The Global Environmental Health & Justice Fund

In the United States, the environment is sometimes portrayed as an issue that matters mostly to the affluent. The truth, of course, is exactly the opposite. Dangerous, polluting factories are not built in Beverly Hills, but in poor neighborhoods in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Brownsville, Texas, and Roxbury, Massachusetts. Those living in the rich suburbs of Johannesburg do not worry about access to clean water, but people living in Soweto, and the slums of Rio and Manila, do.

Today, the front lines of environmental action are found in communities of the poor, the working class and people of color all over the world.

The U.S. Program

New World has been supporting the developing movement for environmental justice for more than a decade, focusing on struggles in the U.S.: communities calling for Superfund clean-ups; urban health activists concerned about soaring asthma rates; unions demanding better workplace health and safety; Native Americans fighting for sovereignty and land rights; farmworkers exposing the dangers of pesticides; and many others.

In addition, New World supports the organizational networks that link local, immediate concerns to larger issues of social justice, racial equality, economic development, and political power. In the networking process, activists all over America have learned they are fighting the same corporate polluters and the same negligent regulators—and are learning they must work together in order to win.

Now a Global Program

In forming the Global Environmental Health and Justice Fund, New World and its funding partners are making a parallel commitment to environmental justice and health activists beyond the U.S. The Fund has begun grantmaking to frontline organizations in eight countries in the global South—Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria, India, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines—and is exploring possibilities for further expansion.

As in the U.S., the Fund supports both anchor organizations and the emerging networks that bring groups from different countries together around common polluters, dangerous industries, and government complicity or inaction.

For example, a Fund grantee recently helped bring 120 anti-incinerator activists from 30 countries together in Penang, Malaysia, not just to discuss how to prevent incinerators being built in their communities, but to examine why the incinerators were thought necessary in the first place and to explore alterative solutions. The Fund also supports a grassroots network taking on the oil industry, which in May 2003 spurred community activists from five countries, including the U.S., to confront Shell Oil at its annual shareholder meeting in London.

Focused Funding

The Fund supports organizations committed to on-the-ground organizing, democratic participation, leadership development, alliance building, a broad vision of social change and inclusive movement building. Though most groups are drawn to the environmental justice movement by disasters and immediate dangers, the Fund encourages activists to demand "not in my backyard—or anyone else's."

As the environmental justice movement matures, the opportunities are multiplying for linkage and strategic campaigns. Relatively small increases in funding will enable many existing organizations to continue building their grassroots base and expand their alliances, while also going on the offensive with corporate and political campaigns that promote permanent solutions, sustainable economies, and democratic accountability. This is a movement coming of age, poised to begin acting on a global scale, poised to demand systemic change.

Funder Education and Outreach

In addition to supporting frontline activism, the Environmental Health and Justice Fund also aims to introduce new funders to both issues and activists through educational workshops based on global analysis and practitioner perspectives. We work closely with kindred foundations in developing grantmaking with a movement building framework and welcome opportunities to pool resources for greater collective impact.