Printer-friendly versionFor this lesson, students will use maps and graphs to explore some instances of environmental injustice.
Framework
The Gulf oil spill disaster raised awareness of the potential devastation arising from environmental pollution. What many people don’t realize is that environmental pollution disproportionately affects people of color and those who live in poverty. Lacking political and economic power, they have less clout with the government bodies that make decisions about where to locate power plants, processing facilities and waste sites. As a result, policy-makers often locate these sites in poor and minority neighborhoods.
Additional Resources
Read the Environmental Protection Agency’s definition of environmental justice.
Read the Principles of Environmental Justice.
Teaching Tolerance reports on the beginnings of the environmental justice movement.
EARLY GRADES (3-5)
MIDDLE GRADES (6-8)
HIGH SCHOOL (9-12)
Activities and embedded assessments address the following standards (McREL 4th edition)
Geography
Standard 1. Understands the characteristics and uses of maps, globes and other geographic tools and technologies
Standard 2. Knows the location of places, geographic features and patterns of the environment
Standard 3. Understands the characteristics and uses of spatial organization of Earth's surface
Standard 4. Understands the physical and human characteristics of place
Standard 9. Understands the nature, distribution and migration of human populations on Earth's surface
Standard 14. Understands how human actions modify the physical environment
Economics
Standard 5. Understands unemployment, income and income distribution in a market economy
Language Arts
Standard 4. Gathers and uses information for research purposes
Standard 5. Uses the general skills and strategies of the reading process
Standard 7. Uses reading skills and strategies to understand and interpret a variety of informational texts
