THE DIVERSITY OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

ABSTRACT

By comparing the US environmental justice movement with recent European developments, this paper suggests an environmental justice framework which is based on the idea of environmental justice as a heterogeneous process rather than an analytical or normative category. Using major debates on environmental justice particularly in the UK and Germany as a touchstone, eight dimensions of environmental justice are carved out and integrated into a processual model. It is discussed how environmental justice as a process may become robust enough to integrate and react to changing natural and social conditions.

Keywords:

• environmental justice
• theory
• inequality
• sociology
• robust strategies

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the reviewers for their helpful comments.

Notes

¹Consequently, this paper's major focus is on the local perspective. For the purpose of our essay, we hold that local and global environmental justice streams are too different to be mixed, albeit some sociologists have argued for an ‘aggregation hypothesis’ which suggests that global phenomena are basically made up of aggregations and repetitions of many similar micro-episodes (Knorr Cetina and Cicourel 1981; Knorr Cetina and Bruegger 2002). For an adequate discussion of the global distribution of environmental burdens the reader may consult the respective literature (e.g., Adeola 2000; Heinrich Böll Stiftung 2002; Martinez-Alier 2002; Donohoe 2003; Sachs 2003).

²See: http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/; Last access: 09/03/2008.

³See: http://www.dbk.de/aktuell/meldungen/01182/index.html; Last access: 09/03/2008.

⁴Statement is taken from an interview he gave to Grist Magazine in 2006. Cf. Rachel's Democracy and Health News #846, www.rachel.org, 2006.

⁵The respective position statement ‘Addressing environmental inequalities’, published in 2004 by the Environment Agency, can be found at www.environment-agency.gov.uk. Regarding Germany, a report issued by the Federal Environmental Agency, focusing on prerequisites to integrate ecological justice into social accounting systems, was published in 2007 at http://www.umweltbundesamt.de/. Last access: 09/03/2008.