Environmental Justice

What is Environmental Justice?

"Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.

EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this nation. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys:

• the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards, and
• equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work."

Source: https://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice

What is Environmental Justice?

"While environmentalism is concerned with environmental injustice and the pursuit of justice, it is primarily concerned with the abuse of the environment by a hierarchical model which places humanity at the top with the result being the abuse of nature.  On the other hand, environmental justice advocates are more concerned with what is termed "social ecology" or "human welfare ecology." Their primary concern is the impact of institutional systemic flaws which are the natural result of a progression of historical events resulting in decisions which establish unjust living conditions upon one group of people due to a lack of organization, power and prominence. At the risk of oversimplification, whereas environmentalism is concerned with humanity’s adverse impact upon the environment, environmental justice proponents are primarily concerned with the impact of an unhealthy environment thrust upon a collective body of life, both human and non-human, including in some instances plant life. The efforts of the environmental justice movement go beyond those of the environmentalism movement."

Source: https://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice

Source: https://www.iep.utm.edu/enviro-j/

Structure vs. Agency

"Structures"

Source: https://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice

Refers to the institutions and the actors within them (e.g. corporations, government entities, etc.) that shape the norms of collective life, for example:

• Legal systems
• Political systems
• Economic Systems
• Religious Institutions

"Agents"

Refers to the individual humans both inside those institutions and outside of them who make and who manage change.