Global Community Initiative 2022-23: Climate Action

"The EJ Atlas collects these stories of communities struggling for environmental justice from around the world. It aims to make these mobilization more visible, highlight claims and testimonies and to make the case for true corporate and state accountability for the injustices inflicted through their activities. It also attempts to serve as a virtual space for those working on EJ issues to get information, find other groups working on related issues, and increase the visibility of environmental conflicts."

The Washington Environmental Health Disparities Map is an interactive mapping tool that compares communities across our state for environmental health disparities.

The map shows pollution measures such as diesel emissions and ozone, as well as proximity to hazardous waste sites. In addition, it displays measures like poverty and cardiovascular disease.

2019 UN article: "From Lagos and Lahore to London, it’s the poorest people who are most affected by air pollution. The poor tend to be priced out of the leafy suburbs where there are fewer highways and air quality is better.

Air pollution is caused by harmful particulates and gases released into the air. It leads to premature death from heart disease, stroke, and cancer, as well as acute lower respiratory infections. Indoor and outdoor (ambient) air pollution caused an estimated 7 million deaths globally in 2016, according to the World Health Organization."

"Air, land, and water pollution caused 9 million premature deaths in 2016, or 16% of all deaths worldwide. About 92% of all pollution-related mortality is seen in low-income and middle-income countries, with the poor, marginalized, and young hardest hit by the health effects of the contamination. The economic burden is immense: in 2016, ambient air pollution alone cost the global economy US$5.7 trillion—4.8 percent of global GDP."

2017 report with the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health found that "one in six of all deaths worldwide is caused by pollution"

The Borgen Project is a non-profit focusing on addressing global poverty.

2017 article

2019 article from UW Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences: "Recent estimates in the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study show that the combination of air pollution, poor water sanitation and exposure to lead and radon is responsible for 9 million premature deaths each year.

Yet this figure captures only a fraction of the real burden of toxic pollutants in the environment, and it doesn’t consider climate change, according to a community of scientists led by researchers in the UW Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences (DEOHS) in the School of Public Health."