Why Not NIMBY?

Abstract

This paper examines a particularly egregious example of a NIMBY (‘Not in my backyard’) claim and considers three proposals for explaining what about that claim might be ethically problematic: (1) The NIMBY claimant is being selfish or self-serving; (2) The NIMBY claim cannot be morally justified, because respecting everyone's NIMBY claims leaves communities worse off; and (3) if policymakers were to defer to people's NIMBY claims, they would end up perpetuating environmental injustices. We argue that these proposals fail to explain why there is anything wrong with the NIMBY claim per se.