Future Perfect
Investigating Environmental Racism

In Nova Scotia, minority and low-income communities are disproportionately located near degraded environments. An ongoing research project raises awareness of the issue, while also mobilizing affected residents to action.    

When an activist working on the issue of environmental racism first met with Ingrid Waldron in 2012 and asked her to become involved with his efforts, Waldron was hesitant. A sociologist and assistant professor of nursing at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she didn’t know much about environmental racism. The term describes settings where industrial polluters and environmental hazards – such as landfills, trash incinerators, or coal plants – are disproportionately placed near low-income or minority communities.   
 
Cases of environmental racism have been documented around the world, with one of the first high-profile cases occurring in the 1980s in Warren County, North Carolina, when a hazardous waste landfill was constructed in the small, predominately African-American community. In many situations, inexpensive land combined with a community’s perceived lack of power to resist leads industry to build environmental hazards in such communities.
 
“I was hesitant to take on a project, as it wasn’t an interest of mine and I didn’t know anything about it,” Waldron says. “But I thought about it more. It seemed challenging. It would be political, and there would be an opportunity to make real change in communities. Those things excited me.” The researcher decided to say yes.  
 
Four years later, The ENRICH Project (Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities, and Community Health) still consumes Waldron. As director, she leads a team of 14 community members, seven academic researchers, three research staff – including Dave Ron, the activist who got the whole project started – and 10 students, health professionals, academic researchers and students, all determined to investigate and address environmental racism in African Nova Scotian and Mi’kmaw communities. (Also known as Mi’kmaq, these Aboriginal peoples were the first inhabitants of the Atlantic provinces of Canada. Today, there are 13 Mi’kmaw communities in Nova Scotia.) and African Nova Scotian communities.
 

 
Using research to mobilize communities
 
“We’re looking at the issue from a research perspective, and using that research and data in order to mobilize communities to action,” Waldron says. The project’s activities are varied, ranging from a youth arts and education project to a series of workshops hosted in 2013 and 2014, to hear residents’ concerns and encourage action. A filmmaker documented those and created a film called In Whose Backyard? (Available online - see link to the right).
 
In these workshops, Waldron and others on the team met with people in affected communities, including Lincolnville, an African Nova Scotian cpredominantly African community settled by Black Loyalists in in 1784. Residents had many concerns about a first-generation landfill, opened less than one kilometre away in 1974, and a second one opened in 2006.
 
They reported high rates of certain illnesses, including cancer and diabetes, and voiced concerns about water contamination from leaking toxins in the soil, poor air quality, and an increase of bears, racoons, skunks and insects because of the garbage. Meanwhile, the community said its population was dwindling and its economic base faltering, as many young people were leavinge.
 
The grievances addressed by Lincolnville’s residents are not unique, as research participants in  North Preston, a primarily African community, and Membertou, a n AboriginalMi’kmaw  community, also spoke of  high rates of illness. Further research is needed, the ENRICH team concluded, such as collecting health statistics on rates of cancer and other illnesses in the community, and helping residents get independent testing of water and soil.
 
According to the 2011 National Household Survey conducted by Statistics Canada (the most recent statistical information available), there are 20,790 African Nova Scotians living in the province, which has a total population of 906,175 people. On the same survey, 33,850 people were of Aboriginal identity.
 
The next step after the initial collection of information was for Waldron to share what her research group had learned, with health agencies, high schools, churches and media. She started to meet with various government departments to see what more could be done. “It wasn’t really going anywhere,” Waldron says of her many meetings. Some people she met with said they weren’t responsible, while others said they did not have the resources to do the work Waldron was requesting. “We reached an impasse.”
 
An act to address environmental racism
 
A fellow team member suggested Waldron try a different approach, and instead of reaching out to staff with various government agencies,, reaching out to provincial politicians, who are elected officials in Canada. . That led her to meet with Lenore Zann, member of the Legislative Assembly of Nova Scotia, who seemed enthusiastic and excited about Waldron’s project.
 
When Zann suggested the possibility of creating a private member’s bill (meaning the bill was introduced by Zann, a private member, not a minister) to address environmental racism, Waldron remembers feeling shocked by Zann’s offer and the possibilities it could uncover. Waldron had not considered taking such a political approach to the issue.
 
Ultimately, Zann, a member of the Nova Scotia New Democratic Party, and Waldron collaborated to develop Bill 111: An Act to Address Environmental Racism. The first private member’s bill to address this problem in Canada, the bill outlined the need for the government to establish a panel to consult with Mi’kmaw, African Nova Scotian and Acadian communities throughout the province, giving residents an opportunity to share their concerns and collaborate with government on strategies and solutions for addressing environmental racism.
 
Zann introduced the bill at the province’s legislature on April 29, 2015. It was put forward to a second reading in the fall of 2015 and debated, but despite impassioned efforts from ENRICH to save the bill, it did not pass. , a failure Waldron attributes that failure to politics – Zann is a member of the New Democratic Party, which holds just five seats in the provincial legislature, whereas the governing Liberal party holds 34 seats and the opposition Progressive Conservative party holds 10 seats. “While that was disappointing, I’m very pleased it was debated,” Ingrid Waldron says, adding that the creation of the bill attracted media attention and helped raise valuable awareness of the existence of environmental racism in Nova Scotia among both politicians and the general public.  
 
The journey continues
 
To further this cause, Waldron herself is currently writing a book about environmental racism in Nova Scotia, set to be published in the fall of 2017. Earlier this year, the ENRICH group launched an interactive map, which plots examples of degraded environments and locations of African and Aboriginal communities.
 
Waldron acknowledges that some Nova Scotian communities affected by environmental racism seem tired and frustrated, and at times,  she has certainly shared those feelings. Reflecting on the last four years, Waldron describes challenges, but she remains upbeat. “Whenever I feel that the project is maybe about to end, I meet someone who comes into my office and says, ‘what do you think about this?’” she says. “It’s taken me on a different journey and allowed me to learn things and do things that are not in my toolbox. I’m constantly challenged and constantly intrigued.”
 
While ENRICH has yet to effect change politically and with regard to the geography of pollution, it has been able to contribute to more subtle improvements: Thanks to the research project, communities have been encouraged to address their situation collectively and to achieve objective documentation. A current ENRICH project for instance, in Lincolnville, involves teaching residents in affected communities how to test their own water for contaminants. If that project is successful, Waldron says, it could be brought to other communities, too. “This is a real, tangible, community-capacity building aspect to the project that I think is important,” Ingrid Waldron says. “People can see something is actually happening.”