Defining Environmental Justice Theories Movements And Nature

The book uses both environmental movements and political theory to help define what is meant by environmental and ecological justice. It will be useful to anyone interested in environmental politics, environmental movements, and justice theory.

Based on presentations made at the conference entitled Environmental Justice and Global Citizenship held in July 2006 at Oxford, UK, 14 papers consider environmental concerns against their social contexts. Contributors address theories in environmental management as they pertain to society and to orientations in "perverse" ecologies, the framework of sustainability, including voluntary agreements and incentives, class and conflict in environmental governance, including the uses of effective conflict, information management including the public debate on genetic modification and the differences between experts and laymen, environmental activism, education, including environmental education in a course on ethics and international development, and the effects of free trade, corporate capitalism, and empowerment of professionals, on sustainability and international environmental law.

Environmental activists and academics alike are realizing that a sustainable society must be a just one. Environmental degradation is almost always linked to questions of human equality and quality of life. Throughout the world, those segments of the population that have the least political power and are the most marginalized are selectively victimized by environmental crises. This book argues that social and environmental justice within and between nations should be an integral part of the policies and agreements that promote sustainable development. The book addresses the links between environmental quality and human equality and between sustainability and environmental justice.

In the first ever theoretical treatment of the environmental justice movement, David Schlosberg demonstrates the development of a new form of `critical' pluralism, in both theory and practice. Taking into account the evolution of environmentalism and pluralism over the course of the century, the author argues that the environmental justice movement and new pluralist theories now represent a considerable challenge to both conventional pluralist thought and the practices of the major groups in the US environmental movement. Much of recent political theory has been aimed at how to acknowledge and recognize, rather than deny, the diversity inherent in contemporary life. In practice, the myriad ways people define and experience the `environment' has given credence to a form of environmentalism that takes difference seriously. The environmental justice movement, with its base in diversity, its networked structure, and its communicative practices and demands, exemplifies the attempt to design political practices beyond those one would expect from a standard interest group in the conventional pluralist model.

“One of the penalties of an ecological education,” wrote Aldo Leopold,” is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.” Ideally we would not do each other or the rest of our biotic community wrong, but we have, and still do. We need non-ideal environmental ethics for living together in this world of wounds. Ethics does not stop after wrongdoing: the aftermath of environmental harm demands ethical action. How we work to repair healthy relationality matters as much as the wounds themselves. Reparative Environmental Justice in a World of Wounds discusses the possibilities and practices of reparative environmental justice. It builds on theories of justice in political philosophy, feminist ethics, indigenous studies, and criminal justice as extended to non-ideal environmental ethics. How can reparative environmental justice provide a useful perspective on ecological restoration, human-animal entanglements, climate change, environmental racism, and traditional ecological knowledge? How can it promote just practices and policies while enabling effective opposition to business as usual? And how does reparative justice look different when we go beyond narrowly construed human conflicts to include relational repair with ecosystems, other animals, and future generations?

Justice, Society and Nature examines the moral response which the world must make to the ecological crisis if there is to be real change in the global society and economy to favour ecological integrity. From its base in the idea of the self, through principles of political justice, to the justice of global institutions, the authors trace the layered structure of the philosophy of justice as it applies to environmental and ecological issues. Philosophical ideas are treated in a straightforward and easily understandable way with reference to practical examples. Moving straight to the heart of pressing international and national concerns, the authors explore the issues of environment and development, fair treatment of humans and non-humans, and the justice of the social and economic systems which affect the health and safety of the peoples of the world. Current grass-roots concerns such as the environmental justice movement in the USA, and the ethics of the international regulation of development are examined in depth. The authors take debates beyond mere complaint about the injustice of the world economy, and suggest what should now be done to do justice to nature.

Since the 2008 financial crash the expansion of neoliberalism has had an enormous impact on nature-society relations around the world. In response, various environmental movements have emerged opposing the neoliberal restructuring of environmental policies using arguments that often bridge traditional divisions between the environmental and labour agendas. The Right to Nature explores the differing experiences of a number of environmental-social movements and struggles from the point of view of both activists and academics. This collection attempts to both document the social-ecological impacts of neoliberal attempts to exploit non-human nature in the post-crisis context and to analyse the opposition of emerging environmental movements and their demands for a radically different production of nature based on social needs and environmental justice. It also provides a necessary space for the exchange of ideas and experiences between academics and activists and aims to motivate further academic-activist collaborations around alternative and counter-hegemonic re-thinking of environmental politics. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and activists interested in environmental policy, environmental justice, social and environmental movements.

Environmental justice is one of the most controversial and important issues in contemporary social science. Volume 8 of the Energy and Environmental Policy series challenges our understanding of environmental justice in a global context. It includes theoretical investigations and case studies by leading authors in the field. Global forces of technology and the development of global markets are transforming social life and the natural order. These changes require a critical examination of nature-society relations. Increasingly, modernization assigns the risks of modernity to those with the least power and greatest vulnerability to environmental harm. Conventional environmentalism, which focuses on critique of the effects of humanity against nature, is inadequate to the challenges of globalization. In particular, it fails to explain sources of persistent patterns of social injustice that accompany escalating environmental exploitation. As the capacity for environmental destruction expands, broader concerns about environmental injustice have come to the fore, including awareness of threats to whole cultures, ways of life, and entire ecologies. The volume's authors consider the links between expanded patterns of environmental injustice and the structures and forces underlying and shaping the international political economy. Environmental injustice is examined across a variety of cultures in the developed and developing world. Through case studies of climate colonialism, revolutionary ecology, and environmental commodification, the global and local dimensions of the problem are presented.The latest volume in this important series demonstrates that environmental justice cannot be reduced to simple parables of indifference, prejudice, or appropriation. It forges understanding of environmental injustice as a development of international political economy itself. Likewise, initiatives on behalf of environmental justice are seen as elements of broader movements to secure self-determination in a globalizing world. This book will be of interest to policymakers, energy and environmental experts, and all those interested in the environment and environmental law. It provides new perspectives on the place of environmental justice in international political and economic conflict.