Tropical Conservation and Grassroots Social Movements: Ecological Theory and Social Justice

Among the myriad political issues that are of concern to ESA, three stand out as not only important in their own right, but together take on a particular urgency. These are (1) environmental justice, (2) globalization, and (3) tropical conservation. The environmental justice movement has focused on the urgent contemporary task of documenting and struggling against political and economic decisions that place underprivileged groups at environmental risk. For example Memphis, site of the 2007 ESA meetings, has communities of mainly African Americans who remain subject to the environmental hazards that originally stemmed from the production of chlordane by the Velsicol Company (the same chemical and same company, by the way, that was so active in attempting to block the publication of Silent Spring). Even though the use of chlordane was banned in the United States in 1988, residues remain in soil and sediments throughout the Memphis area, especially in areas populated by low-income families and people of color.