Environmental justice

Critical EJ calls for scholarship that builds on research in environmental justice studies by questioning assumptions and gaps in earlier work in the field, embracing greater interdisciplinary, and moving towards methodologies and epistemologies including and beyond the social sciences.

These include, in David Pellow's writing: (1) questions concerning the degree to which scholars should place emphasis on one or more social categories of difference (e.g., race, class, gender, sexuality, species, etc.)

versus a focus on multiple forms of inequality; (2) the extent to which scholars studying EJ issues should focus on single-scale versus multi-scalar analyses of the causes, consequences, and possible resolutions of EJ struggles; (3) the degree to which various forms of social inequality and power—including state power—are viewed as entrenched and embedded in society; and (4) the largely unexamined question of the expendability of human and non-human populations facing socioecological threats from states, industries, and other political economic forces.

[22][23] As David Nibert and Michael Fox put it in the context of injustice, “The oppression of various devalued groups in human societies is not independent and unrelated; rather, the arrangements that lead to various forms of oppression are integrated in such a way that the exploitation of one group frequently augments and compounds the mistreatment of others.” Thus, Critical EJ views racism, heteropatriarchy, classism, nativism, ableism, ageism, speciesism (the belief that one species is superior to another), and other forms of inequality as intersecting axes of domination and control.

[20] Pellow observes in his 2017 publication What is Critical Environmental Justice that while “a molecule of carbon dioxide or nitrous oxide can occur in an instant, … it remains in the atmosphere for more than a century, so the decisions we make at one point in time can have dramatic ramifications for generations to come”.

[20] Pellow argues in his 2017 publication What is Critical Environmental Justice that social change movements may be better off thinking and acting beyond the state and capital as targets of reform and/or as reliable partners.

Joen Márquez introduces the concept of “racial expendability” in his book Black and Brown Solidarity, in which he argues that “black and brown bodies are, in the eyes of the state and its constituent legal system, generally viewed as criminal, deficient, threatening, and deserving of violent discipline and even obliteration.”[20] Critical EJ builds on this work by countering the ideology of white supremacy and human dominionism, and articulating the perspective that excluded, marginalized, and other populations, beings, and things - both human and nonhuman - must be viewed not as expensable but rather an indispensable to our collective futures.

[24] Citing that this decision was racially motivated, R. Bullard was asked to compile data from 1970 to 1979 addressing "all landfills, incinerators and solid waste sites" located in Houston, TX at that time.

Thirty-thousand gallons of PCB fluid lined 270 miles of roadway in fourteen North Carolina Counties, and the state announced that a landfill would be built rather than undergoing permanent detoxification.

[33] Chavis would later recall in a New Yorker's article titled “Fighting Environmental Racism in North Carolina” that while “Warren County made headlines … [he] knew in the eighties you couldn't just say there was discrimination.

[40][41] The summit broadened the environmental justice movement beyond its anti-toxins focus to include issues of public health, worker safety, land use, transportation, housing, resource allocation, and community empowerment.

The burden of water scarcity is particularly noticeable in impoverished urban settings and remote rural areas where inadequate infrastructure, limited financial resources, and environmental degradation converge to create formidable challenges.

When this has been applied, as in the case of the Six Nations Indigenous peoples in Canada working with McMaster University researchers, it has shown how community-led sharing and integrating of science and local knowledge can be partnered in response to water quality.

[69] This is kept in place by mechanisms such as enforceable patents, trade regulations and price setting by institutions such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund, where northern countries hold most of the voting power.

[73] Fast fashion exposes environmental justice communities to occupational hazards such as poor ventilation that can lead to respiratory problems from inhalation of synthetic particles and cotton dust.

Gender inequalities in governing bodies have been noted to have an impact on the nature of decisions made, and so consequently federal legislation and discussion surrounding environmental justice often does not include factors of sex.

[75][76] These inequalities have led to the establishment of the Global Gender and Climate Alliance, set up jointly by the United Nations, the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), and WEDO (Women, Environment and Development Organization).

As sea levels rise and storms intensify, such questions will only grow more urgent, and fairness must be a central consideration as societies figure out how to answer them"[90] In December 2023 Biden's administration unveiled a whole strategy to improve ocean justice.

According to Beth Lowell, the vice president of Oceana (non-profit group): "Offshore drilling, fisheries management and reducing plastic pollution are just a few of the areas where these voices are needed".

The National Party introduced a new Minerals Act that began to address environmental considerations by recognizing the health and safety concerns of workers and the need for land rehabilitation during and after mining operations.

Journalist and science writer Fred Pearce notes that in China "most monitoring of urban air still concentrates on one or at most two pollutants, sometimes particulates, sometimes nitrogen oxides or sulfur dioxides or ozone.

The WestConnex Action Group (WAG) have said that residents close to the highway have been negatively affected by its high levels of air pollution, caused by an increase in traffic and unventilated smokestacks in its tunnels.

[120] In March 2022, the Tiwi people filed for a court injunction to stop KEXIM and Korea Trade and Investment Corporation (Korean development finance institutions) funding the project with almost $1bn.

From 1925 to 1970, the predominately poor, African American residents of the "West Grove" endured the negative effects of exposure to carcinogenic emissions and toxic waste discharge from a large trash incinerator called Old Smokey.

Kerr-McGee and United Nuclear Corporation, the two largest mining companies, argued that the Federal Water Pollution Control Act did not apply to them, and maintained that Native American land is not subject to environmental protections.

[150] PCBs bioaccumulate and biomagnify within the fatty tissues of organisms, so the traditional high-fat sea animal diet of the Inuit has posed significant health impacts to both adults and unborn infants.

Banned throughout much of the rest of the world because of the potential threat to human health and the natural environment, Endosulfan is a highly toxic chemical, the safe use of which cannot be guaranteed in the many developing countries it is used in.

Indigenous peoples in particular have been disproportionately affected by mining, with many communities experiencing displacement, loss of traditional livelihoods, and negative health impacts from exposure to toxic chemicals and pollution.

Spacecraft are the only contributors to direct human-derived pollution in the stratosphere, which comes mostly from the launch activities of rich economies in the northern hemisphere, while the global north bears more of the environmental consequences.

For example, in the decades following the publication of the first report on the use of satellite imagery to measure rainforest deforestation in the 1980s, several environmental groups rose to prominence and also influenced changes in domestic policy in Brazil.