Revisiting Environmental Justice  (Paperback, Kaiser Manzoor)

Environmental justice is the equitable treatment and meaningful participation of all people in the creation, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies, regardless of their race, colour, sex, national origin, or level of income. Fair treatment means that no population is subjected to a disproportionate burden of the detrimental effects of pollution on human health or the environment, or the environmental repercussions of industrial, municipal, and commercial operations, or the implementation of federal, state, local, and tribal programmes and policies. By prioritising grassroots political organising, the environmental justice movement sets itself apart from the mainstream environmental movement. The environmental justice movement explicitly calls into question this emphasis on law reform by pointing out how it continues to favour elites at the expense of people working on the ground to improve their communities, in contrast to environmentalists who have invested heavily in legal strategies over the past three decades as a means of achieving social change. Climate justice is commonly understood to refer to either the effects of climate change responses or the accountability for climate change and its causes and those least responsible for carbon emissions are also most at risk from its effects and are frequently further marginalised by mitigation efforts that risk reproducing or escalating existing inequalities. There is now a considerable and diverse literature on procedural, distributional and intergenerational dimensions, including questions of recognition in climate justice.