Robert Bullard Awarded Lifetime Achievement Award by the United Nations

Dr. Robert Bullard, distinguished professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University and author of the seminal book Dumping in Dixie, has been recognized by the UN Environment Programme with a Champions of the Earth Lifetime Achievement Award.

Bullard authored Dumping in Dixie, a book cited in Planetizen articles and around the Internet to this day, in 1990, earning Bullard the unofficial nickname of the "Father of Environmental Justice."

A Champions of the Earth press release explains the work of the book as follows:

[Dumping in Dixie] traced freed Black communities as they purchased property in the formerly slave-owning South – and the polluting companies that swiftly followed them. The book showed that in addition to being deprived of infrastructure and education, sanitation and clean water, these descendants of slaves and their families were also being exposed to higher-than-average levels of pollutants, compromising their health and well-being for generations. For far too long, said Bullard, his path was a lonely one. Environmental advocates, who were largely white, told him that racial justice was not in their wheelhouse. Civil rights groups insisted that pollution was not their problem.

According to the press release, Bullard's current goals focus on teaching young people how to advocate for change. Bullard is also very active in discussions about planning, urbanism, and environmental justice on Twitter.