Environmental justice and the SDGs: from synergies to gaps and contradictions

Mary Menton,Mika Peck,Mariana Walter,Carlos Larrea,Leah Temper,Joan Martinez-Alier,Sara Latorre

doi:10.1007/s11625-020-00789-8

Abstract

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.

Highlights

In 2015, the United Nations launched the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which outlines 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UN 2015) (Table 1)
We argue for the need to incorporate different imaginaries of justice within an intersectional decolonial environmental justice (EJ) that addresses the power dynamics that lead to injustices that come from many directions, and works to redress the racial capitalist system embedded within the colonisation of spaces and bodies, both human and non-human
The synergies, gaps, and contradictions highlighted in the examples above emphasize the need to acknowledge power relations and to move beyond a focus on economic growth (SDG8) and income-based indicators of poverty (SDG1) that mask the complex multi-dimensional nature of poverty and the conditions needed to ensure human well-being

Summary

Introduction

In 2015, the United Nations launched the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which outlines 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UN 2015) (Table 1). We outline key pillars of (1) mainstream EJ, (2) critical EJ; (3) ecological justice; (4) abolitionist and decolonial EJ; and (5) intersectional decolonial EJ These different frameworks build upon each other, with a general shift over time towards a more complete framing of EJ that fully recognises power dynamics and the need to account for the complexity and intersectionality of injustices while recognising the different epistemologies of, and visions for, justice originating from both theory and action in the Global South. The Critical Environmental Justice (CEJ) framework (see Pellow 2018) has called for an expansion of EJ beyond the aforementioned dimensions, critiquing the tendency of EJ literature to focus on state/institutional reforms or policy concessions that do not change the power structure that produce environmental injustices. It highlights the common thread of domination and othering practiced by other more powerful groups (Pellow 2016)

Multi-scalar approaches

Findings

Conclusions