"A sacrifice zone or sacrifice area (often termed a national sacrifice zone or national sacrifice area) is a geographic area that has been permanently changed by heavy environmental alterations (usually to a negative degree) or economic disinvestment, often through locally unwanted land use (#LULU). Commentators including Chris Hedges, Joe Sacco, and Steve Lerner have argued that corporate business practices contribute to producing sacrifice zones. A 2022 report by the United Nations highlighted that millions of people globally are in pollution sacrifice zones, particularly in zones used for heavy industry and mining."
"According to the United Nations Human Rights Council [#UNHRC], the term Sacrifice zone emerged in the #ColdWar period when #NuclearTesting, conducted by #colonial powers, such as the #UnitedStates, #France, the #UnitedKingdom, and the #SovietUnion transformed sections of land into #uninhabitable and highly #radioactive areas. Sacrifice zones can be defined as communities that experience dangerous levels of hazardous contamination and waste exposure. Sacrifice zones are linked to #racism, #oppression, #patriarchy, and #colonialism, as they are hubs of #pollution that disproportionately target and harm the physical and mental health of marginalized groups who face overlapping forms of #oppressions.
According to Helen Huntington Smith, the term was first used in the U.S. discussing the long-term effects of #StripMining#coal in the American West in the 1970s. The National Academy of Sciences/National Academy of Engineering Study Committee on the Potential for Rehabilitating Lands Surface Mined for Coal in the Western United States produced a 1973 report that introduced the term, finding:
In each zone the probability of rehabilitating an area depends upon the land use objectives, the characteristics of the site, the technology available, and the skill with which this technology is applied. At the extremes, if surface mined lands are declared national sacrifice areas, all ecological zones have a high probability of being successfully rehabilitated. If, however, complete restoration is the objective, rehabilitation in each zone has no probability of success.
Similarly in 1975, Genevieve Atwood wrote in Scientific American:
Surface mining without #reclamation removes the land forever from #productive use; such land can best be classified as a #NationalSacrifice area. With successful reclamation, however, surface mining can become just one of a series of land uses that merely interrupt a current use and then return the land to an equivalent potential productivity or an even higher one.
Huntington Smith wrote in 1975, "The Panel that issued the cautious and scholarly National Academy of Sciences report unwittingly touched off a verbal bombshell" with the phrase National Sacrifice Area; "The words exploded in the Western press overnight. Seized upon by a people who felt themselves being served up as 'national sacrifices', they became a watchword and a rallying cry." The term sparked public debate, including among #environmentalists and politicians such as future Colorado governor Richard Lamm.
The term continued to be used in the context of strip mining until at least 1999: '#WestVirginia has become an environmental sacrifice zone'."
Good news: Francesca Albanese's mandate as Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories (on the United Nations Human Rights Council) was automatically renewed (tacitly as they say, for three years); there was no vote.