Global Environmental Justice and the Environmentalism of the Poor

Abstract

There are an increasing number of ecological distribution conflicts around the world ultimately caused from the increase in the metabolism of the economy in terms of flows of energy and materials. There are resource extraction conflicts, transport conflicts, and also waste disposal conflicts. Therefore, there are many local complaints. Since the 1980s and 1990s there has been a globalizing environmental justice movement that in its strategy meetings and practices has developed a set of concepts and slogans to describe and intervene in such conflicts. They include “environmental racism,” “popular epidemiology,” “the environmentalism of the poor and the indigenous,” “biopiracy,” “tree plantations are not forests,” “the ecological debt,” “climate justice,” “food sovereignty,” “water justice,” and so on . . . These notions have been born from socio-environmental activism but sometimes they have been taken up also by academic political ecologists and used in their analyses.