Promoting environmental justice in contaminated areas by combining environmental public health and community theatre practices

Abstract

Communities affected by contaminated sites are often overburdened by environmental and social fragilities living a depression in their potentialities and destabilisation in health and quality of life. The paradigm of Environmental Justice and the framework of community capacity (community capacities) are at stake in promoting environmental public health in communities affected by contaminated sites. Three community changes foreseeing the following objectives appear as priorities: centralisation in decisions regarding the use of their territories; an active (i.e. participated) role in decision-making processes; a view of a possible future without contamination. These transitions require the activation of technical, scientific, and cultural domains. While environmental public health research, especially if implemented through a community participative approach, has a central role in promoting the community capacity of ‘knowledge’, performing arts have great potential for empowering the other capacities. Different collective theatrical approaches are reviewed and analysed in the cultural domain, identifying those of community theatre as the practices with the greatest participative and transformative impact. A community-based approach for promoting environmental justice in contaminated sites requires the development of interventions integrating technical-scientific with cultural domains.