October
1997
The Satya Interview:
Stephan Chenault of the Sierra Club, New York City
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Stephan Chenaut is the
Environmental Justice Committee Co-Chair for the Sierra Club New York
City group and on the executive committee of the Sierra Club NYC. He
is also the vice-president of a board of Magnolia Tree Earth Center
in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn [see Satya, April 1995]. He
is a member of the Cooperative Ecological Community, a group of people
who meet in Park Slope and support each other in ecological lifestyles.
He talked to Satya about sustainability and environmental activism in
an urban environment.
Q: How would you define "sustainable development"?
A: I'd rather call it "sustainability"
than "sustainable development." Sustainability means that people are living
in a way that meets their basic needs but also provides for the livelihood
and well-being of all other life forms and all natural communities on
earth. A definition of sustainability for me would be that all the natural
inhabitants of a forest are able to sustain their lives according to their
nature. It's really sustainability of the whole natural community.
Q: That suggests that "development" doesn't
enter your definition. Are you suggesting that we shouldn't develop?
A: We should do everything possible to
maintain ecosystems intact. That doesn't mean that there won't be changes
or that we won't ever use any innovative technologies. I'm not saying
that. I think there is a lot of innovative technology -- all our physics
and engineering could develop solar energy. That's a great technology
that can be used in a way that could help to sustain the planet. Wind
energy again is a high-tech possibility that can be used in a sustainable
way. There are efforts to develop solar cookers and buildings with energy-efficient
lighting. I'm talking about using technology in a way that sustains our
environment. There are times when I think technology can be very helpful
if used in the right way.
Q: So, how do you balance development of technology
with sustainability?
A: Development, per se, is not
necessarily a goal. Meeting people's basic needs is important. People
should have enough to eat, to clothe themselves, to have a decent home
and a decent livelihood. But the need to continuously have more and more
power over nature, this continuous "frontier" personal ethics to have
more and more control over genetics and organisms: this type of development
as a goal in itself is not acceptable. I think that an alternative type
of development would be to be geared towards increased understanding of,
and sympathy and communication with, other life forms. If we can have
an ethic of having a closer relationship with other life forms, to appreciate
them more, it would certainly give a greater amount of satisfaction.
Q: Cities often seem sinkholes of consumption
and a degraded ecology. What does a sustainable city mean to you and where
does it correlate with environmental justice?
A: First of all, I think cities can be
a great asset for the environment and ecological systems. Having a concentration
of people in these cities is good in a way, because if people were spread
out throughout suburbs and the countryside, I think we would find that
those environments that were previously more lightly populated would become
gradually impoverished ecologically. [A sustainable city] means a healthy
environment, clean air, clean water. You want people to have access to
nature and open spaces -- whether it's through parks, community gardens
within the city, or chances to leave the city and enjoy the natural world.
A healthy environment
is very key to environmental justice. Environmental justice groups are
addressing things like air quality caused by the siting of bus depots
in Northern Manhattan [see Satya, July 1996]. The incinerators are certainly
an environmental justice issue, and we had a victory with the Bronx-Lebanon
incinerator, which has been shut down. Lead-based paint is another major
problem in minority communities.
The other point is
that cities are centers of a great deal of consumption and the important
thing is that we somehow develop urban centers that do not consume as
much. We consume huge amounts of paper that come from both old growth
forests and rainforests. We have a great responsibility for reducing that.
Our city boardwalks and the majority of our park benches are made from
rainforest wood. I was instrumental with Rainforest Relief and the Sierra
Club in getting City councilman Gifford Miller to introduce a bill to
prohibit the City from purchasing tropical rainforest hardwood unless
it was sustainably harvested and managed. Coffee is another problem. Coffee
is grown on former rainforest land and one thing we'd like to see is more
organic coffee promoted in coffee bars. Organic coffee is grown in the
shade in rainforest countries and still maintains a fair amount of biological
diversity because it doesn't require full sunlight. Equal Exchange is
one of the organic coffee producers and I've been talking with people
about starting a campaign to get coffee shops to buy more organic coffee.
Q: What about in inner-city communities?
A: We already have programs like low-income weatherization
projects where assistance is given to low-income people to make their
home more energy efficient. They save on their energy bill as well as
save energy -- so that's a win/win situation. If we could do the same
thing for compact fluorescent lighting and have programs to provide assistance
for buying energy efficient lighting, that would both save money and the
environment. There's Community Supported Agriculture [see Satya, June
1997]. What we would like to see is the City be a strong vital core with
a strong culture and arts and quality of life, and, around the City, farms
so that we don't have to import foods from California or South America
that require all this transportation and processing and packaging and
all the increased pollution. With CSAs and greenmarkets, we can have local
produce.
Q: Do you think that the perception that environmentalism
is a white, middle-class movement is accurate?
A: There is a great amount of activity
among communities of color on environmental issues. Therefore, I think
that the perception is not quite accurate. If people really were involved
in environmental justice issues, they would see that there is a lot of
cross-fertilization between environmental justice and the environmental/conservation
movement already taking place. I know a fair amount of people in the environmental
justice movement and I know that they work in cooperation with groups
such as the Sierra Club, New York League of Conservation Voters, the NYC
Public Industry Research Group and other environmental organizations.
There needs to be more communication about environmental justice and conservation
and other groups are already working together a great deal. There are
problems, but they do work together quite often.
Q: Do you think the misperception comes about
because white liberal environmental activists think that disadvantaged
communities of color have too much to worry about and so they don't reach
out to them?
A: That can be a self-fulfilling prophecy
and I find that that is what often happens. Mainstream environmental groups
have that in their heads and, therefore, they do not go to minority groups
or neighborhoods or meetings when they could. They don't go to Harlem,
they don't table in minority neighborhoods. Then they wonder why aren't
their more minorities in their organizations, because they already have
these expectations that they would not be interested. If they would do
more outreach they would find that there are plenty of people who love
nature. Everyone needs clean air and water and everyone has a feeling
for nature and for other living things.
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