This recently-published statement by the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies takes an unblinking look at the climate crisis and burgeoning "climate chaos" that we're in and how low-income people of color bear the brunt of it. This statement, in particular, points to the limits to policy when the underlying ways of knowing are untouched.
"The climate crisis is not amendable through “technological fixes” or “green consumerism,” because the climate crisis is deeply rooted in a particular type of settler colonialism and capitalism that prevents, and even erases, the sustainable livelihoods of Chicana/o and Latinx people and communities. The National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies recognizes that while the climate crisis becomes more perilous by the day, Chicanas/os and Latinx peoples have always been engaged in struggles to improve our environments."
Check out the list of policy and advocacy recommendations provided below. We all owe NACCS scholar Dr. Devon Peña a debt of gratitude for his perseverance and deep subject matter knowledge of the environmental crisis, and his support for a Green New Deal and a larger vision of community-based, grassroots organizing if we are to restore "our wounded watersheds and ecosystems."
Thanks to our NACCS leadership, as well, for making climate change a front-burner issue.
-Angela Valenzuela
Released: October 29,2019 8:45AM, NACCS National Office, San
Jose State U.
The
NACCS board believes it is important to have our voice as part of the global
movement against climate chaos, and we have asked NACCS environmental scholars
Dr. Devon Peña and Dr. Gabriel Valle to compose the following statement:
The NACCS Climate Crisis Statement
The climate change crisis is affecting all living organisms and ecosystems on
the planet but the enduring effects of decades of environmental racism are
resulting in disparate impacts. Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color
(BIPOC), including Chicanx/Latinx populations, are already suffering major
deleterious effects from this global process of environmental violence. It is
important to understand first of all that climate chaos is not simply driven by
anthropogenic (human-caused) forces but by the type of ravenous destruction of
the planet’s life support systems of the global capitalist economy. The
combination of extreme heat and cold weather events illustrates for us how
so-called “global warming” and even “climate change” are inadequate terms to
describe what is occurring and that the concept of climate chaos illustrates how the entire climate system is
characterized by unpredictable disruptions with cumulative effects that
scientists are only now recognizing and understanding. It is also important to
understand how the effects of climate chaos are destroying ecological systems
that we depend on to produce our food, medicine, clothing, and shelter. Climate
chaos destroys the natural conditions of material cultures.
We are facing a crisis in which Native communities from the Arctic to the Andes
and the Pacific Rim island nations are already being devastated by the chaos of
climate change. We are facing a crisis in which BIPOC and low income persons
are already being killed or displaced by the effects of climate change.
The evidence of disparate impacts must be weighed when we
consider what our policy and political needs are in light of these devastating
processes:
1. Urban heat islands. Research confirms that African Americans are 52% more likely
than whites to live in “urban heat islands” (UHIs) defined as microclimates
that can get an extra 5 to 10 degrees hotter during heat waves. Asian Americans
are 32% more likely and Latinxs are 21% more likely to live in UHIs. In the
Phoenix area, the mostly Native American neighborhood of Guadalupe suffered
more than a dozen deaths during the summer heat wave of 2017 which led to 155
people dying. That set a record for the state of Arizona, passing the 2016
total of 150. Most of these deaths involve BIPOC communities. These differences
are results of the longstanding shameful practice of residential segregation
and a lack of open green spaces and tree cover in these segregated
neighborhoods.
2. Extreme Cold Weather Mortality and Illness. Beyond the effects of heat waves, BIPOC populations are also
suffering higher rates of mortality and illness as a result of extreme cold
weather events affecting urban low-income barrios and rural communities including
reservations.
3. Farm and other natural resource
workers. There are 2.5-3
million farmworkers in the United States. Of these 80% are Latinx and more than
half of these are Mexican-origin workers an increasing number of whom are
Native Mesoamericans. Between 2000 and 2010, 359 occupational heat-related
deaths were identified in the U.S., for a yearly average fatality rate of 0.22
per 1 million workers. Highest rates were found among Latinx males in the
agriculture and construction industries. Farm and construction workers
accounted for nearly 58 percent of occupational heat deaths from 2000 to 2010,
and Latinxs had three times the risk of heat-related death on the job than did
non-Latinxs.[1]
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Source: Deborah Mills, et al., La Frontera: Mi
Viaje con Papa. Barefoot Books.
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4. Climate
refugees (Central America, Mexico). The so-called “Dirty Wars” and decades of
neoliberal “Shock Doctrine” (including NAFTA) initiated a set of violent forces
that – combined with severe drought and climate change impacts – have led to a
mass forced migration of mostly Indigenous populations. These are the same
populations that are being dehumanized and terrorized by US border and
immigration control forces that are separating families and placing their
children in cages.
5. Displacement of
‘cultures of habitat’. Indigenous
peoples are recognized for their deep traditions of resilient inhabitation of
ancestral territories and are renowned for providing ecosystem services to the
Earth. This is why ethnoecologists the world over have long defended “ecosystem
peoples” or “cultures of habitat” and their resilient and regenerative
livelihood traditions and practices.[2] The same corporate and
settler colonial nation state agencies that are underlying forces of climate
chaos are actively engaged in the forced relocation of Indigenous communities.
In the Southwest, Native American/Chicanx acequia communities are facing the
prospect of extinction and displacement due to declining mountain snowpack that
serves as the water source for these celebrated community irrigation systems.[3] The cultural landscape and ecological services of the acequia
systems are being damaged by the effects of drought, past and ongoing
deforestation, and extreme fluctuations in weather patterns. In Alaska, the
Iñupiat village of Kivalina is being relocated due to rising sea levels and it
is only one of many dozens of such Arctic communities directly affected by
climate chaos.
6. Food system and food sovereignty
impacts. BIPOC communities are
already disproportionately affected by hunger and malnutrition. A USDA study of
so-called “food insecurity” demonstrates that Mexican immigrant children suer
the highest rates of hunger and malnutrition in the U.S. BIPOC communities have
long faced death by “nutricide” and are already increasing experiencing the
loss of traditional foods, foodways, and heritage cuisines and of the
agroecosystems and land and waterscapes that support our direct livelihood
traditions and food cultures. Climate chaos is intensifying these deleterious
losses of heritage cuisine, and traditional foodways and undermining our
agroecosystems and our access to traditional hunting, foraging, and fishing
areas.
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7. Air Quality. In 1987, the Commission for Racial Justice at the United Church
of Christ released the groundbreaking report, Toxic Waste and Race in the
United States.[4] The report was one of the first documents to
use the term “environmental racism” to explain how communities of color are
more likely to be exposed to unhealthy air, which can lead to conditions of
asthma, among other things. The report shows that three-fifths of BIPOC
communities live in or near areas of toxic waste. These conditions are not
simply because many of these communities live in urban areas, but because of
the historical process of urban planning and policy making that dictates where
industrial business reside, where freeways are built and expanded, and even the
flight patterns of air traffic. The commission released a second report, Toxic
Waste and Race at Twenty 1987-2007, and their findings show that in spite of
laws and policies created to promote justice, the conditions in many BIPOC
communities remain much the same.[5] In the coming years,
the climate crisis will exacerbate these conditions. In urban communities, the
heat island effect (see item 1) will worsen air quality and increase the prevalence
of asthma. In rural communities, the climate crisis will compound drought
conditions. Air quality in Fresno, CA, recently received an F by the American
Lung Association’s State of the Air 2019 report.[6] Today, approximately
43.3 percent of Americans live in counties that have unhealthy ozone
and/or particle pollution – that is more than 141 million people exposed to
unhealthy air.
8. Water and Water Quality. The availability and the quality of water are
both exacerbated by the climate crisis. A recent report notes that half the
world’s population will live in water-stressed areas by 2025. According to the
World Health Organization (WHO), “Even in non-water stressed areas, the quality
of surface water could deteriorate as more rain and storms drive erosion and
the release of toxins. These dynamics could affect everything from the
availability of drinking water for people to a shortage of water for livestock
and crops (with negative effects for the food supply) to decreases in
hydroelectric power generation.”[7] These water quality impacts are already
affecting the health of U.S. urban BIPOC communities. We have learned that
Flint, MI, is not an isolated incident, but just the tip of the iceberg.
Municipalities access the country are being to realize this. In predominantly
Latino, agricultural communities that rely on groundwater, community members
experience elevated and long-term exposure to nitrates in their drinking water.
Epidemiological evidence suggests an elevated risk of cancer and congenital
disabilities in communities that experience nitrate exposure at levels below
U.S. EPA’s drinking water standard (10 mg/L NO3-N).[8] Recent findings have shown high levels of lead in public
schools. In California, the Community Water Center conducted as state-wade
report that concludes from 2003-2014 over one million students attended schools
that did not meet primary safe drinking water standards. The report also finds the
schools impacted by unsafe drinking water had higher percentages of BIPOC
students.[9] The struggle over water, while frequently
framed as an environmental problem (i.e., drought), is, in fact, a highly
political matter that influences the livelihood and wellbeing of urban and
rural BIPOC communities. Climate chaos is only worsening these problems aided
and abetted by the perverse logic of neoliberal policies that eliminate the
investments in environmental quality and the protection of the Earth’s life-support
systems like air, land, and water.
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Therefore, the National Association for
Chicana and Chicano Studies declares the climate crisis the most paramount
issue of our time. The systems and institutions that destroy the environmental
conditions needed for clean air and water are the same systems and institutions
that have historically denied Chicana/o and Latinx peoples a means to
self-determination. The climate crisis is not amendable through “technological
fixes” or “green consumerism,” because the climate crisis is deeply rooted in a
particular type of settler colonialism and capitalism that prevents, and even
erases, the sustainable livelihoods of Chicana/o and Latinx people and
communities. The National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies
recognizes that while the climate crisis becomes more perilous by the day,
Chicanas/os and Latinx peoples have always been engaged in struggles to improve
our environments. From the acequia farmers improving soil health and
agrobiodiversity through traditional agricultural practices,[10] to the mujeres organizing against polluting industry,[11] we have been there. From the campesinxs resisting pesticides,[12] to the ciudadanxs reusing coffee tins,[13] we have been there. The National Association for Chicana and
Chicano Studies declares that in order to truly address the climate crisis, we
must remake our social, political, and economic systems to promote diversity,
autonomy, resilience, and a just sustainability.
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The NACCS Board of Directors specifically calls for the
following actions in support of the vital climate justice movement:
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NACCS endorses the climate strike actions that
youth across the U.S. and the rest of the planet have launched and call for
continued widespread activism by BIPOC youth and their allies in these
campaigns for climate justice.- We call on U.S. universities and colleges to
divest themselves of stocks in fossil fuel and other extractive industries that
are the principal drivers of this environmental violence.
- We further call on higher education
institutions to end their participation in the global “land grabs” that are
displacing Indigenous and other land- and water-based communities because this
robs the first peoples of their ancestral lands while the world as a whole
suffers the consequences of the loss of these sustainable, resilient, and
equitable cultures of habitat that protect the planet.
- We resolve that the Green New Deal is an
essential tool for education and civic engagement and especially call on the
shapers of this initiative to include community-based and grassroots-led projects
for ecological restoration of our wounded watersheds and ecosystems.
- We call for legal recognition of access to
safe water and culturally appropriate food as basic universal human rights.
- We support reparations associated with climate
chaos and the harm this has caused to Indigenous and other land and water-based
communities in the U.S. and the world. The primary reparations must involve
investments to return Native lands to rightful Indigenous care-giver heirs and
to heal the colonial wounds suffered by the land, water, air, and people.
Endnotes
[1] Gubernot, Diane M et al.
2015. Characterizing
occupational heat-related mortality in the United States, 2000-2010: An
analysis using the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries database. American Journal
of Industrial Medicine 58:2: 203-11.
[2] Nabhan, Gary P. 1997. Cultures of Habitat: On Nature, Culture,
and Story. Washington DC: Counterpoint. Nazarera, Virgina, Ed. Ethnoecology:
Situates Knowledge, Located Lives. Tucson: U. Arizona Press.
[3] Elias, E. H., et al., 2015. Assessing climate change impacts on
water availability of snowmelt- dominated basins of the Upper Rio Grande basin.
Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies 3: 525- 46. URL:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrh.2015.04.004. Peña, Devon G. 2019. “Climate Chaos,
Acequias, and Land Grants Sin agua no hay vida, sin tierra no hay paz.” Paper presented at the 46th Annual Conference
of the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies, Thematic panel:
“Land and Water Wisdom: Exercising Cultural Resistance and Sustainability
Practices.” Albuquerque, NM, April 4-6, 2019.
[4] United Church of Christ. 1987. Toxic Waste and Race in the
United States. Commission for Racial Justice. New York.
[5] United Church of Christ. 2007. Toxic Waste and Race at Twenty.
Commission for Racial Justice. New York.
[6] American Lung Association. 2019. State of the Air Report https://www.lung.org/our-
initiatives/healthy-air/sota/
[7] Goldman Sachs. 2019. Sustainable Growth: Taking a Deep Dive into
Water. URL: https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/clean-technology-and-
renewables/cohen/report.pdf.
Accessed October 10, 2019.
[8] Schaider, Laurel, Lucien Swetschinski, Christopher Campbell,
Ruthann Rudel. 2019. “Environmental justice and drinking water quality: are there
socioeconomic disparities in nitrate
levels in U.S. drinking water?” Environmental Health 18(3) URL:
https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-018-0442-6#Abs1
[9] Community Water Center. 2016. “Are We Providing Our School Kids
Safe Drinking Water? An
Analysis of California Schools Impacted by
Unsafe Drinking Water.” Full Report available at URL:
https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/communitywatercenter/pages/824/attachments/original/1462656752/CWC_MCL_05.07.16a.pdf?
1462656752
[10] Gallegos, Joseph. 2017. “Chicos del horno: A Local, Slow, and
Deep Food.” In Mexican-Origin Foods, Foodways, and Social Movements: Decolonial
Perspectives. Eds. Devon G. Peña, et al. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas
Press.
[11] Pardo, Mary. 1998. Mexican American Women Grassroots Community
Activists. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
[12] Pulido, L. 1996. Environmentalism and economic justice: Two
Chicano struggles in the Southwest. University of Arizona Press.
[13] Diaz, David. 2005. Barrio Urbanism: Chicanos, Planning and
American Cities. New York: Routledge.
