Lighting a Spark: Students learn about environmental justice from attorneys in public service project
"Students gained a better understanding of the environmental challenges we face as a nation," said Lawrence Pittman, right, who taught at Center Public Charter Schools' Brightwood Campus in Washington, D.C. (Photos courtesy of the ABA Section of Environment, Energy and Resources)
Last month, students in Washington, D.C., got to learn about environmental justice from actual environmental lawyers.
The Environmental Justice Service Day at three schools in and around Washington, D.C., took place on Nov. 14. Using a curriculum created by the ABA Section of Environment, Energy and Resources, the lawyers’ goal was to educate students about the history of environmental protection and environmental justice in the United States.
“I used the curriculum at my daughter’s school, and it provides an excellent overview as well as group exercises focused on solving environmental issues,” says Jonathan Nwagbaraocha, the chair of the Section of Environment, Energy and Resources and corporate counsel for environmental sustainability at Cisco Systems. He taught the curriculum for the first time last year to an eighth-grade class at Anna Murray-Douglass Academy School No. 12 in Rochester, New York.
This year’s event was planned in conjunction with the ABA’s inaugural Environmental Justice Symposium at Howard University School of Law. The Nov. 15 symposium, which was led by the Section of Environment, Energy and Resources; the Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice; and the Environmental Justice Task Force, brought together lawyers to discuss best practices for incorporating environmental justice in their work.
The curriculum taught to the students was developed by SEER and is available for other groups interested in teaching environmental justice.Lawrence Pittman, co-chair of the Environmental Justice Symposium’s planning committee, says section members make it a point to include a community service component in their conferences. And, he adds, they thought this particular conference provided the perfect opportunity to use the curriculum.
“Through this public service project, we were able to expose local Washington, D.C., middle school and high school students to the area of environmental law and environmental justice,” says Pittman, a trial attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice. “Students gained a better understanding of the environmental challenges we face as a nation and wrestle with the competing interests we advocate for as attorneys.”
Volunteers visited Ida B. Wells Middle School and Center City Public Charter Schools’ Brightwood Campus in the District of Columbia, and McLean School in Potomac, Maryland. As part of the lessons, students studied actual environmental issues facing a historically Black neighborhood in Houston, where residents have been exposed to chemicals that are linked to cancer and other health problems.
As students discussed remediation and relocation challenges, Pittman says they grappled with concepts including “NIMBY,” an acronym that stands for “not in my backyard” and is used to describe the opposition of residents to development projects. They also proposed creative solutions to turn the waste into fertilizer.
Stacey Halliday taught at the McLean School in Potomac, Maryland.“We hope this public service project is the spark of a continued conversation and engagement of ABA SEER attorneys with youth in the communities we are all a part of,” Pittman says.
Stacey Halliday, the other co-chair of the Environmental Justice Symposium’s planning committee, adds that the conference was equally vital to exposing attorneys to what it means to incorporate environmental justice into everyday legal practice.
“As someone who has advised private and public sector clients on [environmental justice] matters for more than a decade, it was important to me to use this opportunity to showcase how varied and dynamic this work can be,” says Halliday, a partner at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C. “This conference was our opportunity to do just that—highlight firsthand accounts from practitioners who do this work on a daily basis, in ways large and small.”
