The organized environmental movement is represented by a wide range of non-governmental organizations or NGOs that seek to address environmental issues in the United States. They operate on local, national, and international scales. Environmental NGOs vary widely in political views and in the ways they seek to influence the environmental policy of the United States and other governments.
Environmental racism, ecological racism, or ecological apartheid is a form of racism leading to negative environmental outcomes such as landfills, incinerators, and hazardous waste disposal disproportionately impacting communities of color, violating substantive equality. Internationally, it is also associated with extractivism, which places the environmental burdens of mining, oil extraction, and industrial agriculture upon indigenous peoples and poorer nations largely inhabited by people of color.
CEPT University, formerly the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology, is an academic institution located near University Area in Ahmedabad, India offering undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral programmes in areas of natural and developed environment of human society and related disciplines.
A sustainable city, eco-city, or green city is a city designed with consideration for the social, economic, and environmental impact, as well as a resilient habitat for existing populations. This is done in a way that does not compromise the ability of future generations to experience the same. The UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 defines sustainable cities as those that are dedicated to achieving green sustainability, social sustainability and economic sustainability. In accordance with the UN Sustainable Development Goal 11, a sustainable city is defined as one that is dedicated to achieving green, social, and economic sustainability. They are committed to this objective by facilitating opportunities for all through a design that prioritizes inclusivity as well as maintaining a sustainable economic growth. Furthermore, the objective is to minimize the inputs of energy, water, and food, and to drastically reduce waste, as well as the outputs of heat, air pollution. Richard Register, a visual artist, first coined the term ecocity in his 1987 book Ecocity Berkeley: Building Cities for a Healthy Future, where he offers innovative city planning solutions that would work anywhere. Other leading figures who envisioned sustainable cities are architect Paul F Downton, who later founded the company Ecopolis Pty Ltd, as well as authors Timothy Beatley and Steffen Lehmann, who have written extensively on the subject. The field of industrial ecology is sometimes used in planning these cities.
Anthony Juniper is a British campaigner, writer, sustainability adviser and environmentalist who served as Executive Director of Friends of the Earth, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. He was Vice Chair of Friends of the Earth International from 2000 to 2008.
Kerry Bowman is a Canadian bioethicist and environmentalist based in Toronto, Ontario.
Urban Bush Women (UBW), founded in 1984 by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, is a Brooklyn, New York-based non-profit dance company and professional African-American women's dance company. The ensemble performs choreography by Zollar and several other choreographers, often with a focus on the experiences of women of African descent.
Karl Linn was an American landscape architect, psychologist, educator, and community activist, best known for inspiring and guiding the creation of "neighborhood commons" on vacant lots in East Coast inner cities during the 1960s through 1980s. Employing a strategy he called "urban barnraising," he engaged neighborhood residents, volunteer professionals, students, youth teams, social activists, and community gardeners in envisioning, designing, and constructing instant, temporary, and permanent gathering spaces in neighborhoods, on college campuses, and at sites of major conferences and events. "Linn is considered 'Father of American Participatory Architecture' by many academic colleagues and architectural and environmental experts of the National Endowment for the Arts."
New Village Press is a not-for-profit book publisher founded in 2005 in the San Francisco Bay Area now based in New York, New York. It began as a national publishing project of Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR), an educational non-profit organization founded in 1981.
Claude Grunitzky is a journalist, editor and entrepreneur. A graduate of the University of London and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he is best known as founder and editor-in-chief of the lifestyle publication TRACE, an international fashion and music title, and as a co-founder of the TRACE TV network. He runs TRUE Africa, a media platform championing young African voices; TRUE, a content marketing agency; and The Equity Alliance, an investment fund focused on diverse venture capital fund managers and entrepreneurs. He also presents the podcast series Limitless Africa. In 2012, Grunitzky's career was the subject of a Harvard Business School case study, which is taught in the "Power & Influence" MBA class.
Robert Doyle Bullard is an American academic who is the former Dean of the Barbara Jordan - Mickey Leland School Of Public Affairs and is currently a Distinguished Professor at Texas Southern University. Previously Ware Professor of Sociology and Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, Bullard is known as the "father of environmental justice". He has been a leading campaigner against environmental racism, as well as the foremost scholar of the problem, and of the Environmental Justice Movement which sprung up in the United States in the 1980s.
Gaétan Siew is a Mauritian architect.
Dorceta E. Taylor is an American environmental sociologist known for her work on both environmental justice and racism in the environmental movement. She is the senior associate dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Yale School of the Environment, as well as a professor of environmental justice. Prior to this, she was the director of diversity, equity, and inclusion at the University of Michigan's School of Environment and Sustainability (SEAS), where she also served as the James E. Crowfoot Collegiate Professor of Environmental Justice. Taylor's research has ranged over environmental history, environmental justice, environmental policy, leisure and recreation, gender and development, urban affairs, race relations, collective action and social movements, green jobs, diversity in the environmental field, food insecurity, and urban agriculture.
Tom B.K. Goldtooth is a Native American environmental, climate, and economic justice activist, speaker, film producer, and Indigenous rights leader. He is active at local, national, and international levels as an advocate for building healthy and sustainable Indigenous communities based upon the foundation of Indigenous traditional knowledge. Goldtooth has served as executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) since 1996 after serving as a member of the IEN National Council since 1992.
Open spaces in urban environments, such as parks, playgrounds, and natural areas, can provide many health, cultural, recreational, and economic benefits to the communities nearby. However, access to open spaces can be unequal for people of different incomes. In California's two largest metropolitan regions, Los Angeles County in Southern California and the Bay Area in Northern California, access to green space and natural areas varies with the predominant races and classes of the communities. This also holds true in San Diego County in Southern California. Both expanding urbanization and diminishing funding for open space tend to widen these gaps in accessibility. Because open space is associated with various mental and physical benefits, a lack of access to it can pose health consequences. However, more research is needed to determine whether such environmental inequalities translate into long-term health inequalities, and, if so, how.
Environmental, ecological or green gentrification is a process in which cleaning up pollution or providing green amenities increases local property values and attracts wealthier residents to a previously polluted or disenfranchised neighbourhood. Green amenities include green spaces, parks, green roofs, gardens and green and energy efficient building materials. These initiatives can heal many environmental ills from industrialization and beautify urban landscapes. Additionally, greening is imperative for reaching a sustainable future. However, if accompanied by gentrification, these initiatives can have an ambiguous social impact. More specifically, in certain cases the introduction of green amenities might lead to (1) the physical displacement of low income households due to soaring housing costs, and/or (2) the cultural, social, and political displacement of long-time residents. First coined by Sieg et al. (2004), environmental gentrification is a relatively new concept, although it can be considered as a new hybrid of the older and wider topics of gentrification and environmental justice. Social implications of greening projects specifically with regards to housing affordability and displacement of vulnerable citizens. Greening in cities can be both healthy and just.
Julian K. Agyeman is a professor of Urban & Environmental Policy & Planning and Fletcher Professor of Rhetoric and Debate at Tufts University. He is a co-founder and the editor-in-chief of the journal Local Environment. During his career, Agyeman has developed the concept of just sustainabilities, defined as "the need to ensure a better quality of life for all, now, and into the future, in a just and equitable manner, whilst living within the limits of supporting ecosystems."
Mamie Parker is an American biologist, conservationist, executive coach, facilitator, and inspirational speaker from Wilmot, Arkansas. She holds a PhD in limnology from the University of Wisconsin and spent 30 years with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) in a variety of positions in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Georgia, and Washington, D.C. Highly regarded as a pioneer in the field, she was the first Black woman to serve as the assistant director of Fisheries and Habitat Conservation and the first African American to lead a USFWS regional office when she served as the Northeast Service Regional Director, covering 13 northeastern states. She also served as USFWS Chief of Staff and Chief of Fisheries. She received the US government's highest honor for career service employees for her accomplishments, the Presidential Rank Meritorious Service Award, and in 2005 was the first African American inducted into the Arkansas Outdoor Hall of Fame. Since retiring from USFWS, she has worked as an executive leadership coach, inspirational speaker, and environmental consultant with Ma Parker and Associates and EcoLogix Group, Inc. She is on the board of directors of the National Wildlife Federation, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment, The Nature Conservancy-Virginia Chapter, American University School of Public Affairs, Ducks Unlimited, and the Student Conservation Association. Throughout her career she has worked to advance diversity and opportunities for minority students in conservation and fisheries careers; in 2016 she was awarded the Emmeline Moore Prize from the American Fisheries Society for these efforts.
Malo Hutson is the Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia. Prior to serving as dean, Hutson was an Associate Professor in Urban Planning at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation with a focus on equity through urban policy, health and the built environment.
Sheila Rose Foster is a legal scholar, and an author. She is a tenured Professor of Climate at the Columbia Climate School.
