Examining the place of ecological integrity in environmental justice: A systematic review

Environmental justice research is predominately an anthropocentric endeavour, and it is unclear whether this research captures injustices to other species or the integrity of ecological systems that support all life on earth. The purpose of this article is three-fold. First, we systematically review the environmental justice literature to identify the epistemological perspectives from which environmental justice is conveyed. Second, we examine definitions of environmental justice to determine how the concept is operationalised across these paradigms. Third, we document under what conditions these definitions purposely acknowledge the interdependency of all species in order to elucidate the place (or absence) of ecological integrity in our understanding of environmental justice. We conclude with a discussion of the value of going beyond mainstream expressions of environmental justice that typically do not include ecological integrity as a way to begin addressing the problem in a more holistic way.     

Rethinking remediation: mine reclamation,environmental justice,and relations of care

ABSTRACT

To date, research on mine remediation in North America has focused primarily on technical management; relatively less is known about the historical, political and social dimensions of remediation. Remediation, as a continuation of the mining process, alters local landscapes and economies and can be both dangerous and beneficial for surrounding communities. Because remediation projects tend to focus on the technical aspects of clean-up, such projects risk overlooking the environmental injustices associated with past development and obscuring blame or responsibility from industry and government for environmental degradation. Insofar as it is understood as cleaning up or repairing environmental damage, remediation is generally seen as “doing the good” and is less amenable to political or ethical challenges based on community concerns or values. This paper argues that greater attention needs to be paid to public participation and justice concerns associated with cleaning up mine sites. Drawing from the literatures on ecological restoration, environmental justice, reconciliation, discard studies, and matters of care, we highlight critical, yet overlooked issues in the remediation of post-mining landscapes. We argue that remediation projects present a unique opportunity for the negotiation and articulation of morals, values, histories, and physical experiences associated with mine sites and we seek to re-frame remediation as an ongoing, creative process of community healing.     

Revealing inadvertent elitism in stakeholder models of environmental governance: assessing procedural justice in sustainability organizations

Consensus-based multi-stakeholder forms of environmental governance involving government, private and civil society actors, have become popular for advancing sustainability, but have been criticized for failing to achieve procedural justice objectives including recognition, participation and strengthening capabilities. Yet, how such models have functioned within non-governmental organizations dedicated to advancing sustainability has been underexplored. This paper assesses the procedural elements of consensus-based multi-stakeholder models used within Canadian biosphere reserves and model forests, two organizations working to address environment and sustainability issues. We draw on strategic documents and semi-structured interviews from five organizations in Canada to analyze their governance structures and processes against a framework for procedural justice. We find the organizational structure reproduces elitism and professionalism associated with stakeholder models more generally and reproduces challenges associated with recognition, participation and building capabilities found in other stakeholder approaches. Meeting broader sustainability challenges requires organizations to address procedural justice issues in addition to their traditional environmental concerns.     

Urban/rural division in environmental justice frameworks: revealing modernity-urbanisation nexus in Turkey’s small-scale hydropower development

Environmental justice frameworks predominantly focus on exploration of socio-environmental inequalities faced by racial, ethnic, religious, cultural and low-income groups. This article aims to expand this mainstream focus of the environmental justice concept on these groups by conceptualising urban/rural division as a group difference, based on which rural communities face with socio-environmental burdens of environmental policies in relation to their urban counterparts. It is based on the analysis of Turkey’s small-scale hydroelectricity power plant (HPP) development policies, referring to the planning and constructions of approximately 1500 hydropower plants across the country, along with country’s modernist agenda, i.e. achievement of economic development, social progress and urban transformation of Turkey. These power plants are also strongly associated with numerous socio-economic, environmental and cultural impacts on local rural communities and local environments with dozens of local opposition movements, while favouring needs, interests and lifestyles of urban communities. This point deserves a systematic conceptualisation within the environmental justice frameworks as it helps to further explain deep causes of socio-environmental inequalities particularly in developing country contexts. Thus, this article is built on such a conceptualisation arguing the necessity to integrate urban/rural division as a separate group difference to environmental justice frameworks by examining modernisation and urbanisation nexus in Turkey’s small-scale HPP development process.     

A “justice” reading of the trans-national struggle of the people displaced by the Merowe Dam

ABSTRACT

This paper applies a “justice” lens to the struggle of the people displaced by the Merowe Dam in northern Sudan. Application of distributive, procedural, and representational aspects of justice exposes the dissatisfaction of the affected people with the government’s offer and execution of compensation. Consideration of social justice and the utility of norms in trans-national activism brings into sharp focus the difference in interests, and abilities of the many actors involved, and highlights the government’s tactics to divide the communities, and the social divisions sown. As the struggle develops, justice claims are seen to change towards less material issues, suggesting that an expanded and dynamic conception of justice is more helpful than narrow or time-bound conceptions. The findings are of relevance to communities facing possible displacement from dams planned nearby, not least of all for the insight provided on the effectiveness of different tactics in the struggle.     

Environmental justice meets the right to stay put: mobilising against environmental racism,gentrification, and xenophobia in Chicago's Little Village

After decades of fighting for clean air and green space in the face of environmental racism and urban disinvestment, Chicago's Latinx Little Village neighbourhood has begun to see environmental improvements take place. Activists are wary of the potential for gentrification in the wake of clean up, and are advocating for the right to stay put in the community they have worked so hard to improve. These ongoing contestations have recently intersected with accelerating racialized state violence as renewed anti-immigrant and white supremacist rhetoric, policies, and actions have targeted Latinx communities. In this paper we ask, how do struggles against environmental racism, gentrification, and xenophobia interlock, and how does the framework of environmental justice serve to enable activism across all three sites? For racialized minority communities, repeated experiences of forced migration and displacement often mean that an anti-displacement ethos is particularly well-articulated and grounded in collective historical memory. Drawing on an extensive analysis of media materials complemented by archival research, fieldwork, and interviews with community organisers, this paper argues that tight linkages between environmental justice and anti-displacement principles inform community responses to multiple forms of structural racialized violence.     

“It's optional,not mandatory”: Environmental justice in local environmental agencies in Germany

Environmental justice is increasingly becoming a subject of academic debate in Germany. However, the realisation that environmental goods and hazards as well as the impacts of environmental policies are unequally distributed among social groups has not had many practical consequences yet. There are scattered initiatives and pilot projects aiming to address issues of environmental justice. Nevertheless, in the design and implementation of environmental policies there is no systematic consideration of their social dimension. In this paper, we outline the perspective of employees in German local environmental agencies on environmental justice. For this purpose, we conducted six qualitative interviews, which focused on the example of low emission zones. We identified three crucial aspects in these interviews: problem perception, motivation to act and perceived scope of action. Our main finding is that environmental justice is hardly an issue for environmental agencies and that this is the case because there is no necessity for them to consider social aspects in their work as this is neither legally required nor demanded in the public debate.     

Promoting community involvement at brownfields sites in socio-economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods

Brownfields programmes provide environmental justice to distressed communities by applying private sector remediation and real estate expertise to abandoned and contaminated properties. This study examines how brownfields developers and community support organisations operating in socio-economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods work to increase awareness of projects in the community, build trust between stakeholders and create mechanisms for community members to participate in brownfields decision making. Analysis of case study data from brownfields sites in four US cities shows that developers and non-governmental organisations can play important roles in fashioning redevelopment outcomes which benefit both developers and communities. When standard required outreach efforts are combined with non-traditional community involvement mechanisms, the result is often long-term support for redevelopment projects.     

Environmental justice in Appalachia Ohio? An expanded consideration of privilege and the role it plays in defending the contaminated status quo in a white,working-class community

Environmental justice addresses inequitable distributions of health risks from exposure to pollution and other hazards. Appalachian residents of southeastern Ohio who live along the Ohio River are disproportionately subject to industrial pollution. Of particular concern is the DuPont Washington Works plant where perfluorooctanoic acid, or C8, was used to make consumer products. Although company officials became aware in 1984 that the water supply of Little Hocking, Ohio, was tainted with C8 coming from its plant, residents were not notified until 2002. Subsequent studies determined a number of health problems, including cancer, are linked to residents’ exposure. This qualitative study asked Little Hocking residents and environmental regulators if they consider C8 contamination in Little Hocking an injustice. Results indicate a lack of consensus – even among affected residents – concerning DuPont's^® actions as constituting an injustice. This finding, among others, is used to argue that many residents in Little Hocking, through their association with DuPont^®, benefit from class-based forms of privilege and seek to maintain them in the context of immobility and economic uncertainty. This explains why some communities may be considered an environmental justice community from an academic standpoint, but not self-identify as such. However, maintaining privilege at the local scale in the context of weak regulation enhances exploitation in Little Hocking while contributing to power at extra-local scales. Thus, environmental justice activists in white, working-class communities must overcome the challenge posed by privilege that defends the contaminated status quo.     

Blocking pipelines,unsettling environmental justice: from rights of nature to responsibility to territory

ABSTRACT

Indigenous peoples are among the most affected by environmental injustices globally, however environmental justice theory has not yet meaningfully addressed decolonisation and the resistance of Indigenous communities against extractivism in the settler-colonial context. This paper suggests that informing environmental justice through decolonial analysis and decolonising practices can help transcend the Western ontological roots of environmental justice theories and inform a more radical and emancipatory environmental justice. The Unist’ot’en Resistance and Action Camp blocking pipelines in northwestern British Columbia, Canada, their “Reimagined Free Prior and Informed Consent protocol” and the Delgamuukw case are described to discuss limitations of the state and legal framework for accommodating a decolonial and transformative environmental justice. A decolonial analysis informed by these two moments of Wet’sewet’ten history suggests limits and adaptations to the trivalent EJ framework based on recognition, participation and distribution. It is argued that a decolonising and transformative approach to environmental justice must be based on self-governing authority, relational ontologies of nature and epistemic justice and the unsettling of power through the assertion of responsibility and care through direct action. This discussion is placed in the context of the expansion of the concept of ecological rights, for example through the enshrining of the “Rights of Nature” in the constitutions of countries such as Bolivia and Ecuador, to highlight the Inherent tensions in the translation of Indigenous cosmo-visions into legal systems based on universalist values.     

The supervision of environmental risk: The case of HCB waste or Botany/Randwick?

The governance activities of capital and the state include attempts to control the timing and spacing of social activities such as the production of environmental risks and settlement of different social groups. The supervisory activities that have shaped the environmental and social history of the Botany/Randwick area are identified here, to examine how the HCB waste risk developed in that community. The analysis shows that multiple environmental risks and an ethnically diverse, working class community have been brought together in space to create environmental injustice. Analysing the governance of one environmental risk like hexachlorobenzene (HCB) waste may not increase understanding about communities facing multiple environmental risks or the supervisory processes that lead to the unfair accumulation of risks for particular places or social groups. Lessons from the environmental justice movement suggest that reframing problems like HCB waste management at Botany/Randwick as distributive justice issues may contribute to governance arrangements that better manage multiple risks and pollution sources in space affecting marginalised communities.     

Fair fracking? Ethics and environmental justice in United Kingdom shale gas policy and planning

The exploitation of shale gas resources is a significant issue of environmental justice. Uneven distributions of risks and social impacts to local site communities must be balanced against the economic benefits to gas users and developers; and unequal decision-making powers must be negotiated between local and central governments, communities and fracking site developers. These distributive and procedural elements are addressed in relation to UK policy, planning, regulatory and industry development. I adopt an explicitly normative framework of policy evaluation, addressing a research gap on the ethics of shale gas by operationalising Shrader-Frechette’s Principle of Prima Facie Political Equality. I conclude that UK fracking policy reveals inherent contradictions of environmental justice in relation to the Conservative Government’s localist and planning reform agendas. Early fracking policy protected communities from harm in the wake of seismic risk events, but these were quickly replaced with pro-industry economic stimulation and planning legislation that curtailed community empowerment in fracking decision-making, increased environmental risks to communities, transferred powers from local to central government and created the conditions of distributive injustices in the management of community benefit provisions. I argue that only by “re-localising” the scale of fracking governance can political equality be ensured and the distributive and procedural environmental injustices be ameliorated.     

Urban environmental justice through the camera: understanding the politics of space and the right to the city

Using the lens of Lefebvre's spatial trialectics, we assess the utility of photo-elicited interviewing for environmental justice, recognising that a view to social spatial analysis is essential to engaging with the historical processes of exclusion and discrimination that are crucial to explaining why unequal distributions of environmental injustice are systemic and not random. Drawing on insights from our own photo-elicited interviewing-based work in the neighbourhood called Parkdale in Toronto, we make two main recommendations for future environmental justice work using photo-elicited interviewing. First, researchers must be open to a broader epistemology, one that draws on a more spatially nuanced and temporally evolving knowledge of the full range of environmental influences on communities. Second, in order to arrive at a more robust critical analysis of social space, researchers should complement photo-elicited interviewing with historical research about the relevant communities and include participants from other comparative communities.     

Urban sustainability and environmental justice: evaluating the linkages in public planning/policy discourse

Many cities' municipal governments have made some version of “sustainability” an explicit policy goal over the past two decades. Previous research has documented how the operationalisation and conceptualisation of sustainability in urban sustainability plans vary greatly among cities, particularly with respect to environmental justice. This article reports on whether and how large American cities incorporate environmental justice into their urban sustainability indicator projects. Our findings suggest that while there has been an increase in the number of cities incorporating environmental justice elements into sustainability plans since the early 2000s, their conceptualizations and implementations of sustainability remain highly constrained. The paucity of evaluative tools suggests that environmental justice efforts are potentially losing traction in public debate over macro-scale sustainability concerns (e.g. climate change) or the need for regionally competitive environmental amenities (e.g. parks). This paper concludes with suggestions for revising existing sustainability plans to better reflect environmental justice concerns.     

Environmental justice along product life cycles: importance,renewable energy examples and policy complexities

Environmental justice is critical to our efforts to preserve the human habitat from the degradation of pollution and climate change because of the need for cooperation and due to our ignorance of how the intertwined effects of our actions in one locality affect the quality of life in other localities across the world. While environmental justice questions are often focused on the location choices for specific activities that pollute, another important perspective is environmental justice over the life cycle of the production of products. Upon close examination renewable energies, critical alternatives to the fossil fuels which induce climate change, have environmental justice issues over their life cycles. Formal, statutory national law is not sufficient to address environmental justice problems along product life cycles in a world in which production is globalised and environmental effects pass beyond political borders. The responses to this challenge must draw on an interacting combination of information, custom, soft law, such as international standards and certification, and formal national laws. Through an interesting complex of intertwined effects, this system has already advanced our capacity to address environmental justice problems along product life cycles. The magnitude of the challenge and the complexity of the system demand ongoing effort and further innovation. Also, the system is not well configured to address our burgeoning consumption which continues to expand the burdens of future generations.     

Economic,ecological, and equity dimensions of brownfield redevelopment plans for environmental justice communities in the USA

ABSTRACT

This paper employs qualitative content analysis to assess 28 brownfield redevelopment plans produced as part of a US Environmental Protection Agency programme. The analysis framework followed the economic, ecological, and social equity dimensions of sustainable development. The findings illustrate that, in terms of economic dimensions, most plans discussed financing the overall project, but few mentioned site values or the pivotal cost of remediating brownfield sites or addressed questions related to liability, the transfer of ownership of sites, or the end use of remediated sites. In terms of ecological dimensions, while many plans suggested “green” uses of existing brownfields, few discussed the impacts of the plans on urban ecological issues or offered technical feasibility of remediating the sites. In terms of social equity dimensions, half of the plans described potential local jobs stemming from the proposed redevelopment, but many did not discuss the human impacts of remediating contaminated sites or the costs of doing nothing. Most plans mentioned community engagement methods but not their outcomes, making the degree to which the lessons gleaned from such engagement influenced the plans totally unclear. Despite the programme’s explicit focus on the nexus of environmental justice and local environments, many plans struggled to address the topic in favour of tackling broader economic, environmental, and equity issues. Overall, this paper contributes to the understanding of brownfield redevelopment planning by not only summarising and synthesising the tendencies of existing plans but also suggesting strategies to address areas in which current planning efforts fall short.     

Leveraging foodways for health and justice

ABSTRACT

The global industrial food system is increasingly recognised as a source of poor health that deepens social and economic inequity. Health advocates, policy makers, and food activists strive to improve nutrition and food access across racial and ethnic divides; however, given established approaches, they may miss fundamental pathways for improving health and justice comprehensively. While food access and nutrition are often identified as primary concerns for marginalised communities and the reason for food insecurity and food-related illness, critical food justice scholars use a more expansive lens to suggest a democratised food system is needed, and that solutions based solely in access to healthy food can undermine more systemic approaches. Our research extends this analysis, highlighting the importance of endemic food culture (foodways) as a tool for retaining identity, building community, and maintaining health among refugee populations in one community in Salt Lake City, Utah. Further, this work suggests that community engagement and expertise is essential in leveraging foodways such that marginalised communities can effectively resist cheap, unhealthy, and placeless calories.     

Mobilisation and protest: environmental justice in Durban,South Africa

This paper examines the ability of civil society actors to champion environmental justice in an industrial risk society in South Africa by way of mobilisation and protest action. This paper presents viewpoints from key stakeholders at the Durban city level and three local case study sites to examine social capital relations to achieve environmental justice. It explores how civil society engages in social capital for mobilisation with itself and subsequent protest actions to engage with government and industry. The paper highlights that social actor response to engage in social capital for mobilisation and protests is best understood in relation to the socio-economic and political positioning of individuals or organisations.     

Planning for environmental justice in an urban national park

Urban national parks were designed in the 1970s to bring nature and recreational opportunities to socio-economically disadvantaged communities in the USA. Using the theoretical frame of environmental justice, this paper discusses findings of a recent survey of visitors to Los Angeles' Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area – the United States' largest urban national park. Findings show park visitors were predominantly white, affluent, and lived nearby. People of colour travelled further, were significantly less likely to be return visitors, and were less inclined to use the park for active recreation. Seemingly, this park fails to meet the needs of the disadvantaged urban communities for whom it was created, a problem that may also affect other parks in the United States and potentially parks in other countries. Park planners and managers can take practical steps to increase accessibility to this park for people of colour and low-income earners, and should monitor other parks for patterns of ethno-racially differentiated access and utilisation.     

Environmental justice: Co-evolution of environmental concerns and social justice

Summary This paper describes the co-evolution of environmental concerns with civil rights. Over the last 20 years the two issues have found considerable overlap in what is now called the environmental justice movement. The results are exciting, with implications about decision-making, about protecting both environmental quality and civil rights. The promotion of environmental justice spurs social progress. Safeguarding the health of the environment(s) reinforces civil rights.The opinions in this paper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the institutions with which they are affiliated.