Environmental justice in Kuwait metropolitan area: a spatial analysis of land-use impact on environmental quality variability

Abstract

ABSTRACT Rapid urbanisation raises conceptual questions about the spatial association of environmental quality and certain communities or demographic groups under the term of environmental justice. Thus, to evaluate environmental justice, we proposed a flexible GIS-based multi-criteria model that can be easily adjusted to include other factors to expand the environmental justice context toward other considerations, including the nature of the study area. In this study, the model was applied to Kuwait metropolitan area using four criteria: the proximity of industrial areas, major roads, high-traffic areas, and green areas. The spatial association of these criteria and different demographic groups was explored to evaluate the environmental equality among the groups. The environmental justice index (EJI) varied from 2.43 to 10. The low EJI values covered about 4% of the Kuwait metropolitan area, whereas the moderate and high EJI values covered about 38% and 58%, respectively. The moderate and high EJI areas were fairly distributed in the urban areas compared to the low EJI areas. The findings revealed that the concentrated industrial blocks surrounded by residential areas were one of the most important factors decreasing the EJI values and creating a disparity in the EJI distribution within the urban blocks.