The Green Amendment
Lynn Neuman director of Artichoke Dance Company
One year ago, New York became the third state in the nation to adopt a green amendment into its constitution, joining Pennsylvania and Montana. To celebrate this one year anniversary, Lynn Neuman sat down with Maya Van Rossum, an attorney who was instrumental in crafting the amendment and bringing it to voters, and Jenny Veloz, an environmental justice community organizer, to discuss the potential and impacts of the amendment for New Yorkers.
LISTEN TO FULL EPISODE HERE
Biographies:
Maya Van Rossum founder of Green Amendments for the Generations, a non-profit organization working to get environmental rights adopted into state constitutions across the country. Rossum is also CEO of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, protecting the health of the Delaware River Watershed.
Jenny Veloz community organizer in the environmental justice program at New York’s Lawyers for the Public Interest. Veloz’s main focus and campaign is around building communities revolving environmental issues.
Questions from Lynn Neuman
The Bill: What will the Green Amendment do, and what do we expect to experience now that we have these constitutional rights?
Maya: “It will raise the rights to clean water and air and a healthful environment so that they are given the same highest constitutional standing and legal protection as the other fundamental rights that we hold dear. Other rights are given higher standing, because those rights are protected in the Bill of Rights section of the Constitution, which governs all laws and governments in the state. Prior, the environment didn’t have equal constitutional standing, but now it does. So it’s really going to be transformational in terms of how the law operates. Government officials will now have a constitutional obligation to protect the environmental rights of all people regardless of race, socio economics or ethnicity.”
Jenny: “[The Green Amendment] Codifies a basic civil right that all New Yorkers have, which is clean air, clean water and a healthful environment, and that shouldn't be determined by the zip code you live in. So often, and historically in low income communities, especially communities of color who continue to bear the brunt of environmental harms and hazards that affect their health, and affect their well being, this amendment gives them the right, and ensures that they can advocate for themselves.”
Clean/ Healthful Rights: New York’s amendment uses the language ‘clean’ and ‘health’. How will this be determined, what’s clean and healthy?
Maya: “Before the amendment, laws were written in a way to legalize environmental pollution and degradation. Now we flipped that. All government officials are going to start from the place of ‘I am constitutionally bound to prevent pollution and degradation, because that is the only way I can approach my work and ensure I protect the constitutional environmental rights of all the people”
Jenny: “Not a lot of individuals know what their rights are, and you come across people who are kind of surprised that something like the Green Amendment has never been codified into the states Bill of Rights. And that in reality technically means they didn’t have that right to clean air, to clean water and to a healthful environment and it surprises a lot of people, and it's something that we tend to take for granted”
Language and Legal: Pennsylvania was the first state to adopt a Green Amendment which includes a provision that the state’s natural resources are ‘common property of all the people, including generations to come.’ Maryland’s proposed language states that ‘Maryland as trustee, shall protect, conserve, manage and enhance the state's natural and cultural resources, including air, lands, waters, wildlife, and ecosystems for the benefit and enjoyment of both present and future generations’.
Can you provide some insight into these differences? Does the openness of New York State’s language provide an advantage or disadvantage?
Maya: “The Green Amendment’s language in New York State, in every state, is broad. Constitutional rights in the Bill of Rights are broad. They all use broad language, and they do that by design so they can cover the wealth of issues that they need to cover, and they can stand the test of time. So the problems in the future will be defined over the test of time, and understood more over time. In the environmental context we’re at the beginning of the process now, we’re just a few years in. Over time we’ll develop an understanding of what these rights mean”
“The trustee language that's in Pennsylvania’s Green Amendment is truly beneficial and powerful, and we really encourage the use of that because it really offers a level of clarity and strength when it comes to using the green amendments in the courts in important and powerful ways. Because […] if you use trust law it's very clear that the state is the trustee, that the people are the beneficiaries and that the state has the duty of loyalty to all the beneficiaries, that they are constitutionally bound to protect the rights of all the beneficiaries equitably.”
Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act and Green Amendments: In Pennsylvania and Montana, it took a few decades for case law to determine the scope and reach of the green amendment. Certainly these are different times. In NYS we have the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. Is there more power, or more of a mandate with the confluence of the CLCPA and the Green Amendment?
Maya:“Both tools are essential, the Green Amendment assures that people have all the power when government officials are failing”
Jenny: “My hope is that both pieces of this legislation nudge it forward and put New York state as one of the states that can be just like California, be a leader”
Strategies
Maya: “The goal is to get Green Amendment in every state Constitution, and ultimately the federal level”
Jenny: “For me it's all about the advocacy, it's about helping people advocate, giving them the tools, and part of those tools are about education, about the harmful effects, especially those communities that have been historically affected. I always say, just because we got the bill passed, that doesn't mean the work is done, because now we have to hold people accountable and make sure that they're doing what they're supposed to be doing to ensure that this is properly enacted, and there's that proper mandate, and folks don’t try to water it down. It's up to us and our responsibility to give them that education to help propel them and help amplify their voice. Making sure people that felt voiceless and powerless know that they aren’t. They can and should fight back.
What usually happens when we pass an act, these environmental laws […] usually the neighborhoods and communities that need it the most are usually the last to benefit. And it's time to prioritize those communities and make sure that they're on the forefront so they're the first to benefit”
A year ago when the green amendment was passed into New York state’s bill of rights, a movement sprung across the nation to adopt the right to a healthy environment into the state’s bill of rights. This interview with Rossum and Veloz hopes to further explain this amendment’s adoption and language, as well as its implications of environmental protection and environmental justice.
LISTEN TO FULL EPISODE HERE