A Global Movement for Environmental Justice

06/28/21 • 38 min

From coal plants to large-scale agriculture, industrial activities contributing to the environmental crisis tend to concentrate in minority communities with little power, wealth, or legal knowledge to defend themselves. The consequences to health and livelihoods are frequently devastating. To help them protect themselves, the nonprofit Namati trains paralegals to educate and organize ordinary citizens to fight for justice within the legal system and change the laws that threaten their well-being.

This episode tells the story of Namati and founder Vivek Maru’s lifelong campaign to give the vulnerable a voice in the legal systems that impact their lives. Now, as climate change exacerbates nearly every form of social injustice, Namati is doubling down on the threats to land and environmental rights by forming a coordinated movement of environmental justice organizations around the world. This episode:

begins with a landmark land-grab case in Sierra Leone that illustrates the power of a community exercising its rights (0:06);
explains how years of deep experience in individual cases can lead to systemic changes in laws that benefit entire societies (07:21);
traces Maru’s personal history from the influence of his grandfather, a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, through his college studies of the social movements of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X (09:00);
describes the origins of the Namati strategy in 1950s South Africa (11:52) and Maru’s first experience in combining law and community organizing in Sierra Leone (12:47);
chronicles the work of Namati on abuses of land, citizenship, and other rights from Myanmar to Kenya, and the formation of an international network of justice empowerment organizations (16:47);
highlights Namati’s plans to turbo-charge its response to land and environmental abuses (22:05); and
how Namati is now transferring its experience in developing countries back home to address environmental injustices in the United States (26:18).

Additional Resources:

Source articles for this episode include:

Justice for All, the report of the Task Force on Justice, details the “justice gap” around the world.
The Impact of Legal Empowerment on Barriers to Health Care describes Namati’s impact on health care rights in Mozambique.
Justice and Identity in Kibera chronicles the efforts of paralegals to win Kenyan citizenship for the Nubian minority.
The Escazú Agreement about the landmark regional treaty for environmental defenders.
The Justice Gap Report of the Legal Services Corp. details the lack of access to justice in the United States.
Financing People-Centered Justice in Africa unveils plans for the new Grassroots Legal Empowerment Fund.

The full transcript of the episode can be found at https://ssir.org/podcasts/category/unchartedground.

begins with a landmark land-grab case in Sierra Leone that illustrates the power of a community exercising its rights (0:06);
explains how years of deep experience in individual cases can lead to systemic changes in laws that benefit entire societies (07:21);
traces Maru’s personal history from the influence of his grandfather, a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, through his college studies of the social movements of Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X (09:00);
describes the origins of the Namati strategy in 1950s South Africa (11:52) and Maru’s first experience in combining law and community organizing in Sierra Leone (12:47);
chronicles the work of Namati on abuses of land, citizenship, and other rights from Myanmar to Kenya, and the formation of an international network of justice empowerment organizations (16:47);
highlights Namati’s plans to turbo-charge its response to land and environmental abuses (22:05); and
how Namati is now transferring its experience in developing countries back home to address environmental injustices in the United States (26:18).

Additional Resources:

Source articles for this episode include:

Justice for All, the report of the Task Force on Justice, details the “justice gap” around the world.
The Impact of Legal Empowerment on Barriers to Health Care describes Namati’s impact on health care rights in Mozambique.
Justice and Identity in Kibera chronicles the efforts of paralegals to win Kenyan citizenship for the Nubian minority.
The Escazú Agreement about the landmark regional treaty for environmental defenders.
The Justice Gap Report of the Legal Services Corp. details the lack of access to justice in the United States.
Financing People-Centered Justice in Africa unveils plans for the new Grassroots Legal Empowerment Fund.

The full transcript of the episode can be found at https://ssir.org/podcasts/category/unchartedground.

Previous Episode

The Healing Force of Family

This is the second episode of a two-part series about raising the quality of health care in the developing world.

Even before the onslaught of COVID-19, public health services in many developing countries were chronically strained by a combination of burgeoning populations, severe shortages of trained clinicians, and growing burdens of disease. Noora Health harnesses an untapped resource—the family members of hospital patients in India—by training them in simple medical skills to help their loved ones recover with fewer complications and readmissions once they return home. Noora’s standard of caregiving is already helping to restore trust in India's beleaguered public system and may prove to be a critical element in the country's pursuit of universal health coverage.

This episode tells the story of Noora’s origins as a graduate school project of co-founders Edith Elliott and Shahed Alam and their serendipitous discovery of people's family members as a health resource. Follow their journey as they:

developed empathy for hospital patients as young teenagers, through the trials of suffering family members of their own (05:02);
devised a pilot test of their theory of change in an Indian cardiac hospital (10:04);
determined to turn the school assignment into a professional mission (12:35);
refined a comprehensive model (14:44) and partnered with the Indian state of Punjab to scale it up (22:47);
and responded to the COVID-19 crisis in India with novel strategies to help vulnerable families of positive patients stay safe (28:51).

Additional Resources:

Studies noted or alluded to in the episode:
- Journal of Global Health Reports on the results of the Noora program on cardiac patient recovery;
- BMJ Global Health article citing newborn care results to advocate for the importance of family-focused postnatal education.
The Noora Health channel on YouTube, providing hundreds of examples of Noora’s materials, including Bollywood-style dramas (mostly in Indian languages).
Blog post by Noora’s director of training, Anand Kumar, about how Noora began.

The full transcript of the episode can be found at https://ssir.org/podcasts/category/unchartedground.

Next Episode

The Business of Water

Nothing is more essential to life than clean drinking water. Where it’s in short supply—as in much of Africa and other developing regions—there’s opportunity for promoting good health, improving livelihoods, and making money. Jibu seeks to achieve all three through its franchises that treat, package, and distribute affordable water in the major cities of East Africa. For Jibu, selling water is ultimately a means to the end of spreading economic opportunity for the continent’s aspiring entrepreneurs.

A father-and-son team, Randy and Galen Welsch, started Jibu in 2012. The social enterprise is now a leading purveyor of bottled water in four countries and growing rapidly in three more. This episode traces the venture from:

their early brainstorming sessions (03:59) to the failure of their pilot project in all three initial countries (05:54), the design of compact equipment tailored for developing markets (11:29),
their priorities on recruiting women franchisees and employees to promote gender equity (17:24),
structuring payment terms to make the franchise opportunity affordable to African entrepreneurs (25:52),
and empowering local owners to make decisions that are key to growth and sustainability (29:36).

Additional Resources:

Source articles for this episode include:

Progress on Household Drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, the WHO’s latest data on water access around the world.
Africa’s Cities: Opening Doors to the World, a World Bank report on the challenges faced by the continent’s urban centers.
Africa’s Urbanization Dynamics 2020, an analysis by the OECD of policy options for the development of African cities within their local contexts.

The full transcript of the episode can be found at https://ssir.org/podcasts/entry/the_business_of_water.