends to the exploitative work environment of migrant farm workers, garment districts sweatshops, building construction, dirty low-paying industrial jobs, and the micro-electronic industry. Many of the workers who suffer under substandard occupational and safety conditions are immigrants (many of whom are undocumented), women, and people of color.

Dumping in Dixie. Environmental decision-making operates at the juncture of science, economics, politics, and special interests that place communities of color at special risk. In many instances, the only science involved is "political" science. This is especially true in America's Deep South. By default, the southern United States became a "sacrifice zone," a sump for the rest of the nation's toxic waste. The Deep South is stuck with a unique legacy---the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and white resistance to equal justice for all. It is not a mystery why "Dixie" is the most environmentally befouled region of the United States.

Corporate Welfare and "Cancer Alley." Corporations routinely pollute the air, ground, and drinking water while being subsidized by tax breaks from the state. Louisiana is a leader in doling out corporate welfare. Louisiana is also one of the poorest states in the nation. In the 1990s, the state wiped off the books $3.1 billion in property taxes to polluting companies. The state's top five worse polluters received $111 million dollars over the past decade. Dozens of African American communities, many founded by former slaves, along Louisiana's Mississippi River chemical corridor suffer the brunt of the industry's "toxic gumbo." Local residents and environmentalists have dubbed the chemical corridor "Cancer Alley."

Discriminatory Zoning and Land Use. Racism influences land use, industrial facility siting, and infrastructure development. Exclusionary zoning has been a subtle form of using government authority and power to foster and perpetuate discriminatory practicesÑincluding environmental planning. Zoning has also been widely used as a "NIMBY" (not in my backyard) tool by middle-income home owners interests, pushing "dirty" industries into communities inhabited largely by the poor and people of color.

Residential Apartheid. Racism is a potent factor in sorting people into their physical environments and neighborhoods. Racist government policies create and perpetuate shantytowns, slums, and squatter settlements. The color of ones skin is still an important factor in explaining social inequality, economic isolation, political exploitation, and the health and well being of blacks in Brazil's favelas (or slums), South Africa's townships, and the United States' urban ghettos.

Childhood Lead Poisoning. Childhood lead poisoning is a preventable environmental disease. It disproportionately affects African American children who live in older housing with chipping lead paint. Over 28.4 percent of all low-income African American children were lead poisoned compared to 9.8 percent of low-income white children.

Radioactive Colonialism. Government, legal, economic, political, and military institutions reinforce environmental racism. Radioactive colonialism operates in energy production (mining of uranium) and disposal of wastes on Native and indigenous peoples lands. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has left a trail of nuclear weapons garbage on Native and indigenous peoples lands from Nevada to the Pacific Islands. The 1,000 atomic bombs exploded on Western Shoshone lands in Nevada makes it the "most bombed nation on earth." The U.S. government wants to site a nuclear dump in Yucca Mountain, sacred to the Shoshone.

Military Toxics. U.S. military toxics threaten communities from Alaska to Puerto Rico and as far away as the Marshall Islands. Native Alaska villages and traditional hunting and fishing areas are placed in jeopardy by pollution from military bases. Marshall Islands residents live under a constant threat from radioactive contamination left over from U.S. weapons testing. Residents on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico are engaged in a heated battle against the U.S. Navy. The Navy has used the tiny U.S. commonwealth island, inhabited by 9,000 residents, as a bombing range since 1941.

Finally, it is clear that endangered people of color in the industrialized countries of the North have a lot in common with populations in developing countries of the South that are also threatened by industrial polluters and government inaction. Global alliances have formed among the "victims" of environmental injustice in the North and South. These alliances have organized, educated, and empowered themselves to challenge government and industrial polluters. The groups are demanding that polluters pay for the damage inflicted on communities of color. They have elevated their message and struggles to the international arena, including the United Nations Human Rights Commission, World Bank, and World Trade Organization.