Environmental Justice: Concepts, Evidence and Politics

by Walker; Gordon

• ISBN13: 9780415589741
• ISBN10: 0415589746
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-02-09
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Environmental justice has increasingly become part of the language of environmental activism, political debate, academic research and policy making around the world. It involves asking searching questions about how the environment has impacts on different people'¬"s lives. Does pollution follow the poor? Are some communities far more vulnerable to the impacts of flooding or climate change than others? Are the benefits of access to green space for all, or only for some? Do powerful voices dominate environmental decisions to the exclusion of others? This book focuses on such questions and the processes and complexities involved in answering them. Its aims to explore the diversity of ways in which environment and social difference are intertwined and how the justice of their interrelationship matters. It has a distinctive international perspective, tracing how the discourse of environmental justice has moved around the world and across scales to include global concerns, and examining research, activism and policy development in the US, the UK, South Africa and other countries. The widening scope and diversity of what has been positioned within an environmental justice '¬Üframe'¬" is also reflected in chapters focus on waste, air quality, flooding, urban greenspace and climate change. In each case the basis for evidence of inequalities in impacts, vulnerabilities and responsibilities is examined, asking questions about the knowledge that is produced, the assumptions involved and the concepts of justice that are being deployed in both academic and political contexts. The book will provide readers with a wide ranging and critical view of the evolving field of environmental justice scholarship. It encourages careful thinking and analysis of what is at issue, and provides a framework for understanding the claim making of environmental justice in spatial, temporal and political context. It provides compelling examples of the processes involved in producing inequalities and a clear sense of the challenges involved in advancing the interests of disadvantaged, vulnerable and excluded social groups and communities.

Author Biography

Gordon Walker is Chair of Environment, Risk and Justice in the Lancaster Environment Centre at Lancaster University, UK.

Table of Contents

List of figures	p. viii
List of tables	p. x
List of boxes	p. xi
Preface	p. xii
Acknowledgements	p. xiv
Understanding environmental justice	p. 1
The scope of environmental justice	p. 2
Framing	p. 4
Claim-making	p. 5
Definitions of environmental justice and the case for multiplicity	p. 8
Defining environmental inequality: the is-ought distinction	p. 12
Summary	p. 14
Structure of the book	p. 14
Further reading	p. 15
Globalising and framing environmental justice	p. 16
The environmental justice movement in the US	p. 17
The international travelling of the environmental justice frame	p. 23
Environmental justice framings of global issues	p. 34
The implications of 'going global'	p. 36
Summary	p. 37
Further reading	p. 38
Making claims: justice, evidence and process	p. 39
The three elements of claim-making	p. 40
Justice concepts: how things ought to be	p. 42
Evidence: how things are	p. 53
Process: why things are how they are	p. 64
Summary	p. 75
Further reading	p. 75
Locating waste: siting and the politics of dumping	p. 77
Resisting waste: three cases	p. 78
Unequal patterns of waste site locations	p. 84
Environmental racism or markets? Analysing positions	p. 90
Displacement, toxic imperialism and environmental blackmail	p. 94
From redistribution to prevention	p. 100
Summary	p. 101
Further reading	p. 102
Breathing unequally: air quality and inequality	p. 104
Air quality and multidimensional claim-making	p. 104
Evidence of air quality inequality	p. 107
Explaining patterns of inequality	p. 111
Vulnerability and impacts on health: the 'triple jeopardy'	p. 115
The distribution of responsibility for air pollution	p. 118
Justice in the air	p. 119
Summary	p. 125
Further reading	p. 126
Flood vulnerability: uneven risk and the injustice of disaster	p. 127
Characterising flooding: values, time and nature	p. 128
Inequalities in flood exposure: who lives with flood risk and why?	p. 130
Inequalities in vulnerability: who suffers flood impacts?	p. 135
New Orleans and the Katrina flood	p. 139
Justice and flooding	p. 148
Summary	p. 154
Further reading	p. 155
Urban greenspace: distributing an environmental good	p. 156
Greenspace as a 'good thing'	p. 157
Always a good thing? Contested meanings of urban greenspace	p. 160
Greenspace and social difference: evidence claims and inequality	p. 163
Greenspace and justice	p. 173
Summary	p. 177
Further reading	p. 178
Climate justice: scaling the politics of the future	p. 179
Challenges for climate justice	p. 182
Impacts, vulnerabilities and adaptation	p. 186
Mitigation, responsibilities and transitions	p. 198
Towards integration in climate justice	p. 209
Summary	p. 212
Further reading	p. 213
Analysing environmental justice: some conclusions	p. 214
There is value in understanding exactly how social differentiation exists and how it is experienced in environmental terms	p. 215
Environmental inequalities are constituted by more than spatial patterns of proximity and exposure	p. 216
Recognising the methodological complexities and choices involved in generating empirical evidence is important in progressing understanding and in doing justice	p. 216
It is necessary to distinguish between inequality and injustice and to reason carefully about why an inequality matters and to whom	p. 217
Environmental justice is about more than just patterns of distribution; procedure, recognition and their detail also matter	p. 218
Environmental justice is contested and involves political challenges	p. 219
Environmental justice is an objective but also a process of 'working towards'	p. 220
Bibliography	p. 222
Index	p. 249
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