Bunyan Bryant, Ph.D. is the Director of the Environmental Justice Initiative at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment. He teaches two environmental justice courses and speaks at college campuses and professional conferences throughout the nation. He is a member of the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund and the United States Environmental Protection Agency Clean Air Act Advisory Committee.
Dr. Bryant’s latest interest involves global climate change and environmental justice as he believes that no other issue threatens developing countries and low-income/people of color communities in developed nations more than global climate change. Other research interests include developing case studies on corporate, agency, and community responses to hazardous waste sites. He was co-principal investigator of the University of Michigan 1990 Detroit Area Study on Race and Toxic Waste. A more recent study undertaken with Dr. Elaine Hockman is determining the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people of color and low-income groups. They are in the midst of completing a book entitled Michigan: A State of Environmental Justice?.
Dr. Bryant is currently updating his textbook Environmental Advocacy: Working for Economic and Environmental Justice. He has written the book Environmental Advocacy: Concepts, Issues and Dilemmas and a manual entitled "Social and Environmental Change: A Manual for Community Organizing and Action.” He and Professor Paul Mohai edited the book Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards: A Time for Discourse, which has been used widely by lawyers, students, and advocates (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992). Professor Bryant also edited the book Environmental Justice: Issues, Policies, and Solutions (Island Press, 1995). He has written numerous articles for peer-reviewed journals.
Dr. Bryant and several of his students held a groundbreaking international Environmental Justice Global Climate Change Conference in March of 2004. He organized an Environmental Justice/Philosophy conference for scholars in April 2002, and co-organized a successful Latino Environmental Justice Symposium held in November 2002. Dr. Bryant was the co-organizer of the University of Michigan 1990 Conference on Race and the Incidence of Environmental Hazards, which had considerable national impact and led to a series of high-level policy meetings with EPA Administrator William K. Reilly under President Bush's administration and later with EPA Administrator Carol Browner. These meetings paved the road for the EPA’s commitment to environmental justice issues and to the creation of an EPA Office on Environmental Justice. Professor Bryant was a part of the movement responsible for President Clinton's signing of the Environmental Justice Executive Order, which has had a major impact on federal agencies and communities throughout the country.
Dr. Bryant has been a member of the EPA’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council for several years. In 1994 he co-facilitated the Symposium for Health Research and Needs to Ensure Environmental Justice, an event sponsored by major federal agencies. Over 1,000 grassroots activists, government personnel, scientists, and community academic people participated.
In 2001 Dr. Bryant was awarded the prestigious honors of the Arthur Thurnau Professorship Award and the Harold Johnson Diversity Award. In 2000 he was selected as the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources and Environment Teacher of the Year Award. Dr. Bryant has been a consultant to a number of nonprofit environmental organizations and is continually in demand as an expert lecturer on environmental justice and organizational advocacy.