Historical paths of environmental injustice: a century of placing industrial facilities in Helsinki, Finland

Abstract

The article explores the historical process of creating unjust environmental conditions in one geographical area in the Finnish capital, Helsinki. The study traces back the decision-making processes about placing environmentally burdensome, communal facilities, such as power plants, waste disposal and other infrastructural facilities. Also the lack of environmental amenities is investigated. The study covers a time period from the latter half of the nineteenth century to the 1980s. The historical analysis of the development of land-use decisions in the city is based on documentary and archival sources about the decision-making processes and it is conducted in the framework of distributive and procedural environmental justice. Four different periods of siting policies are identified. The motives for land-use decisions at each phase reflect geographical, political and historical reasoning. The concept of path dependency is introduced to explain, how environmental injustices were reproduced because of past paths of siting policies locked in subsequent decisions and created a negative twist of accumulating environmental burden.

Keywords:

• environmental justice
• distributional injustice
• industrial facilities
• path dependency
• Helsinki

Notes

1 Hermanni-Vallila is a local district newspaper. Translation of the quote is by the author.

2 The importance of the historical perspective within environmental justice research has been highlighted and it has increased greatly within the last decade (Szasz and Meuser 1997, Callewaert 2002, Egan 2002, Krieg 2005, Luckin 2005). Also a number of contributions overlapping urban environmental history and themes in environmental justice have been published recently, notably the articles in the edited volume by Massard-Guilbaud and Rodger (2011b) and e.g. Klingle (2006). In the Finnish context, the view point of environmental justice in urban (environmental) history research has lacked so far nearly entirely, only one study by Kuoppamäki-Kalkkinen (1977) has touched upon justice issues in the context of urban planning.

3 In the late 1960s the plant was out of use for more than a year due to enlargement works constructed at the plant.

4 The discussion around the path dependency theory is a broad field since 1985 when it was discussed by David (1985). The QWERTY typewriting keyboard is an example of path dependency. It effectively prevented the jamming of the keys, was adopted largely and became the dominant keyboard type, even if others proved to be more efficient. The path seems to result in inflexibility and inhibit change into another technology since the dominant one is locked-in.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland [grant number 115527] and Helsinki University Centre for Environment, HENVI [project: MULTIDOM].