Community-Based Environmental Protection: Grassroots Approaches to Advance Environmental Justice and Health Equity

In the wake of overlapping environmental and social ills disproportionately impacting low-income and communities of color as well as other environmentally overburdened geographies, affected residents and grassroots organizations have not waited on government or other actors to address critical community challenges. To seek self-determined environmental change and community outcomes, these community members and organizations have engaged in the practice of community-based environmental protection, an approach in which local organizations and individuals, usually residents of a specific geographic area, take action to address their own environmental concerns. In this chapter, we explore approaches to seeking community-based environmental protection and utilize a case study of the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance (WAWA) to highlight the ways in which grassroots, community-based organizations are leveraging local community knowledge and lived experiences as well as utilizing diverse tools to enact it. Specifically, we elevate WAWA’s use of environmental justice advocacy, environmental stewardship, environmental education, and participatory research approaches to enact community-based environmental protection, thereby advancing environmental justice and health equity while also improving the quality of local environments.