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Environmental Support Center Calls For New Climate Change Movement:

Success Depends on Partnerships in Low-Income and People of Color Communities

WASHINGTON—(BUSINESS WIRE December 01, 2009 06:00 AM EDT)—In a newly released report by the Washington-based Environmental Support Center, the group asserts that the mainstream U.S. environmental movement is “highly homogenous by race and class and significantly by gender in its leadership.”

     Angela Park, author of “Everybody’s Movement: Environmental Justice and Climate Change” said environmental groups should heighten their attention to “environmental inequities based on race, class and other differences, including women and children.”

     “People of color,” Park said, “who already endure dispropor-tionate impacts from environmental degradation, are the canaries in the coal mine of climate change.”

     Park said that activists in people of color and low-income communities are likely to connect the long-range threat of global warming to issues their constituents grapple with today, such as public health, transportation, and poor air and water quality.

     Park also said that since one-third of the U.S. population is comprised of people of color, and that by 2042 will constitute a majority, the lack of diversity and inclusiveness in the climate change movement reflects a “potentially fatal disconnect” with stated goals of cutting global emissions by 2050.

     “The demographic ground is fundamentally shifting and changing the U.S. population,” Park said, “Business as usual simply will not work in the future.”

     “To win this battle, we need a bigger boat,” said Judy Hatcher, Executive Director of the Environmental Support Center, “and all hands on deck.”

     Hatcher said that the scale and urgency of the climate change crisis will require strong partnerships between mainstream environmental organizations and organizations from low-income and communities of color. But, Hatcher cautioned, to be successful, these partnerships must incorporate “sustained efforts to understand how marginalized communities view fairness and equity in environmental and economic issues.”

     “Everybody’s Movement” is an outgrowth of a year’s research and interviews with two dozen grassroots leaders and foundation executives who work closely with organizations in low-income communities and in communities of color.

     A full text of “Everybody’s Movement” can be downloaded here.

Contacts

Environmental Support Center

Judy Hatcher: envirosupport AT hotmail DOT com,

or

Angela Park, 802-436-4000

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Click here for the full PDF report.