Abstract
The industrial economy is not circular, it is entropic, therefore requiring new supplies of energy and materials extracted from the “commodity frontiers”, and producing polluting waste. Therefore, ecological distribution conflicts arise. The Global Atlas of Environmental Justice is an online inventory of such ecological distribution conflicts based on scholarly and activist knowledge. It reached 3200 entries by July 2020 (ejtlas.org) allowing research on such conflicts in the field of comparative, statistical political ecology. The EJAtlas is used for research but also for university teaching in the environmental social sciences and in business economics and management. It is a unique instrument co-produced with and supporting environmental movements. One can do comparative analyses on the social actors involved in the conflicts and their forms of mobilization, and also on the behaviour of private or public companies. Research may focus on countries or regions but also on cross-cultural topics such as gold and copper mining, sand mining, dams, eucalyptus or oil palm plantations, incinerators and other methods of waste disposal, coal fired power plants, gas fracking, nuclear reactors, CAFOs. Analyses are done also on the cross- cultural expressions (slogans, banners, documentaries, murals) of the conflicts gathered in the EJAtlas. The wealth of research coming from the EJAtlas gives an affirmative answer to the question: Is there a global environmental justice movement? Making old or emergent conflicts more visible contributes to placing political ecology at the centre of politics.
Highlights
The industrial economy is not circular, it is entropic, requiring new supplies of energy and materials extracted from the “commodity frontiers”, and producing polluting waste
In many of the ecological distribution conflicts described in the EJAtlas, there are overlapping social roles and issues arising in the same conflict
The EJAtlas is a product of the grassroots counter-movement for environmental justice, and at the same time a tool for researching its contemporary history and support its presence across world regions and cultures
Summary
The words “environmental justice” are used here in a sociological sense, as they were first used in the movement born in the United States in struggles against waste dumping in North Carolina in 1982 (Martinez-Alier et al, 2014). Rich regions have displaced and are increasing the displacement of environmental costs associated with material throughput to poorer regions of the world (Muradian and Martinez-Alier, 2001, Hornborg and Martinez-Alier, 2016) Such a framework of ecologically unequal exchanges or Raubwirtschaft helps discern the coalitions of power that produce and benefit from patterns of extraction, trade and consumption, and the social groups (ethnic groups, women, peasants...) that suffer the most, providing a departure point for constructing coalitions to support the protest counter-movements of the most vulnerable groups. As Rajiv Maher writes in the Business and Human Rights Journal (2020) the EJAtlas documents and catalogues social conflicts around environmental issues aiming to make these instances of mobilization more visible, highlighting claims and testimonies, making the case for corporate and state accountability for the injustices inflicted sometimes through their activities. How do corporations (and state organs) react to allegations of using “counter-insurgency methods” against environmental defenders? Corporations are supposed to practice disclosure of environmental, social and governance (ESG) results
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