Pesticide Drift and the Pursuit of Environmental Justice

Abstract

An examination of political conflicts over pesticide drift and the differing conceptions of justice held by industry, regulators, and activists. The widespread but virtually invisible problem of pesticide drift—the airborne movement of agricultural pesticides into residential areas—has fueled grassroots activism from Maine to Hawaii. Pesticide drift accidents have terrified and sickened many living in the country's most marginalized and vulnerable communities. In this book, Jill Lindsey Harrison considers political conflicts over pesticide drift in California, using them to illuminate the broader problem and its potential solutions. The fact that pesticide pollution and illnesses associated with it disproportionately affect the poor and the powerless raises questions of environmental justice (and political injustice). Despite California's impressive record of environmental protection, massive pesticide regulatory apparatus, and booming organic farming industry, pesticide-related accidents and illnesses continue unabated. To unpack this conundrum, Harrison examines the conceptions of justice that increasingly shape environmental politics and finds that California's agricultural industry, regulators, and pesticide drift activists hold different, and conflicting, notions of what justice looks like. Drawing on her own extensive ethnographic research as well as in-depth interviews with regulators, activists, scientists, and public health practitioners, Harrison examines the ways industry, regulatory agencies, and different kinds of activists address pesticide drift, connecting their efforts to communitarian and libertarian conceptions of justice. The approach taken by pesticide drift activists, she finds, not only critiques theories of justice undergirding mainstream sustainable-agriculture activism, but also offers an entirely new notion of what justice means. To solve seemingly intractable environmental problems such as pesticide drift, Harrison argues, we need a different kind of environmental justice. She proposes the precautionary principle as a framework for effectively and justly addressing environmental inequities in the everyday work of environmental regulatory institutions.

What does it mean to do food justice?

“…• Considers when and how it is useful or not to engage the state, the market or other actors; • Institutionalizes equity in democratic participatory processes at every level (Harrison 2006(Harrison , 2008a(Harrison , 2008b(Harrison , 2011.…”

Sociology in Global Environmental Governance? Neoliberalism, Protectionism and the Methyl Bromide Controversy in the Montreal Protocol

“…The conventional alternatives to methyl bromide might not deplete the ozone layer but certainly have negative local effects. Two examples are 1,3-Dichloropropene, which has a township cap due to its toxicity and ability to persist in water, and chloropicrin, a war gas, both of which have been the subject of pesticide drift [84]. Another example is methyl iodide, which was approved for use in strawberry fields in 2008, a highly effective alternative to methyl bromide for strawberry fumigation.…”

A Bridge to Challenging Environmental Inequality: Intersectionality, Environmental Justice, and Disaster Vulnerability

“…EJ's advancement across these spatial dimensions creates an opening in the literature for a more contextual, intersectional understanding of the distribution of environmental goods and bads, such as sustainability, climate impacts, natural resource extraction, and waste and e-waste disposal (Agyeman et al 2016;Anand 2004;Carruthers 2008;Jamieson 2001;Pellow 2007;Schlosburg 2004;Smith, Sonnenfeld, and Pellow 2006). Intersectional experiences are indeed coming to light across different social and environmental dimensions of EJ, such as pesticide exposure in rural minority communities (Harrison 2011). Other authors are exploring EJ from the perspectives of gender, sexuality, and activism (Newman et al 2004).…”