Environmental Justice

Walker, Gordon (2019) Environmental Justice. In: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Second Edition. Elsevier, pp. 221-225. ISBN 9780081022962

Abstract

Environmental justice is about the intertwining of the environment and society, with a concern for how patterns of inequality are patterned and produced, how policy and resource exploitation decisions are made, and how some groups are discriminated against and unfairly burdened. It is a term used by activists, academics, and some policy communities that has traveled widely across the world to make claims about the justice of many different environmental concerns, controversies, and conflicts. Human geographers have focused in part on mapping and quantifying sociospatial patterns of environmental benefits and burdens, but other forms of research and critical theorizing have also emerged, including through engagements with activist communities and interdisciplinary working. It is a multiscalar concept applied to particular places and cases, but also to global concerns including climate change and international waste transfers. It also opens up questions structured in terms of a range of temporalities from the everyday to the intergenerational.