Concept
Environmental justice
Overview
Environmental justice is a social movement that addresses injustice that occurs when poor or marginalized communities are harmed by hazardous waste, resource extraction, and other land uses from which they do not benefit. The movement has generated hundreds of studies showing that exposure to environmental harm is inequitably distributed. Additionally, many marginalized communities, including Black/racialized communities and the LGBTQ community, are disproportionately impacted by natural disasters.
Environmental justice is broadly defined as fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. Over time, scholars have elaborated multiple dimensions of the concept.
The movement began in the United States in the 1980s. It was heavily influenced by the American civil rights movement and focused on environmental racism within rich countries. The movement was later expanded to consider gender, LGBTQ people, international environmental injustice, and inequalities within marginalized groups. As the movement achieved some success in rich countries, environmental burdens were shifted to the Global South (for example through extractivism or the global waste trade). The movement for environmental justice has thus become more global, with some of its aims now being articulated by the United Nations. The movement overlaps with movements for Indigenous land rights and for the human right to a healthy environment.
The goal of the environmental justice movement is to achieve agency for marginalized communities in making environmental decisions that affect their lives. The global environmental justice movement arises from local environmental conflicts in which environmental defenders frequently confront multi-national corporations in resource extraction or other industries. Local outcomes of these conflicts are increasingly influenced by trans-national environmental justice networks.
Environmental justice scholars have produced an interdisciplinary body of social science literature that includes contributions to political ecology, environmental law, and theories on justice and sustainability.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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And of this latter there are two parts: because of transactions some are voluntary and some involuntary; voluntary, such as follow; selling, buying, use, bail, borrowing, deposit, hiring: and this class is called voluntary because the origination of these transactions is voluntary. The involuntary again are either such as effect secrecy; as theft, adultery, poisoning, pimping, kidnapping of slaves, assassination…
Aristotle, The Nicomachean ethics of Aristotle
States what Environmental justice is.
8. That no man press his counsel upon any man against his will. 9. How to know suddenly what is the law of nature. 10. That the law of nature taketh place after security from others to observe the same. 11. The right of nature not to be taken away by custom, nor the law of nature abrogated by any act. 12. Why the dictates of nature are called laws. 13. Whatsoever is against conscience in a man that is his own judge…
Thomas Hobbes, The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 04
States what Environmental justice is.
This does not belong to God, since, as the Apostle says: "Who hath first given to Him, and recompense shall be made him?" (Rom. 11:35). The other consists in distribution, and is called distributive justice; whereby a ruler or a steward gives to each what his rank deserves. As then the proper order displayed in ruling a family or any kind of multitude evinces justice of this kind in the ruler, so the order of the…
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
States what Environmental justice is.
Philosophers who discussed Environmental justice
Related ideas
- Feminism
- Anarchism
- Geneva
- Distributive justice
- Gross domestic product
- Inuit
- Justice
- Peru
- Kenya
- The Observer
- Culture
- African Americans
- Paris
- Posthumanism
- Racism
- Social science
- South Korea
- The New York Times
- United Nations
- Earth Summit
- Ecofeminism
- Haymarket Books
- Critical theory
- Australia
Place in the tradition
Part of Environmental philosophy.