The revolution began with magic markers for Robert Bullard, winner of this year’s Champions of the Earth Lifetime Achievement award. It was 1978 and the American sociologist and environmental activist was three years out of grad school when his wife, a lawyer, told him one day she was suing the state of Texas.

“There was a waste disposal company that was trying to place a landfill in the middle of a Black middle-class community in Houston," he recalled recently. "And she needed evidence to support a restraining order. I was all she had.”

So, with six graduate students and an armful of red, green, orange, yellow and black magic markers, Bullard set out to conduct what was one of America’s first ethnographic ‘windshield studies’, using the markers to identify neighborhoods, residents and polluting industries. What he found was sobering, though unsurprising.

In the city of Houston, where just one in four residents was Black, all city-owned landfills and six of eight city-owned incinerators were in Black neighborhoods. Three of the four privately owned landfills were located in Black neighborhoods. More than 80 percent of all the garbage in Houston – one of America’s biggest cities – was being disposed of in Black communities.

Bullard's wife, Linda McKeever Bullard, and the community group she represented would ultimately lose the class action lawsuit that followed, Bean v. Southwestern Waste Management Corp. But it set an important precedent: it was America's first-ever suit against polluters charging environmental racism under civil rights law. And it set Bullard off on a course of inquiry that has grown into a movement for environmental justice.

“It was an awakening for me. I decided I am not going to do dead white men sociology. I am going to do kick-ass sociology,” said Bullard. “So, we expanded the Houston study and began to look across the southern United States – the part of the country they call Dixie. We found that environmental oppression was rooted in systemic racism. It was stamped into its DNA.”

A systemic problem
His investigations culminated in Dumping in Dixie, the first of 18 books that Bullard has authored or co-authored. It traced freed Black communities as they purchased property in the formerly slave-owning South – and the polluting companies that swiftly followed them. The book showed that in addition to being deprived of infrastructure and education, sanitation and clean water,  these descendants of slaves and their families were also being exposed to higher-than-average levels of pollutants, compromising their health and well-being for generations. For far too long, said Bullard, his path was a lonely one. Environmental advocates, who were largely white, told him that racial justice was not in their wheelhouse. Civil rights groups insisted that pollution was not their problem.

“It took us almost 25 years until the two movements merged, until folks on both sides woke up to the realization that what we were experiencing in low-income and communities of colour was a form of systemic racism with detrimental health impacts,” said Bullard. “Not only that, but that these environmental disparities were having detrimental effects on life expectancy, home ownership and transformative wealth creation.”

Bullard is now a Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University and Co-Chair of the Executive Committee of the National Black Environmental Justice Network. He has a career spanning 40 years and says his primary goal now is teaching young people how to advocate for change. He cautions them that “the quest for justice is no sprint. It’s a marathon relay (where we must) pass the baton to the next generation of freedom fighters.”

Bullard, who counts the legendary civil rights leader and social science pioneer W.E.B Du Bois as his hero, said it’s critical that young advocates learn how to use research and science to support their crusade for justice. When underserved and marginalized communities are armed with evidence and facts, the weight of their protest is enhanced, he adds. “We have always been taking research we produced and translating it into action that communities can own and take to whatever venue – the city council, the state legislature, congress, the presidency – to change things.”

An international issue 

The United States isn’t the only country suffering from inequality, said Bullard, who sees the United Nations as a standard-bearer in the effort to address social ills, like poverty.

“The United Nations is in the position to talk about and implement the moral imperative to start dealing with some of these huge disparities in health and wealth – to redress and correct inequities and structural disparities,” he said. “Globalization has made the world a much smaller place. We are starting to see how we are all connected and how we have to together deal with the stressors coming down the road.”

In according Bullard the Lifetime Achievement award, United Nations Environment Programme Executive Director Inger Andersen paid tribute to someone she called an ally of the environmental movement, hailing his vision, his commitment and his role in mentoring the environmental justice advocates of tomorrow.

“Robert Bullard has shown us how one person can mobilize others to build a movement for the planet and for social justice,” she said. “His commitment to the idea that all people, regardless of background, have a right to clean air and clean water reflects a human-rights based approach to the environment, which is critical for global discourse. UNEP is honoured to recognize this pioneer with our highest possible award.”

Bullard says the biggest reward is the people around him, for whom the struggle – and the small victories – are real. 

“There is a long arc of justice, and we have to understand that this is not instant oatmeal. If we get you all to understand that these struggles are long term, we will reach that North Star: justice, fairness and equity for all.”

The United Nations Environment Programme’s Champions of the Earth and the Young Champions of the Earth honour individuals, groups and organizations whose actions have a transformative impact on the environment.  

The annual Champions of the Earth award is the UN’s highest environmental honour. It recognizes outstanding leaders from government, civil society and the private sector. Professor Robert Bullard is one of six laureates announced in December 2020, on the cusp of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030. 

By showcasing news of the significant work being done on the environmental frontlines, the Champions of the Earth awards aim to inspire and motivate more people to act for nature. The awards are part of UNEP’s #ForNature campaign to rally momentum for the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) in Kunming in May 2021, and catalyze climate action all the way to the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow in November 2021.