Environmental justice aspires to a healthy environment for all, as well as fair and inclusive processes of environmental decision-making. In order to develop successful strategies to achieve this, it is important to understand the factors that shape environmental justice outcomes. This optimistic, accessible and wide-ranging book contributes to this understanding by assessing the extent of, and reasons for, environmental justice/injustice in seven diverse countries - United States, Republic of Korea (South Korea), United Kingdom, Sweden, China, Bolivia and Cuba. Factors discussed include: race and class discrimination; citizen power; industrialisation processes; political-economic context; and the influence of dominant environmental discourses. In particular, the role of capitalism is critically explored. Based on over a hundred interviews with politicians, experts, activists and citizens of these countries, this is a compelling analysis aimed at all academics, policy-makers and campaigners who are engaged in thinking or action to address the most urgent environmental and social issues of our time.
Struggles for environmental justice involve communities mobilising against powerful forces which advocate ‘development’, driven increasingly by neoliberal imperatives. In doing so, communities face questions about their alliances with other groups, working with outsiders and issues of class, race, ethnicity, gender, worker/community and settler/indigenous relationships.
Written by a wide range of international scholars and activists, contributors explore these dynamics and the opportunities for agency and solidarity. They critique the practice of community development professionals, academics, trade union organisers, social movements and activists and inform those engaged in the pursuit of justice as community, development and environment interact.
25 TWO Urban greenspace and environmental justice claims Simin Davoudi and Elizabeth Brooks Introduction The budget for new road building, if used differently, could provide 1,000 new parks at an initial capital cost of £10 million each – two parks in each local authority in England. (CABE study, quoted in Marmot, 2010: 25) Urban greenspace provides a vivid illustration of the debate over how multiple factors can coincide to turn the distributional unevenness of environmental benefits into a case for claims of injustice. What underpins this debate is a
155 Transportation and environmental justice NINE Transportation and environmental justice Lori G. Kennedy Introduction Having examined the emergent policy agenda for transport and social exclusion in the UK, we now turn our attention to the environmental justice movement as it relates to transportation policies in the US. As a starting point, it is important to note that the term environmental justice has its roots in the US civil rights movement dating back to the 1960s, where there was a realization that racial discrimination was being compounded by
213 ELEVEN Achieving environmental justice In all the seven countries featured in this book, there were numerous people inventively and determinedly striving to achieve environmental justice. This has resulted in a number of notable outcomes. The United States has been in the forefront of conceptualising environmental justice, as well as developing relevant institutional frameworks and legislation; the Republic of Korea has been a model in terms of setting mandatory emissions targets, investing highly in environmental strategies and programmes and
making constrains some people’s control over the environment, while endowing others with benefits. Such questioning may reveal that disproportionate exposure to environmental risks emanates from structural misrecognition of the status and rights of marginalized communities. Research within the field of environmental justice seeks to analyse such environmental inequalities and the claims to justice they engender. Nowadays, attention to environmental justice is no longer limited to activism and academic research. The importance of considering justice is increasingly
1 ONE Community, development and popular struggles for environmental justice Anne Harley and Eurig Scandrett Introduction ‘The environment’ comprises many aspects of the world: the complex ecosystems and biological and chemical cycles on which all life on the planet depends; the resources exploited by human societies throughout history in structures of production and consumption to meet needs and desires; the spaces in which both production and its waste stream are located and in which human non-productive, reproductive, creative and recreational activity
131 six environmental justice: philosophies and practices Tony Fitzpatrick overview In addition to ethical theories of what is right and good, environmentalists make reference to political philosophies of justice. Green philosophers have drawn on a range of established ideas in trying to develop a distinct understanding of environmental justice. This chapter: • contextualises and debates the concept of environmental justice by drawing on three of the most important political philosophies of recent decades: liberalism, communitarianism and republicanism
143 FIFTEEN Environmental Justice David N. Pellow The Problem Environmental injustice (or environmental inequality) is widespread in the U.S. and around the globe. Environmental injustice is the term scholars use to describe what occurs when marginal populations suffer a disproportionately high burden of environmental harm and are excluded from environmental decisions affecting their communities. This is a social problem that primarily affects people of color, Indigenous peoples, low- income populations, immigrants, and women. These communities are sites
201 ELEVEN waste collection as an environmental justice issue: a case study of a neighbourhood in Bristol, UK Karen Bell and David Sweeting introduction Despite recent attempts to improve urban waste management through increased recycling, insufficient attention has been paid to the social and distributional impacts of waste policy. This omission means that such changes appear to have reinforced environmental injustices through the re/production of inequitable social burdens and benefits. This chapter argues that, if policy makers were to consider waste
