As a scholar, Dr. Robert Bullard is credited with being one of the founders of the environmental justice movement. In 2013, the influential Sierra Club bestowed upon Bullard its highly prestigious John Muir award. The award is considered to be one of the most significant for individuals who have attained achievement in national or international conservation causes.
Bullard’s “expertise and media savvy has garnered much needed attention and remedies for communities burdened with environmental hazards,” said Leslie Fields, director of the Sierra Club Environmental Justice and Community Partnerships program, when the award was made last year.
In 2014, the Sierra Club is extending its recognition of the Houston-based scholar’s work by creating the Robert Bullard Environmental Justice Award. The organization last month announced that the Club will present the first Robert Bullard Environmental Justice Award along with the Club’s other awards on November 21 in San Francisco.
“I am very humbled by a gesture of this nature,” Bullard, who is dean of the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University, told Diverse.
“What it says to me is that … the naming of the award itself really honors the work and not just my work but the work of others who have really labored in the fields working on environmental justice, confronting environmental racism, and dealing with pollution and environmental degradation in communities that oftentimes don’t have resources to fight the battle alone,” he said.
Sierra Club officials say the new award “will honor an individual or a group that has done outstanding work in the area of environmental justice.” The inaugural award will be presented to Mississippi activist Rose Johnson.
