A Bridge to Challenging Environmental Inequality: Intersectionality, Environmental Justice, and Disaster Vulnerability

Many cities have policies encouraging homeowners to plant trees. For these policies to be effective, it is important to understand what motivates a homeowner’s tree-planting decision. Researchers address this question by identifying variables that influence participation in a tree-planting program in Portland, Oregon, U.S. According to the study, homeowners with street trees, and those living in older homes, are more likely to participate in the local program. Homeowners who had owned their homes for longer, and those who live in census-block groups with lower high-school graduation rates, are less likely to participate in the program. Results suggest that tree-planting programs may inadvertently exacerbate environmental inequality.

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Do the rules of private nuisance breach the principles of environmental justice?

Environmental Law Review ◽

10.1177/1461452918817052 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

pp. 21-37

Author(s):

Sam Porter

Keyword(s):

Environmental Justice ◽

Social Institutions ◽

Practical Application ◽

Environmental Inequality ◽

Environmental Injustice ◽

Disadvantaged Groups ◽

Significant Potential ◽

Traditional Remedy ◽

Relative Standard ◽

Lock In

This article explores the potential distributive consequences of the tort of private nuisance, through the lens of environmental justice. Firstly, the theoretical underpinnings of this concept are set out. The principal concern of environmental justice is the unfair burdening of disadvantaged groups with societies’ environmental ‘bads’; but the concept can also be manipulated to form a coherent set of principles, enabling the assessment of social institutions. For brevity’s sake, a detailed investigation of the theory of environmental justice or its procedural elements is excluded in favour of a more rigorous practical application of substantive environmental justice. The second and largest part of this article applies this framework for environmental justice to private nuisance. This application serves to demonstrate that the tort has significant potential to perpetuate or even exacerbate environmental inequality. The so-called locality rule – the relative standard used to identify actionable nuisances – appears to ‘lock-in’ environmental injustice, as does the standing rule, which prevents certain classes of claimant – potentially the most disadvantaged – from seeking refuge in this tort. In addition, the increased willingness of judges to issue damages instead of the traditional remedy of an injunction may go further than merely ‘locking in’ environmental injustice by widening environmental inequality.

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Information Exchange and Environmental Justice

10.28945/2925 ◽

2005 ◽

Author(s):

Gloria G. Horning

Keyword(s):

Environmental Justice ◽

Low Income ◽

Collective Identity ◽

Information Exchange ◽

Participant Observation ◽

Pulp Mill ◽

Environmental Inequality ◽

Information Process ◽

Scarce Resources

The Environmental Justice Movement is an aggregate of community-based, grassroots efforts against proposed and existing hazardous waste facilities and the organizations that assist them. The movement has created a context in which low-income communities and people of color are able to act with power. Using interviews, participant observation, and various archival records, a case study of the organization HOPE located in Perry, Florida, was developed. The case compared key factors in community mobilization and campaign endurance. Special attention was paid to the process of issue construction, the formation of collective identity, and the role of framing in mobilizing specific constituencies. In the case of the P&G/Buckeye Pulp Mill where the community face hazardous surroundings. Environmental inequality formation occurs when different stakeholders struggle for scarce resources within the political economy and the benefits and costs of those resources become unevenly distributed. Scarce resources include components of the social and natural environment. Thus the environmental inequality formation model stresses (1) the importance of process and history; (2) the role of information process and the relationship of multiple stakeholders; and (3) the agency of those with the least access to resources. This study explores the information exchange and the movement's identity on both an individual and group level. When people become involved in the movement they experience a shift in personal paradigm that involves a progression from discovery of environmental problems, through disillusionment in previously accepted folk ideas, to personal empowerment.

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Environmental Inequality in France: A Theoretical, Empirical and Policy Perspective

Analyse & Kritik ◽

10.1515/auk-2014-0204 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 36 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Éloi Laurent

Keyword(s):

Air Pollution ◽

Environmental Justice ◽

Capability Approach ◽

Social Issues ◽

Empirical Studies ◽

Environmental Inequality ◽

Policy Perspective ◽

Social Ecological ◽

Policy Solutions ◽

The Capability Approach

AbstractThis article highlights the challenge of environmental inequality in France within the framework of social-ecology, an approach relating ecological crises to social issues, especially inequality. It starts by defining the notions of environmental inequality and environmental justice within the framework of the; ‘capability approach’ and then reviews recent empirical studies that show how air pollution, chemical and noise pollutions, access to environmental resources and exposure to social-ecological disasters are socially differentiated in France and can be understood, under the definition adopted in this article, as a form of injustice. It concludes by reviewing issues raised by environmental inequality in France and exploring policy solutions able to address this challenge.

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Assessing Environmental Inequality in Portland, Oregon: An Exploration of Local Environmental Justice Struggles

10.15760/etd.450 ◽

2000 ◽

Author(s):

Jordan Folks

Keyword(s):

Environmental Justice ◽

Environmental Inequality

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Theorizing Global Environmental Inequality and Global Social Movements for Human Rights and Environmental Justice

Resisting Global Toxics ◽

10.7551/mitpress/7479.003.0008 ◽

2007 ◽

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

Social Movements ◽

Environmental Justice ◽

Environmental Inequality ◽

Global Environmental

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Theoretical Model of Environmental Justice and Environmental Inequality in China’s Four Major Economic Zones

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su11215923 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (21) ◽

pp. 5923

Author(s):

He ◽

Wang ◽

Ji ◽

Wei ◽

Wang ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Environmental Justice ◽

Pearl River Delta ◽

Yangtze River ◽

Yangtze River Delta ◽

Environmental Risks ◽

River Delta ◽

Pearl River ◽

Environmental Inequality ◽

Economic Zones ◽

The Yangtze River Delta

With the change in China’s social structure and the emergence of the middle class, severe environmental pollution is stimulating the demand for social environmental justice in China. Facing the absence of environmental justice theory and related empirical research in China, this article introduces a general equilibrium theory model of environmental justice. It proves that under Pareto efficiency, environmental justice is difficult to achieve in a competitive market, and environmental inequality is the normal state. An econometric model is established based on demographic and socioeconomic factors, comparison with the US principle of environmental justice, and characteristic perspectives in the Chinese context. The study takes 444 counties in China’s four major economic zones, the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei, and Chengdu–Chongqing, as the units for empirical analysis of the regional distribution of environmental inequality. The results indicate that rural residents bear higher environmental risks than urban residents. There are different environmentally vulnerable groups and environmental disparities among the four economic zones; notably, minorities in the Pearl River Delta, poor residents in Chengdu–Chongqing, and rural residents in the Yangtze River Delta bear the environmental inequality caused by industrial gas pollution. However, migrants, including rural migrants, do not disproportionately suffer environmental risks caused by industrial pollution at the county level. This paper provides theoretical support and a systematic analytical framework for the study of China’s environmental justice issues. We describe China’s environmental inequality status and provide a reference for the design of environmental justice interventions.

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Environmental economic geography and environmental inequality: challenges and new research prospects

Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftsgeographie ◽

10.1515/zfw-2018-0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 62 (2) ◽

pp. 120-134 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Boris Braun ◽

Jürgen Oßenbrügge ◽

Christian Schulz

Keyword(s):

Environmental Economic ◽

Environmental Justice ◽

Social Inequality ◽

Economic Geography ◽

Food Systems ◽

Environmental Inequality ◽

Alternative Food Systems ◽

Coastal Bangladesh ◽

New Research ◽

German Cities

Abstract The environmental dimension and sustainability-related issues have increasingly gained momentum in Economic Geography. This paper argues that integrating the inequality perspective into Environmental Economic Geography (EEG) and trying to disentangle the manifold interrelationships between economic, social, and environmental disadvantage could be worthwhile efforts. Based on three case studies – the debate on urban environmental justice in German cities, the spread of alternative food systems and food-sharing initiatives in Germany, and the socially selective migration in hazard prone areas in rural coastal Bangladesh – we demonstrate that aspects of social inequality indeed matter for EEG thinking.

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