Environmental Justice (EJ) refers to the basic human right to safe and clean environment of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income.

While challenging environmental racism or the overwhelming siting of toxic sites and pollution in places where people of color, Indigenous Peoples, and poor communities live, at its core EJ believes no community whether inside or outside of the borders of the United State should have to bear the destruction and poisoning from the current profit driven economic system. It challenges the commodification of land, water, energy, air, other natural resources, and entire people. It promotes strong enforcement of corporate regulations, environmental protection based on precautionary principle,the expansion of social welfare programs, self-determination of nations and people. To learn more read the 17 Principles of Environmental Justice.

Roots of EJ in brief

The EJ movement was born out of the legacy of the Civil Rights, Indigenous Rights, Anti-Nuclear, Anti-Vietnam war, New Left, and Third World Feminist movements of the 60s and 70s. In the midst of deregulation, de-industrialization, and cut backs in social welfare programs, the publication of "Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States," in 1987 provided a critical analytical tool for communities of color across the nation to galvanize around environmental justice.  In 1991 the First People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit brought together hundreds of grassroots organizers and activists fighting in Cancer Alley, Louisiana to Black and Brown communities fighting Texaco oil refinery in CA to connect as a national movement. One of the bigger national policy victory for the movement was the implementation of President Clinton's EJ Executive Order 12898 that mandated all federal agencies to ensure environmental justice in the planning, participation, and implementation of all federal policies.

Today the EJ movement has evolved to fight for Climate Justice as well as embrace the Indigenous concept of "living well" with earth and going beyond human rights to fight for the right of mother earth as declared at the People's Climate Conference in Bolivia in April 2010.

Some EJ organizations across country: