Naming civic health in environmental justice discourse: The Jackson water crisis

From late 2021 to the Fall of 2022, the US passed legislation of particular importance to environmental justice (EJ) – defined by The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.¹” On November 15, 2021, President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. This law contains over $170 billion in EJ provisions, with focal points including environmental remediation, improving the water supply with the replacement of lead pipes, and reducing greenhouse emissions through investments in electric vehicles and public transportation.² These efforts were strengthened on August 16, 2022, with the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act which expands access to clean energies and establishes several environmental justice grant programs.³ Despite these legislative achievements breathing hope into the EJ movement, less than one month later – on August 30, 2022 – Governor Tate Reeves of Mississippi declared a state of emergency as flooding of the Pearl River further damaged Jackson's crumbling water treatment plants and strained the city's already tenuous water supply.⁴ The contrast between the management of this crisis and the recent passage of what many consider to be the most meaningful EJ legislation in decades, highlights an important opportunity for civic health – “the measure of civic, social, and political strength of a community⁵” – in ensuring population health and eliminating health disparities.

Beyond being a basic human right, a leading motivator for achieving EJ is health equity.⁶ Environmental pollutants and climate-related disasters have important consequences for human health. Some consequences may be immediate, such as gastroenteritis that ensues within hours or days of consuming polluted water or displacement from one's home due to flooding. Other consequences may be more insidious, manifesting themselves years or decades later. Examples include adverse neurological effects on child development from consuming lead-laden water or malignancy from chronic exposure to polluted air. Evidence repeatedly shows that underserved populations bear a disproportionate burden of these harms,⁷ and will continue to do so under climate change scenarios.⁸ Moreover, the scale of these issues is so large that it is often impossible for individuals to mitigate these harms through independent action. For this reason, promoting civic health is imperative.

We have seen each domain of civic health declare itself in the Jackson Water Crisis. Individual volunteerism as well as donations of bottled drinking water and money during this crisis embody the civic component of civic health. The social component has manifested itself via the leveraging of social networks such as church groups, the Mississippi Rapid Response Coalition, and former National Football League star and current Jackson State University football head coach Deion Sander's national status to aid relief efforts. The political component of civic health is marked by relationships between citizens and the government. This is traditionally thought of as voting for elected officials, but also involves interactions with these persons to express one's political opinions. Throughout the crisis, citizens have met with city council persons, Jackson Mayor Lumumba, and other officials to help shape the political discourse of the crisis and to voice the need for more permanent changes to prevent similar crises in the future. Importantly, these types of civic engagement may bolster physical and mental health among those that participate,^9,10 and there is growing recognition of civic engagement as a social determinant of health.

We have optimism for the improvement and resolution of the Jackson Water Crisis; however, it is a dire reminder that environmental injustices are deeply rooted, amplified by climate change, and will require continuous effort to overcome. US Google Trends data since 2004 demonstrates that the public is more familiar with EJ than civic health as a concept (Figure 1). Hence, although communities may already engage in civic health activities, increasing awareness of civic health as a concept may aid in making these efforts more intentional. Specifically, naming and promoting civic health in EJ discourse may be useful to the environmental community because it provides an additional framework to describe how individuals and communities can work to achieve EJ goals. The pursuit of EJ is an iterative process and by intentionally and frequently assessing their civic, social, and political strength, communities may be able to better position themselves to advocate for and achieve EJ as the climate crisis worsens.

Figure 1.

Civic Health and Environmental Justice Search Trends. This figure plots the Google Trends relative search volumes (RSVs) of the terms “civic health” and “environmental justice” from the time of initial Google Trends data availability (2004) until September 2022 in the United States.

Contributors

JCN led the conception and writing of the manuscript. JAC contributed to the writing of the manuscript. All authors reviewed and approved of the final manuscript.

Declaration of interests

The authors declared no conflicts of interest.