Image: © Environmental Justice Institute Covid regime (in Foucault's meaning) After February 26, 2020 when the first Corona wave hit Germany, the Environmental Justice Institute fell into deep slumber but is awakening in face of a supposed end in sight. A key issue with the Corona pandemic is rooted in the regime (in [...] | Image: © Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Highly cited and featured articles of the journal Environmental Justice available Once again, the journal Environmental Justice (jEJ) provides access to a number of articles that were selected either due to their impact factor in the field of enviromental justice research. The jEJ is one of the most relevant pioneers in the [...] | Image: © Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Most downloaded articles of the journal Environmental Justice available The journal Environmental Justice (jEJ) is one of the most relevant pioneers in the field of Environmental Justice Research. The peer-review journal is published bimonthly, covering the impacts and environmental burdens that affect marginalized po [...] |
Image: © KEITI and Kaufmann Environmental Justice in South Korea Approached by Dr. Jeong-Hi Go from Thirdspace Berlin who kindly served also as perfect translator between the two languages, the Environmental Justice Institute (EJI) convened with chief researcher Won Hui Cho and researcher Jae Ho Im from the [...] | Image: © Rosignoli Environmental Justice Workshop in Italy On December 17, 2019, the workshop "Environmental Justice in a comparative perspective" took place at the University of Milan, "La Statale."(Download the program including names of participants here) The event took place at the Department of International, Legal, Historical and Political Studies [...] | Image: © Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Organizing for dealing with Climate Change The journal Environmental Justice (jEJ) is one of the most relevant pioneers in the field of Environmental Justice Research. The peer-review journal is published bimonthly, covering the impacts and environmental burdens that affect marginalized po [...] |
Environmental Justice as a research theme
Theory Considerations on Environmental Justice as a research framework
By Götz Kaufmann, October 6, 2014
Environmental Justice contains several partial conceptions (Bolte, G.,
Bunge, C., Hornberg, C., Köckler, H., Mielck, 2012; cf. Maschewsky, 2001; Walker, 2009). Basically, it consists in the concepts of environmental goods,
environmental bads, and environmental risks (Kaufmann, 2013a, p. 167).
There is a rough institutional understanding, recognized from the American and Canadian debates since the 1980s that refers strongly to environmental justice claims and claims of environmental racism (Gosine & Teelucksingh, 2008), historically targeting the beginning of environmental justice struggles after the Love Channel incident (cf. Dobsen, 1998; T. H. Fletcher, 2003; T. Fletcher, 2002) and protests against illegal waste siting in Warren County (cf. R. D. Bullard, 1993; R. Bullard, 1993; Chavis & Lee, 1987). Environmental justice research examines not only marginalized racial or ethnic groups (native Americans, indigenous people, people of Afro-American or Aboriginal origin etc.), but also gender divides (Souza, 2008). Due to the history of the movement (Gosine & Teelucksingh, 2008), environmental justice research is 'bottom-up' – it focuses on the community level (Kameri-Mbote & Cullet, 1996) and an understanding of the 'environment' concept as a place where we "live, act and play" (Gosine & Teelucksingh, 2008, p. viii). As for the justice conception, the concept deals with distributional, intergenerational, and procedural justice likewise. The grassroots orientation of this research has established environmental justice research close to cultural studies but also close to studies on inequality, gender, |
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planning, economics, ethics, philosophy, sociology, and politics (among
others). As a general research framework, environmental justice refers to environmental racism in terms of statistical likeliness to face negative impacts in
the respective environment (Beck, 1986, among others).
It is important to distinguish two possible answers to the revealed unequal distribution of environmental goods and environmental burdens. One is called the Not-In-My-Backyard (NIMBY) claim that came from the early days where Afro-American communities articulated the demand of replacement of waste sites that threaten their neighbourhood. The second one is more critical and asks for Not-In-Anyone's-Backyard (NIABY) (cf. Maantay, 2001). According to the latter answer, the solution must include the concerns of society as a whole. Environmental justice adds community as an autonomous actor to environmental research and makes social justice concerns part of the environmental research field (Kameri-Mbote & Cullet, 1996). |
Planning research has added the concept of polyrationality (Davy, 2008)
to express differently perceived environments of housing communities. In sociology, environmental justice research is tied to the social construction of the
environment concept. This leads here to the understanding that environmental issues only exist as an environmental problem when the affected community
perceives them as such, or the 'social nature' concept (cf. Kaufmann, 2013b). Political science focuses on equal participation rights in the process of
building public optinion (Maguire & Lind, 2003) whereas law and philosophy look at the different conceptions of justice (Rawls, 1972; Schmidtz, 2007). All
these approaches equally define environmental justice as a vivid field of research and transdisciplinary activity.
The Environmental Justice Institute is founded to support the existing joint efforts from society and academia on the international level to frame the concept and to bring people from different backgrounds together. |
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References
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Bolte, G., Bunge, C., Hornberg, C., Köckler, H., Mielck, A. (2012). Umweltgerechtigkeit. Chancengleichheit bei Umwelt und Gesundheit: Konzepte,
Datenlage und Handlungsperspektiven. (A. Mielck, Ed.) (1st ed.). Bern: Verlag Hans Huber.
Bullard, R. (1993). Anatomy of Environmental Racism and the Environmental Justice Movement. In Confronting Environmental Racism. Voices from the
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Bullard, R. D. (1993). Confronting Environmental Racism. Voices from the Grassroots. Cambridge.
Chavis, B., & Lee, C. (1987). Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States. A National Report on the Racial and Socio-Economic Characteristics of Communities
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Fletcher, T. (2002). Neighbourhood change at Love Chanal. Contamination, evacuation, and resettlement. Land Use Policy, 19(4), 311–323.
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Saarbrücken: Südwestdeutscher Verlag für Hochschulschriften. Can be retrieved from Google Books (checked 11/07/2015).
Kaufmann, G. F. (2013b). From imaginary problem of "pollution" of a "clean" earth to the concept of "Social Nature." In Environmental Justice and
Sustainable Development. With a case study in Brazil's Amazon using Q Methodology (pp. 38–40). Saarbrücken: Südwestdeutscher Verlag für
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on 11/07/2015.
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Maschewsky, W. (2001). Umweltgerechtigkeit, Public Health und soziale Stadt. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag für Akademische Schriften.
Rawls, J. (1972). A Theory of Justice. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
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City.
Souza, A. (2008). The Gathering Momentum for Environmental Justice in Brazil. Environmental Justice, 1(4), 183–188.
Walker, G. (2009). Beyond Distribution and Proximity. Exploring the Multiple Spatialities of Environmental Justice. Antipode, 41(4), 614–636.
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