A history of environmental justice

2020 ◽  
pp. 6-17
Author(s):  
Esme G. Murdock
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
History Of

An Environmental Justice Analysis of British Air Quality

2003 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 909-929 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Mitchell ◽  
Danny Dorling
Keyword(s):  
Air Pollution ◽  
Air Quality ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Car Ownership ◽  
National Study ◽  
Environmental Injustice ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of

This paper presents the results of the first national study of air quality in Britain to consider the implications of its distribution across over ten thousand local communities in terms of potential environmental injustice. We consider the recent history of the environmental justice debate in Britain, Europe, and the USA and, in the light of this, estimate how one aspect of air pollution, nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels, affects different population groups differentially across Britain. We also estimate the extent to which people living in each community in Britain contribute towards this pollution, with the aid of information on the characteristics of the vehicles they own. We find that, although community NO x emission and ambient NO2 concentration are strongly related, the communities that have access to fewest cars tend to suffer from the highest levels of air pollution, whereas those in which car ownership is greatest enjoy the cleanest air. Pollution is most concentrated in areas where young children and their parents are more likely to live and least concentrated in areas to which the elderly tend to migrate. Those communities that are most polluted and which also emit the least pollution tend to be amongst the poorest in Britain. There is therefore evidence of environmental injustice in the distribution and production of poor air quality in Britain. However, the spatial distribution of those who produce and receive most of that pollution have to be considered simultaneously to see this injustice clearly.

Three More Voices Papers for This Special Issue of New Solutions—Environmental Justice in the U.S. Gulf Coast Region

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 617-621
Author(s):  
John Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Gulf Coast ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Economic Disparities ◽  
Climate Risks ◽  
History Of ◽  
Gulf Coast Region ◽  
Coast Region ◽  
The U.S

The U.S. states along the northern shores of the Gulf of Mexico have often been described as America’s Energy Colony. This region is festooned with polluting industries, storage and waste disposal sites for toxic products, and a history of generally lax approaches to environmental public health and enforcement of regulations. This issue of New Solutions includes three interviews of groups and individuals who work for Environmental Justice in the Gulf Coast region. The interviewees provide key insights into the diverse cultural texture and social fabric of the Gulf. Their range of gulf locales and population groups embody different styles of engagement and different relationships to organizing, disseminating health and environmental risk information, and advocating for social and environmental justice. Similarities among their communities in terms of health and economic disparities, climate risks, and vulnerabilities lend credence to the idea of the Gulf as a regional Environmental Justice community.

scholarly journals Environment pollution: The rise of militarism and terrorism in the Niger Delta of Nigeria

2014 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Christian Madubuko
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Niger Delta ◽  
Oil Exploration ◽  
Environmental Laws ◽  
Oil Companies ◽  
The People ◽  
Oil Pipelines ◽  
Primary Means ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Receive

Oil was discovered in large quantities in Nigeria in 1956 and exploration began in the same year. Before oil, agriculture and fishing had assured the Niger Delta people of a bright future. Since 1956, oil has been extracted from the Niger Delta with destructive consequences on the environment, bringing about environmental degradation and destruction of the people’s primary means of livelihood. Land and water were badly polluted, and the health of the people affected because of leaks from oil pipelines, gas flaring and acid rains. Several petitions and non-violent protests by Delta communities, women and youth against environmental destruction failed to receive attention. Rather, opposition to peaceful protests earned the people military invasions of their communities, clampdowns and jailings. The rise of militarism and terrorism in the Niger Delta was the result of the Federal Government and Oil Companies’ clampdown on non-violent protests for environmental justice in the Niger Delta. This paper discusses the history of oil exploration in the Niger Delta, oil laws, effects of oil exploration in the region, and the rise of militants and terrorists in the area. The paper uses the term, ‘environmental Justice’ to denote unfair treatment and destruction of the Delta environment resulting from oil exploration, non implementation and enforcement of environmental laws and regulations, and abuse of human rights.The paper suggests solutions for peace in the Niger Delta.

In the Shadow of Sustainable Development

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-72
Author(s):  
Christina Ergas
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Developing World ◽  
Metabolic Rift ◽  
Treadmill Of Production ◽  
History Of ◽  
Autonomous Development

The prevailing notion of sustainable development has remained ineffective at reducing environmental degradation and social inequalities. The chapter argues that sustainable development, as it has been conceived, is actually a shell game for creating neocolonial dependency in the developing world rather than more sustainable, self-sufficient nations. This chapter explains the history of colonization and urbanization, contextualizing the problem of weak, neoliberal, sustainable development using social science environmental theories, such as climate denialism, ecofeminism, environmental justice, metabolic rift, and treadmill of production. It then provides an alternative, a radical sustainability that is at once socially and ecologically egalitarian, or transformative, and restores the health of people and the planet, or regenerative. These cases are presented as alternatives to sustainable development and as examples of radical sustainability and self-sufficient, autonomous development.

Oil Opposition

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark C.J. Stoddart ◽  
Jillian Rene Smith ◽  
Paula Graham
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Development Projects ◽  
Ecological Risks ◽  
Oil Development ◽  
Energy Projects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Oil Sector

This chapter examines mobilization against new oil development by Indigenous and environmental activists. Drawing on Canadian examples, two key themes are identified. First, anti-oil activism adopts a diversity of discourses and tactical links between particular oil development projects and broader socio-environmental issues such as colonialism and climate change. Environmental opposition often reflects a conservationist approach that emphasizes ecological risks, which compartmentalizes opposition to specific projects from broader analyses of the oil sector. Indigenous opposition is more often grounded in a rights-based approach that emphasizes Canada’s long history of colonization. Second, where there are alignments between Indigenous and environmental opposition against oil projects, appeals to treaty agreements and environmental justice are used by both indigenous and non-indigenous anti-oil activists to challenge energy projects.

Environmental Justice and Primary Prevention of Cancer: The Odyssey and Legacy of Lorenzo Tomatis

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Huff ◽  
Ronald Melnick
Keyword(s):  
Primary Prevention ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
History Of Medicine ◽  
Chemical Carcinogenesis ◽  
Professional Life ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
The Arts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Physician Scientist ◽  
Prevention Of Cancer

Lorenzo Tomatis [1929–2007] devoted his private and professional life to the betterment of mankind. As a physician, scientist, and humanitarian he championed against the plight of social injustice and promoted the obvious benefits of primary prevention of diseases compared to treatments that prevent or delay disease progression, especially occupational cancers. An avowed student and scholar of literature, the arts, the history of medicine and science, and chemical carcinogenesis, he believed in and wrote about these issues throughout his storied life. Some of his achievements, with excerpts from his writings, especially on primary prevention and on social injustice, are highlighted herein.

Three Voices Papers for This Special Issue of New Solutions—Environmental Justice in the U.S. Gulf Coast Region

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 463-466
Author(s):  
John Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Gulf Coast ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
Environmental Public Health ◽  
History Of ◽  
Gulf Coast Region ◽  
Coast Region ◽  
The U.S

The U.S. states along the northern shores of the Gulf of Mexico have often been described as America’s Energy Colony. This region is festooned with polluting industries, storage and waste disposal sites for toxic products, and a history of generally lax approaches to environmental public health and enforcement of regulations. This issue of New Solutions includes three interviews of groups and individuals who work for environmental justice in the Gulf Coast region. The interviewees provide key insights into the diverse cultural texture and social fabric of the Gulf. Their range of gulf locales and population groups embody different styles of engagement and different relationships to organizing, disseminating health and environmental risk information, and advocating for social and environmental justice. Three additional interviews will appear in the next issue of New Solutions.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Daniel Renfrew
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Political Ecology ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Lead Poisoning ◽  
Theoretical Foundation ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Neoliberal Reform ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Ecology Of Health

The book’s introduction presents the origins, character, scope, and implications of the Uruguayan lead-poisoning epidemic. The chapter situates the epidemic within a political and economic context of neoliberal reform and crisis and in relation to the global and biomedical history of the disease. The chapter outlines the author’s ethnographic research methods and the book’s principal social actors and research sites. The theoretical foundation of the book follows a political ecology of health perspective, with focused analyses of environmental justice, knowledge/power, and governance/resistance.

Dirty hands: The toxic politics of denunciation

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amelia Fiske
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Corporate Accountability ◽  
Dirty Hands ◽  
Bare Hand ◽  
Region I ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bodily Knowledge ◽  
Asymmetric Relationships

In September 2013, President Correa balanced himself on a felled log over an oil waste pit in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Extending a bare hand dripping with crude, he launched La Mano Sucia de Chevron campaign, demanding accountability for decades of contamination. This article explores the role of bodily knowledge in witnessing industrial contamination and struggles for environmental justice. Situating the mano sucia in the history of activism in the region, I show how the juxtaposition of different hands within the same motif reveals profoundly asymmetric relationships to the toxic entanglements that oil produces. Dirtied hands reveal the co-production of toxicity and power in extractive landscapes: At times throughout this article, the gesture calls for corporate accountability and distributive environmental justice, at other times, it reveals the systemic production of material, social and political distance between the accrual of benefit and the production of harm in an industrial-capitalist order. While drawing on the central role of bodily knowledges in apprehending environmental harm, I argue that bodily knowledges must also be examined for their specific relationships to forms of power and exploitation, and for their potential for appropriation by other parties – even when dedicated to condemning environmental injustice.

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