ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AS CORE PILLAR OF SUSTAINABILITY
Environmental Monitoring Group
Cape Town, South Africa
Website
The Environmental Monitoring Group (EMG) is an independent non-governmental organization, established in 1991. Initially, their focus was to ensure the laws being developed for South Africa had an environmental justice focus, which quickly evolved to promoting sustainable development and environmental justice on a broader level.
Described as the world’s ‘most unequal country’, South Africa’s population is deeply divided. With an extremely unbalanced distribution of wealth, access to clean and safe water is not a norm for a large part of the population. EMG is committed to addressing this equality gap by working directly with communities affected by it.
EMG’s focus is on enhancing people’s relationships with the environment and with each other, working to end inequality, establish participatory processes, and build social justice related to the use and management of natural resources.
30COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS
FOUNDED IN
1991
10HOURS OF ENVIRONMENTAL TV EDUCATION
The project: The grant funded the management of an Integrated Community Environment Project along the extremely polluted Kuils River, where environmental racism sees low income communities living in environmentally harmful conditions.
Our activation: 11th Hour Racing Team joined a mass river clean up organized by EMG during The Ocean Race stopover and visited a community garden initiative based at a school in the township. The objective was to help shine a light on the inequalities in Cape Town, galvanize local authorities, build stronger civil society networks, re-ignite community activism, and facilitate learning.
