Pollution as Environmental Violence

By Steve Lemeshko

In the last two decades, the term "environmental violence" has gained significant attention. As illustrated by the Google Books Ngram Viewer, its usage has drastically increased in the last twenty years:

While similar, related concepts such as slow violence have been used, they are not identical. Slow violence can manifest itself as a form of environmental violence, such as chemical pollution building up over decades in a community's water supply. However, environmental violence is not always slow; for instance, events such as oil spills can cause rapid, catastrophic environmental damage. Similarly, not all slow violence is environmental—some forms can be present within the sphere of human interactions, like systemic poverty or structural racism.

Despite its growing popularity, environmental violence remains a vague term, often used inconsistently and without a clear definition. In “Environmental violence: a tool for planetary health research” (2023) published in the Lancet, Richard Marcantonio and Agustín Fuentes attempt to clarify and operationalize this term to make it a more effective research tool on planetary and, thus, human health. Framing destructive human impacts on the environment as “violence” helps decision makers and the general public to apprehend processes that are frequently structural and difficult to perceive.

Marcantonio and Fuentes argue that the term has been “too inconsistent, too general and broad, and insufficiently connected to human health” to serve as an effective framework. By analyzing academic literature, authors identified the most thorough definition of environmental violence to date in Bandy Lee’s “Causes and cures VIII: Environmental violence” (2016), which states:

(a) the violence between people(s) over natural resources; (b) environmental policies that can be violent against people; (c) the secondary violence from the natural world as a result of human degradation of the earth; and (d) direct damage to the environment by humans that threatens their own survival. (106)

While Lee’s definition is comprehensive, Marcantonio and Fuentes argue that such a framework is too broad to be easily applied in research. Instead, they propose a more focused framework that emphasizes human-produced pollution as a key driver of environmental violence:

[W]e propose that environmental violence be defined as direct and indirect harm experienced by humans due to toxic and non-toxic pollutants put into a local—and concurrently the global—ecosystem through human activities and processes. (e861)

This narrow definition centers pollution—of air, water, and soil—as a key element of environmental violence, closely linking it to human industrial activities. It is a practical and ready-applicable framework that can be used for the investigation of environmental processes and their effect on human and environmental health. For example, the legacy of extensive mining across the West, in general, or in places like Coeur d’Alene Lake, Idaho, in particular, illustrates the long-term impacts of human activity.

This definition of environmental violence also aligns with the contemporary environmental policies that prioritize human health, like the Clean Air Act (CAA), Clean Water Act (CWA), and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). Under CERCLA, for example, the EPA updates the online map of the U.S. with the National Priorities List, where anyone can view the sites across the U.S. requiring clean-up from hazardous chemicals.

The implications of this framework extend beyond these policies. By framing excess pollution as unnecessary harm, it offers a compelling moral and legal argument for reducing pollutants and transitioning to more sustainable production practices. This perspective can be particularly relevant in discussions about greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Additionally, it sheds light on the unequal distribution of pollution patterns within and across nations—the disproportionate effect on marginalized communities embedded in current production patterns. For instance, Cancer Alley in Louisiana, an 85-mile stretch with over 200 petrochemical plants, shows how environmental violence disproportionately impacts vulnerable communities. Similarly, the global practice of shipping decommissioned vessels to Bangladesh shipbreaking yards exposes the blatant environmental injustice, as environmental harm is outsourced to economically disadvantaged regions. These examples show the intersection of slow, environmental violence and structural violence.

Bangladesh shipbreaking yard. Credit: Lindsay Bremner, CC BY-SA 2.0.

ExxonMobil's Baton Rouge Refinery in Cancer Alley, Louisiana. Credit: Jim Bowen, CC BY 2.0.

Recognizing pollution as a form of violence has significant legal, social, and political implications. However, because of convenience in operationalization and transportability, this framework has its limitations: it is human-centric and does not explicitly acknowledge the intrinsic value of nature or the violence done to non-human species. For example, while deforestation or poaching may have indirect impacts on human health, they are not central to this definition of environmental violence, and the slow-unfolding nature of such harm can lead to irreversible damage before action is taken. Despite these limitations, the concept of environmental violence as defined still remains a powerful tool for addressing at least some of the environmental challenges of our time.

Tusk Conceptual Garden in Woburn Safari Park. Credit: Marie Shallcross, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

The full citations of the articles are:

Marcantonio, Richard and Agustín Fuentes. “Environmental violence: a tool for planetary health research.” The Lancet Planetary Health, vol. 7, no. 10, October 2023, doi:10.1016/S2542-5196(23)00190-0.

Lee, Bandy X. “Causes and cures VIII: Environmental violence.” Aggression and Violent Behavior, vol. 30, 2016, pp. 105-109, doi:10.1016/j.avb.2016.07.004.

For further reading on slow violence and environmental humanities, see the following articles:

Indigenous Knowledge and Colonial Violence in Kaipara Moana, New Zealand / September 19, 2024

Public Perceptions of Immigrants: The Challenge of Raising Awareness of Climate Change as a Reason for Migration / September 17, 2024

Documenting Coal Mining in Jharia, India, through Photography / May 5, 2024