Taking away David’s slingFootnote^*

* In 1994, leading U.S. environmental justice lawyer Luke Cole characterised environmental justice lawsuits as “another stone in David’s sling” (Cole Citation1994). In 2013, during a plenary session at an Australian conference on “Mining in a Sustainable World”, author Sharyn Munro noted that recently amended planning policies in New South Wales, Australia (which are discussed further in this paper), provided the mining industry “Goliath” with “more muscle”, remarking that “ … they [the Government] don’t even want David to keep his slingshot” (http://www.une.edu.au/humanities/peace-studies-conference.php#recordings). This paper uses these comments as a springboard for considering how theories of environmental justice might be applied to understanding current cases of extractive resource development, community concern and ongoing land-use conflict in Australia and the U.S.A.

: environmental justice and land-use conflict in extractive resource development

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