Environmental Justice and the (Re) Production of Sacrifice Zones: The Impact of Migration Policies and Practices in the Aegean

The environmental justice movement validates the grassroots struggles of residents of places which Steve Lerner refers to as “sacrifice zones”: low-income and racialized communities shouldering more than their fair share of environmental harms related to pollution, contamination, toxic waste, and heavy industry. On this account, disparities in wealth and power, often inscribed and re-inscribed through social processes of racialization, are understood to produce disparities in environmental burdens. Here, we attempt to understand how these dynamics are shifting in the green energy economy under settler colonial capitalism. We consider the possibility that the political economy of green energy contains its own sacrifice zones. Drawing on preliminary empirical research undertaken in southwestern Ontario in 2015, we document local resistance to renewable energy projects. Residents mounted campaigns against wind turbines based on suspected health effects and against solar farms based on arable land and food justice concerns, and in both cases, grounded their resistance in a generalized claim, which might be termed a “right to landscape”. We conclude that this resistance, contrary to typical framings which dismiss it as NIMBYism, has resonances with broader claims about environmental justice and may signal larger structural shifts worth devoting scholarly attention to. In the end, however, we do not wholly accept the sacrifice zone characterization of this resistance either, as our analysis reveals it to be far more complex and ambiguous than such a framing allows. But we maintain that taking this resistance seriously, rather than treating it as merely obstructionist to a transition away from fossil capitalism, reveals a counter-hegemonic potential at its core. There are seeds in this resistance with the power to push back on the deepening of capitalist relations that would otherwise be ushered in by an uncritical embrace of “green energy” enthusiasm.

I begin by identifying five primary discourses of resilience in Scotland in relation to climate policy; city resilience; regeneration; public health; and more recently ‘transformational’ community resilience. These simultaneously operate at national, city and neighbourhood scales, indicating a need for critical reflection on their impact across multiple levels and diverse publics. As a member of the 100 Resilient Cities Network, Glasgow aspires to use a values-driven approach to address inequality through the lens of resilience and asset-based community empowerment. Drawing on Schlosberg’s (2004:521) ‘trivalent’ conception of environmental justice (consisting of distributional, procedural and recognition dimensions), I explore the intersections between local socio-environmental concerns, environmental justice, the discourses of resilience and socially just climate policy. Schlosberg reminds us that ‘generalised social injustices are manifest in environmental conditions’ (2013:40), and Glasgow’s story reflects how Scottish urban socio-environmental concerns are inextricably linked with the economic and social legacy of rapid deindustrialisation, the failure of previous regeneration strategies, and the consequent number of isolated buildings and derelict land (Fairburn et al., 2005). Using participatory action research in a neighbourhood of multiple deprivation, I identified the current absence of an environmental justice discourse to challenge the health inequalities of living in proximity to vacant and derelict land and poor local environmental quality (Maantay 2013). This was reflected in a disconnect between community development initiatives and a range of fragmented environmental interventions which, if better coordinated, could facilitate an inclusive well & green narrative. By introducing an environmental justice frame at a neighbourhood and city level, I subtly shift the focus from assets to rights, sustainable consumption and inequality for low-income neighbourhoods. I conclude by proposing an integrated social, environmental and climate justice framework to crystallise and navigate the discourses of resilience towards ‘transformational’ community resilience.

This paper highlights the value of an Environmental Reproductive Justice framework in social work and argues that environmental justice and reproductive justice should not be approached as two distinct issues. Because social work is a human right and social justice focused profession, it is uniquely poised to simultaneously address environmental justice issues impacting reproductive health and wellbeing. An Environmental Reproductive Justice framework centers Intersectionality to address sociopolitical issues at the intersection of environmental and reproductive concerns. We offer examples of organizations utilizing Environmental Reproductive Justice approaches, whether implicitly or explicitly. We conclude with implications for social work education and practice.

Just transition originates from the labor movement urging to protect fossil fuel workers from the impact of low-carbon transition policies. It has evolved to address an integrated framework of climate, energy, and environmental justice during the transition to a low/zero-carbon society. Recent years have seen a rapid boom surrounding the theorization of just transition. However, relatively few studies have examined how the concept of just transition is applied to research across academic disciplines or under what research agenda just transition would encompass different concerns addressed by environmental, climate, and energy justice scholarship. Against this backdrop, this article sets out to investigate the main topics being discussed in just transition and climate-energy-environmental justice literature, and the similarities and differences between the global and Korean scholarship using topic modeling. The results demonstrate that city and local transitions have emerged as key topics while the focus of scholarly debates has shifted from regional pollution to global sustainability issues in the foreign literature after the Paris Agreement. In the Korean literature, institution-related topics rapidly increased after 2008, wherein green growth strategies were introduced. Yet, local issues, industry and jobs replaced these topics after the Paris Agreement. By comparing the results, the article draws implications for Korean scholarship to better understand just transition as an integrated framework of climate, energy, and environmental justice.

Through their synergies, trade-offs, and contradictions, the sustainable development goals (SDGs) have the potential to lead to environmental justices and injustices. Yet, environmental justice (EJ), and social justice more broadly, are not currently embedded within the language and spirit of the SDGs. We part from the premise that “many ‘environmental’ problems are, by their very nature, problems of justice” (Lele, Wiley Interdiscip Rev Water 4:e1224, 2017). We review progress in EJ frameworks in recent years, arguing for the need to move beyond a focus on the four principles of mainstream EJ (distribution, procedure, recognition, and capabilities) towards a more intersectional decolonial approach to environmental justice that recognises the indispensability of both humans and non-humans. EJ frameworks, and the SDGs should recognise power dynamics, complex interactions among injustices, and listens to the different ‘senses of justice’ and desires of theorists, activists, and other stakeholder from the Global South. We analyze how EJ frameworks are, or fail to be, incorporated in the SDGs with a focus on the food–water–health nexus (SDG2, 3, 6); climate-energy (SDG7, 13), conservation (SDG14, 15); and poverty and inequality (SDG1, 10). We call attention to the ‘elephant in the room’—the failure to go beyond GDP but instead include economic growth as a goal (SDG8). We argue that sustainable degrowth and intersectional decolonial environmental justices would create better conditions for the transformative changes needed to reach the broader aim of the SDGs: to leave no one behind.

Beyond Biodiversity Conservation: Why Policy Needs Social Theory, Social Theory Needs Justice, and Justice Needs Policy

A large body of research demonstrates that race, class, and gender are key factors influencing the conditions, resources, and risks that groups and individuals experience and perceive within both “green” and built environments. However, at least one dimension remains relatively absent from the literature: age. The main argument of this article is that environmental sociology and justice studies would benefit from further consideration of how age-relations, birth cohort identities, and life course conditions relate to variations in environmental health, environmental conditions, and perceptions thereof. The purpose of this article is to encourage such explorations by providing an introduction to major concepts and definitions from critical aging theory and by offering suggestions as to how these concepts could be explored within an environmental justice framework. I first introduce definitions, theoretical concepts, and methodological issues germane to studies of aging and note possible explanations for the relative invisibility of matters of aging and the life course in sociological studies of environments and environmental justice. The final portion of the article presents brief illustrative examples from fieldwork in rural China, followed by suggested areas for further exploration.

The transition to renewable energy is being pursued within neoliberal frameworks that prioritize market competition and industrial development, increasingly resulting in significant negative socio-ecological consequences and environmental injustices. As a result, scholars and activists are increasingly taking up more radical discursive strategies, adopting critical terms like ‘sacrifice zone,’ to describe marginalized places. In short, critiques of fossil fuel regimes are increasingly accompanied by an emerging critique of hegemonic renewable energy regimes. Through a case study of community resistance to a large-scale solar PV project in Alentejo, Portugal, this article aims to further understand this critique by analysing the arguments and discursive strategies that local movements are utilizing against business-as-usual renewable energy transitions and how they are received by powerful actors. Findings reveal that opposition is not solely driven by self-interest or place-attachment, but is deeply rooted in critiques of procedural and distributive injustices, framed through the critical and constructive discourse of ‘sacrifice zone’ which not only enabled residents to make sense of what was happening, but also allowed them to build new forms of territorial commonality and critique. This study highlights how the concept of the ‘sacrifice zone’ functions as a means of co-producing new knowledge and as a tool for explaining and coping with change. From the perspective of pragmatic sociology, it can also be viewed as a critical strategy of self-vulnerabilization—one that resists change, demands recognition, challenges state authority, and attempts to foster new territorial movements.

This article addresses the complex social-ecological challenges faced by sacrifice zones—territories subjected to severe environmental degradation and social injustices. Traditional environmental justice research, with its emphasis on distributive justice, often fails to capture the intricate dynamics of these often not-recognized areas. In light of these limitations, this article proposes a second-generation environmental justice approach, employing a critical realist paradigm, to identify sacrifice zones and explore their deeper causal mechanisms. This approach, which transcends the distributional focus of traditional research, reveals mechanisms commonly observed in these zones. These mechanisms enable and sustain environmental degradation and social injustices through dynamics such as economic exploitation, policy failures, and power imbalances. Intertwined within social-ecological systems, these dynamics create cycles of poverty, health disparities, and ecological harm. Moreover, the article offers a methodological reflection on the theoretical proposal and planning practices toward environmental justice. It concludes with recommendations for future research, emphasizing the importance of systemic change and inclusive policy-making to achieve environmental justice and sustainability.

The analysis of environmental issues and the pursuit of environmental justice have gained significant attention in modern times. While progress has been made in understanding environmental impacts and establishing the right to access environmental information, the need to examine environmental inequalities persists. This study aimed to propose a methodology to identify and analyse potential ‘sacrifice zones’ within a region of interest using: (i) Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA), (ii) Municipal Risk Indicators, and (iii) Spatial Autoregressive (SAR) models. The relationship between environmental hazards and social disadvantage in the Campania region of Italy was estimated and the findings of this preliminary study in this area are presented. Our preliminary results: (i) reveal a non-random distribution of contaminated sites and waste management plants (ii) localize the ‘sacrifice zones’ that are predominantly located in municipalities between the provinces of Naples and Caserta, (iii) show a disproportionately burdened with higher environmental risk and greater social vulnerability in some specific areas. Further investigations are required to replicate the results of this study under different environmental conditions. Additionally, enabling more precise identification of affected populations and areas subjected to heightened environmental pressures that would enhance the potential of the proposed approach. The proposed methodology can be adapted to different spatial contexts and data sources.

This article discusses a variety of experiences and philosophical reflections on cultural loss under an environmental justice framework, wherein ‘environmental justice’ is broadly construed as the conceptual connections, causal relationships, and strong correlations that exist between environmental issues and social justice. Environmental justice frames social issues as environmental issues. Social and environmental issues are inseparable, co-causally related, and always in a context that requires a political interpretation; in particular, such a consideration of justice accounts for power dynamics and socio-environmental practices that maintain historical relations, as well as the remedies for injustices. The primary argument of this article is that the environmental justice framework is a proper theoretical and practical approach to understanding the cultural loss among indigenous peoples caused by climate change. It emphasizes restorative justice philosophies and procedures that can address the future consequences of cultural loss.

This paper details the importance of participatory mapping (PM) as a key element for analyzing environmental issues in the Tula Region of the Mezquital Valley (RTVM) and its applicability in a sacrifice zone, considered one of the most affected areas in the world. This study presents four PM exercises carried out in the municipalities of Atitalaquia, Atotonilco, Tula de Allende, and Apaxco de Ocampo, in addition to an analysis derived from community environmental assessments (CEAs) and an Environmental Problem Monitoring Matrix (EPMM), which allowed linking environmental issues with disturbances in the socioecological system (SES). These exercises were conducted with local actors using a participatory action research (PAR) approach, which is important for understanding impacts from a community perspective. The methodology consisted of four DAC and CP workshops in the study area, in addition to the use of tools such as green mapping, recording local knowledge in a EPMM, and GIS tools for data representation. The results led to the conclusion that there is an environmental crisis in the RTVM, generated by water pollution, urban and industrial discharges, air pollution, pollution from various sources of industrial emissions and open-pit mining, and soil pollution from the use of agrochemicals, monoculture farming, and excessive resource extraction. This situation generates changes in the socio-ecological system that are directly related to ecosystems and the health of the population.

The paper discusses the concept of ‘environmental justice’ in the European Union, approaching it from the perspective of the centre-periphery gap in the EU, that is, the divide between the Member States from Western and Northern Europe on the one hand and Central and Eastern Europe on the other. It identifies distributive, procedural and corrective injustices that make the EU periphery, albeit less responsible for historical and contemporary environmental harms in Europe, bear the greater environmental burden, in addition to having less influence over environmental decision-making than the EU centre. The discussion is informed by the ideas that have emerged in US scholarship, especially regarding the concept of environmental justice itself, as well as the critical analysis of the (re)distributive effects of law and the identity critique of law. The paper concludes with a reflection on possible avenues for integrating environmental justice concerns into the EU legal and institutional framework in order to better address the centre-periphery gap and mitigate existing regional inequalities in environmental matters. Keywords: environmental justice, European Union, centre-periphery gap, distributive injustice, procedural injustice, corrective injustice. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution − Non-Commercial − No Derivatives 4.0 International License. Suggested citation: D Petric, ‘Environmental Justice in the European Union: A Critical Reassessment’ (2019) 15 CYELP 215.

This article describes pedagogical changes that I have made to my Environmental Justice class at the University of the Pacific in response to increasingly crisis conditions with regard to both climate change and higher education. Over the past 15 years, my students are increasingly low-income, first generation, and from Stockton, a so-called “sacrifice zone” with abysmal environmental health outcomes in the heart of California’s Central Valley. My increasing focus on local environmental health disparities, combined with the intensification of the climate crisis, and my decision to prioritize support for student mental health in the midst of climate anxiety, have resulted in a class that feels both connected and immersive. Students are engaging with readings and other course materials, actively participating in discussion, and pushing us further with their own questions, passions, and lived experiences. In this “post”-covid world in which student engagement has become increasingly difficult, student mental health is increasingly tenuous, and climate anxieties plague students and faculty alike, this feels extraordinary and worth sharing. This essay is a chance to reflect on why this shift has occurred, and the potential for university classes to draw working class, diverse students into environmental and climate justice movements at a time when they are so desperately needed.

Through bringing Christian ethics into conversation with original fieldwork and archival research on environmental justice activists, this essay develops an ecopolitical theology and practice of environmental justice as the work of transforming “sacrifice zones” into “sacred zones.” Sacrifice zones are places of concentrated environmental injustice, where harmful toxins and ecological degradation are channeled to secure the social and ecological flourishing of other places. During the movement against the environmentally destructive practice of mountaintop removal coal mining in West Virginia, leading activist Robyn Kincaid borrowed from Martin Luther King Jr. and green economy visionary Van Jones to envision Appalachia’s transformation from a sacrifice zone into a sacred zone. This essay argues that Kincaid’s constructive conceptualization of sacrifice—“to make sacred”—holds promise for a Christian ethics and politics of environmental justice; develops its implicit theology; demonstrates its relevance beyond Appalachia; and contrasts it with climate politics as usual.