ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM: REFLECTIONS ON CLIMATE CHANGE AND COVID-19

Society faces a period of global crisis with direct links that originate serious social, environmental and economic impacts. However, ethnic-racial groups and minority groups are more likely to suffer from such impacts. In this sense, environmental racism presents itself as a decisive factor in the face of the effects and impacts of climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic. The main objective of this study is to analyze the environmental racism that permeates to the present time, presenting itself in different forms during the climate and health crisis. Methodologically, it is a method of qualitative approach, based on bibliographic and documentary analysis procedures. The result of this study allows bringing environmental racism and environmental injustices to the debate in the face of the climate and sanitary crisis. In addition, the study describes how climate and sanitary issues have as their main feature the effects of environmental racism that have persisted since Apartheid, presenting itself as a major obstacle to be faced. Thus, although environmental racism is understood as a problem that encompasses the entire social sphere, it becomes sociologically invisible. The main contribution of this study is to bring to light the problems and challenges that reverberate in ethnic-racial groups, in the search for effective equity. The only alternative is to build an equitable, just, and inclusive society.