What is Environmental Justice?
Referencing Wikipedia: Environmental justice emerged as a concept in the United States in the early 1980s. The term has two distinct uses with the more common usage describing a social movement that focuses on the fair distribution of environmental benefits and burdens. The other use is an interdisciplinary body of social science literature that includes theories of the environment and justice, environmental laws and their implementations, environmental policy and planning and governance for development and sustainability, and political ecology.
For me, Environmental Justice a positive term for people that use their power, the law and critical mass to overcome environmental problems that have been put onto them and their environment by others (government, business, individuals). This justice is usually delivered in a peaceful way, but then people have varying degrees of desperation and achieving some justice can get difficult or violent.
My Inspiration
Well, I've always been an environmentalist. I'm that guy who will pick up things on the floor, and put them in the bin. I'm the one that will not eat certain food due to its environmental impact and i'll certainly go out of my way to avoid palm oil (pretty difficult one that!...). Fairly recently I was flying my drone around the less populated parts of London when I found this garbage heap of common land (see image below). The place was literally full of junk - household and commercial. I saw this as an injustice to the nearby river, or that flora and fauna that live on the land. There are so many issues with this 'dumping site' and questions arise...
- Why do people do it?
- Does it cost money to be properly disposed of?
- How does disposal work?
- Who will clean this up?
- Who and what is it impacting? etc etc...
These questions led me to take the pro-active investigative approach and also to learn the theoretical answers to these question and what I (or all of us!) can do about these injustices. This research led me to University of East Anglia (UEA) Environmental Justice course. It didn't answer the questions above, you have to think deeply on them, but it did teach me a lot of environmental issues across the world and about justice itself. This course covers developing to developed countries and has lots to say on the theory and solutions to environmental problems and injustices.
The FREE Course (curated by the University of East Anglia)
Understand how climate change, biodiversity loss and deforestation affect people, exploring justice in environment management. The world faces challenging environmental problems. They are challenging because different people typically contribute differently to environmental change, and because its effects will be felt differently by different people in different places.
If you are environmentally minded and have some spare time to learn, perhaps you'd like this course. I hope that you do.
Let me know in the comments below if you have any questions or want to talk on the subject!
Has there ever been any environmental justice issues in your country or area?
Click HERE the LINK in the title to find out more!
To a few environmental friends I've come across on Steemit:
