Notion Of Environmental Justice Research Articles

African Ecocriticism, Interspecies Relationship, and Kyuka Lilymjok’s Twilight for a Vulture

Ecocriticism in Africa, often framed by the postcolonial problem, appears to have a lot of focus on the notion of environmental justice. This kind of ecocriticism, rooted in protest aesthetics, aligns with the eco-activisms of the likes of Wangari Mathai of Kenya and Ken Saro-Wiwa of Nigeria who have, in different ways, contributed immensely to the literary awareness and the physical confrontation against the institutional powers that cause environmental degradation in Africa. These environmental writers expose the business of extractive capitalism responsible for harmful practices like gas flaring, oil spills, oil bunkering, water and air pollution, tree felling, and other activities that are inimical to the biodiversity of the continent. Considering the general degradation that reduces the postcolonial societies to what Frantz Fanon calls the wretched of the earth, it could be agreed that these writers’ focus on the environmentalism of the poor is not out of place. However, this rubric deemphasizes the nonhuman implication of the environmental tragedies, leaves untapped the full potentials of those literary genres that aestheticize relations across species, and expands the vision for ecological sustainability. To change the narrative, this article uses Kyuka Lilymjok’s Twilight for a Vulture to highlight the roles of nonhuman beings of the environment by analyzing the interspecies relationships that occur when species are brought closely together in the Nigerian environment. Both humans and nonhuman species found in Nigerian environment do not exist in isolation; they relate to each other. These relationships or interactive moments open contact zones of proximity and provide opportunities for contrasting various forms of human relationship with the nonhuman world. This is not to privilege nonhumans over humans, but rather to emphasize the ways these nonhuman life forms are linked with humans.

Pastoralism and conservation: The politics and notions of environmental justice under the grazing ban policy in Inner Mongolia, China

Environmental justice is a key concept for understanding the contested relationship between pastoralism and conservation. Our study adopted a political approach to examine conservation, pastoralism, and justice in the context of the grazing ban policy in China. Employing a qualitative, in-depth case study, we investigated the local political actors and processes that lead to environmental (in)justice. The evidence shows how injustice is perpetuated by both centralized and decentralized political processes and how herders use their knowledge and strategies in resistance to the injustice. In addition, the study contributed to a pluralistic understanding of justice by examining the different notions of justice held by the herders. We found that herders perceive injustices through different lenses, namely economic, ecological, and cultural aspects. Further, the similarities and differences between Han and Mongolian herders are discussed in terms of their notions of environmental justice and counteractions.

Environmental justice against environmental policies: the example of Montreal boroughs

ABSTRACT This article examines middle- and working-class citizens’ opposition to green policies in two Montreal boroughs. Through observation of council meetings, it seeks to understand how citizens discuss green policies in local political institutions. In this study, citizens do not oppose environmental policies by principle nor deny the existence of environmental problems. Rather, they feel swept along by a ‘green revolution’ for which they will bear most of the costs without any short-term benefit. In order to voice this concern, they tend to use the notion of environmental justice in opposition to environmental policies. Their understanding of environmental justice merges a procedural critique of democracy regarding participation and transparency and a substantial critique of inequities in the distribution of the environmental burden. These citizens also manifest an attachment to their neighborhood that connects the environment to the concept of the common good and an exercise of democracy. In this regard, this study reveals how citizens who mobilized within institutions come to a political understanding of environmental issues through the notion of environmental justice.

Beyond fairness: the Covid-19 pandemic as an expression of environmental injustice

ABSTRACT The paper sets out to explore the significance of the concept of environmental justice for a critical study of the Covid-19 pandemic. This task involves questioning the prevailing equation of justice with fairness, the limits of which have become manifest during the pandemic. In its place, a more holistic conceptualization is required, which registers the material environment as a constitutive dimension of the actuality of justice. It is toward such a holistic conceptualization that environmental justice discourse points. Yet, to fully meet its critical potential, the notion of environmental justice needs to widen its scope beyond problems of unequal distribution and disproportionate exposure of disenfranchized groups. Moreover, it must confront its own distributional logic, which ends up reducing the concept's potency and actuality to an ethical judgment on the current state of the world, whose failure to live up to a set ideal is seen as leading to environmental disaster. This critical confrontation will be accomplished through a materialist theorization of justice as a diagrammatic process of environment-making. Looking at the Covid-19 pandemic through this theoretical lens, it will be conceived as an ‘ethological accident’, which expresses in its very contingency an injustice that is integral to capitalist environments.

BEYOND THE VIRUS: There cannot be a pandemic without the State

Abstract Abstract: This paper starts with the acknowledgment of the importance of the State as an order-ing principle for the experience of the pandemic. Such a statement implies two complementary movements - although these will not be exhausted in the following pages. Firstly, it means that the notion of pandemic itself has a genealogy. It means that its emergence is the result of a histor-ical process and of specific political configurations, which are strongly associated with the con-solidation of the modern State. Second, if the treatment of the notion of a pandemic needs to be considered on the basis of its relationship with the state, an analysis of “pandemic” processes is undoubtedly a political debate. I finish by suggesting benefits of a possible approximation be-tween the notion of environmental justice and the critical principles for the analysis of the pan-demic that we are facing.

An Environmental Justice Perspective on Air Quality Offsets

Air quality offsets in South Africa are intended to counterbalance the harm caused by atmospheric emissions and deliver a net ambient air quality benefit in the affected airshed. In practice, they are implemented as a condition of leniency from compliance with the Minimum Emission Standards, and they focus on converting solid fuel burning households in low-income communities to cleaner forms of energy. Air quality offsets are not supported by all stakeholders, with non-governmental organisations in particular voicing vociferous objections. To date, there have only been very limited analyses of the ethical dimensions of air quality offsets. In this paper, air quality offsets and the Minimum Emission Standards are examined and compared from the perspective of three notions of environmental justice: distributive justice, which focuses on the distribution of environmental burdens and benefits; procedural justice, which considers inclusion and exclusion in decision- and policy-making processes; and justice as recognition, which focuses on the cultural and institutional processes that determine recognition, misrecognition and non-recognition of various groups. It is found that air quality offsets should guide action which promotes distributive justice because they are focussed on reducing polluting emissions in vulnerable, low-income communities that are exposed to the highest levels of ambient pollution. From a procedural justice perspective, South Africa’s legislative processes provide for involving most stakeholders in decision-making processes. Air quality offset initiatives should be evaluated once they have been implemented at scale to determine whether they have indeed aided in redressing injustices. Assessment criteria could include whether the air quality-related health risk of vulnerable communities has been reduced, whether community members have participated in the design and implementation of interventions, and whether marginalised members of the community have benefitted from the interventions.

Environmental justice movements in globalising networks: a critical discussion on social resistance against large dams

ABSTRACT We examine the social resistance against large dams as environmental justice movements in four case studies - the Sardar Sarovar Project from India, the Hidrosogamoso from Colombia, the ‘new water culture’ movement in Spain, and the Lesotho Highlands Project from Lesotho - with diverse social, political and environmental contexts. We discuss three broad issues. First, the nature of the involvement of civil society and metropolitan intelligentsia in leadership roles. Second, how cross-class and multi-sectoral alliances have been forged between the local and the global. And third, how the notion of environmental justice in relation to social justice is adopted in these movements.

The Ecosystem Approach and Environmental Justice Nexus in Natural Resource Management

Abstract The ecosystem approach emerged in the international environmental realm to promote equity and justice for both people and nature. It provides a set of mechanisms, including equitable benefit sharing; conservation and sustainable use; adaptive management; and participatory practices. This article explores how the ecosystem approach that is used in natural resource management shares synergies with notions of environmental justice, including distributional justice, procedural justice and justice-as-recognition. It also explores how the ecosystem approach responds to two additional principles of environmental justice that are specific to environmental disciplines, namely, intergenerational equity and the precautionary principle. The article illustrates the complementarity between the ecosystem approach and environmental justice through practical examples and argues that environmental justice can be promoted by utilizing the ecosystem approach as a vehicle for policy-makers.

Justice, Equity and Benefit-Sharing Under the Nagoya Protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity

This article attempts to bridge the multi-disciplinary debate on environmental justice and the traditional international legal debate on equity with a view to analysing the legal concept of fair and equitable benefit-sharing in international law. To that end, the article uses the Nagoya Protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity as a testing ground for: i) unpacking different notions of justice that may be pursued through fair and equitable benefit-sharing from access to genetic resources and the use of associated traditional knowledge, and ii) relating different notions of justice to the different functions that equity plays in international law. The aim is to test the potential wider application, in other areas of international law that refer to benefit-sharing, of linking a pluralist notion of environmental justice to different functions of equity. It is argued that this helps systematically unveil implicit legal design choices in relation to the pursuit of justice through international law-making, and interpret international legal instruments in ways that can contribute to negotiate concrete understandings of justice on a case-by-case basis.

Environmental Justice and Human Rights on the Mining Wastelands of the Witwatersrand Gold Fields

In South Africa, the constitutional and statutory framework seemingly establishes a strong synergy between environmental rights and environmental justice. A prevailing notion of transformative constitutionalism additionally positions law as the foundation for large-scale social change through non-violent political processes. A case study of the Tudor Shaft Informal settlement on the Witwatersrand goldfields elucidates the ambiguities in the notion of environmental justice and the tensions between claims based on the environmental right and socio-economic rights. By highlighting the existence of local moral orders—political alliances based on access to resources that frequently employ violence to achieve political ends—it also suggests the limited reach of the constitutional order and the project of transformative constitutionalism.

A fair share? Perceptions of justice in South Africa’s water allocation reform policy

This paper examines the multiple meanings of justice embedded in the notion of environmental justice. It uses research on South Africa’s Water Allocation Reform policy to explore how ideas of justice have shifted in the course of crafting the policy, employing the notion of ‘allocation discourses’ to capture the changing conceptions of justice. South Africa’s reform efforts are part of a global trend that vests the ultimate authority over water resources with the State, which provides it with a large degree of discretion in allocating use rights to resources. Drawing on discourse analysis and interviews with key stakeholders, the paper demonstrates how the early versions of the policy were characterised by desert-oriented and utilitarian interpretations of justice, which then shifted to an explicitly egalitarian perspective in the final version, but which, to-date, has had little practical consequence, however. In the early versions, existing users were portrayed as unilaterally beneficial and productive, and the process of redistribution as a risky venture that could lead to environmental degradation and the economy being undermined, whilst failing to acknowledge the waste and pollution of existing users. The paper highlights the importance of unpacking key concepts and understanding how particular framings of human-nature relations influence ideas of justice, and how these may shift over time.

Forum: Principled Strategy: The Role of Equity Norms in China's Climate Change Diplomacy

Through more than two decades of multilateral climate change negotiations, China has steadfastly opposed emission limits for developing countries. Scholars have traditionally explained the rigidity of Chinese diplomacy with reference to economic interests and power, and in the process understated the importance of equity norms. In international negotiations, China has served as one of the key architects and promoters of the common but differentiated responsibility principle, which holds that global environmental justice requires that developed countries bear the primary obligation for combating climate change. China has used this principle strategically in order to legitimize its opposition to emission limits. However, China's negotiating stance cannot be defined simply as the instrumental use of norms, as Beijing is genuinely sensitive to issues of equity. These equity concerns have occasionally led China to act in a manner that, from a strict cost-benefit analysis, runs counter to its own economic interests. In sum, notions of environmental justice are simultaneously a tool China uses to pursue its interests and a force that structures China's interest.

Integrated water management and environmental justice – public acceptability and fairness in adopting water innovations

Innovations to manage freshwater resources and avert shortages – including conservation through use of reclaimed wastewater, desalination, and demand-side management measures such as increasing block rate structures offer practical, effective remedies for meeting future water demands. We examine the challenges confronting adoption of these innovations that revolve around perceptions of fairness and public acceptability. A major obstacle to these approaches' adoption is environmental justice – that the risk and burden of resource solutions, as well as their benefits – should be borne equitably, despite differences of income or race. We first consider how debates regarding water supply are often disputes over different notions of environmental justice. We then examine general equity debates over adopting various innovations in one US state at the nexus of water demand and supply innovation: California. We contend that fairly adopting these innovations requires embracing open, inclusive, and transparent decision-making processes in which no important constituency is excluded from decisions, and in which different notions of environmental justice are embraced.

"To Love the Wind and the Rain": African Americans and Environmental History

To Love the Wind and the Rain is a groundbreaking and vivid analysis of the relationship between African Americans and the environment in US history. It focuses on three major themes: African Americans in the rural environment, African Americans in the urban and suburban environments, and African Americans and the notion of environmental justice. Meticulously researched, the essays cover subjects including slavery, hunting, gardening, religion, the turpentine industry, outdoor recreation, women, and politics. To Love the Wind and the Rain will serve as an excellent foundation for future studies in African American environmental history.