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From environmental to climate justice: Climate change and the discourse of environmental justice
Abstract
Environmental justice is a major movement and organizing discourse in the environmental politics arena, and both the movement and the idea have had a large influence on the way that climate justice has been conceptualized. While most discussions of climate justice in the academic literature focus on ideal conceptions and normative arguments of justice theory, or on the pragmatic policy of the more elite environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), a distinct discourse has developed out of the grassroots. In these movement articulations of climate justice, the concerns and principles of environmental justice are clear and consistent. Here, climate justice focuses on local impacts and experience, inequitable vulnerabilities, the importance of community voice, and demands for community sovereignty and functioning. This review traces the discourse of environmental justice from its development, through the range of principles and demands of grassroots climate justice movements, to more recent articulations of ideas for just adaptation to climate change. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website. Conflict of interest: The authors have declared no conflicts of interest for this article.
... While climate justice had been used before by academics and NGOs since 1989, it was popularized via this grassroots struggle-based narrative in opposition to fossil industry and dominant climate politics (Bond 2012). From early on, key demands were keeping fossil fuels in the ground, repaying of ecological debt and a just transition providing assistance to vulnerable and fossil-dependent communities (Schlosberg and Collins 2014). ...
... Climate justice analyzes climate disruption as interwoven with inequalities (Schlosberg and Collins 2014). First, contributions to climate disruption are highly unequal. ...
... Importantly, the climate justice metanarrative has been constructed in opposition to a (perceived) mainstream approach to climate change (Schlosberg and Collins 2014). The initial climate movement saw NGOs emphasizing the realness of science behind climate change and used largely institutional channels to pressure nation states and international organizations to take actions with debates framed in terms of technical and economic feasibility (Almeida 2019). ...
How can societies deal with climate change in more just and sustainable ways? In societal debates, multiple strategic pathways for dealing with climate change compete among each other. A narrative approach has been used both as an analytical tool for studying strategic pathways and the tensions between them, as well as a tool to render such tensions more productive through the suggested development of overarching metanarratives. Despite the recent global wave of climate protests, climate movements and their various narratives have remained understudied among sustainability transition scholars. To address this gap, I aim to contribute to the recentering of movements in transition studies by investigating transformation pathway narratives within the West-European case of the Belgian climate movement. Based on interviews (n = 20) among organizers in Belgian climate movement groups throughout 2019 and 2020, I identify climate justice as an actual existing metanarrative, aimed at bottom-up systemic transformation through interlinking social and ecological struggles. While it has developed in opposition to a ‘mainstream’ metanarrative, I find that in the case studied, climate justice provides an ambiguous but common ground on which more moderate and radical interpretations can engage. Furthermore, I find four more transformation pathway narratives: climate plan, climate emergency, divestment and blockadia and shed light on the discussions within the Belgian climate movement around these narratives. A single unified (meta-)narrative might be impossible as well as undesirable. While spaces for listening and debate can render tensions more productive, creating common ground might still require sharp edges.
... Climate justice is a concept and framework that aims to bring visibility to and work against climate-fueled inequities, socially and geographically, by centering the perspectives and needs of marginalized and disproportionately-affected groups (Schlosberg and Collins 2014;Sultana 2022a). Climate justice is rooted in concepts of environmental justice in terms of its ecological analysis and practice as well as broader efforts to adopt and honor concepts of universal human rights. ...
... Climate justice is a heterogenous and ideologically contested concept for which there is no universally agreed-upon definition (Schlosberg and Collins 2014;Scandrett 2016;Trott et al. 2022). Still, efforts to advance climate justice-like the environmental justice movement before and alongside it-are united by a shared focus on 'local impacts and experience, inequitable vulnerabilities, the importance of community voice, and demands for community sovereignty and functioning' (Schlosberg and Collins 2014, p. 359). ...
Growing recognition of the multi-faceted injustices of climate change has resulted in shifting public and policy discourse around how to understand and address climate change, yet justice considerations are rarely present in climate change education (CCE). With aims of bringing visibility to existing efforts and building a foundation for more widespread justice-driven CCE, this systematic review examined how justice frameworks are being employed in a range of CCE contexts, within and beyond the classroom. Analyses of 55 peer-reviewed articles with data from 57 countries published between 2007 and 2020 demonstrate that the empirical literature on justice in CCE has grown significantly in recent years. Notably, justice-driven CCE in this review took place within and beyond STEM education settings, was fueled more by people-focused aims (e.g. advancing equity) compared to planet-focused aims (e.g. protecting the environment), and encompassed a remarkable diversity of educational processes, goals, and outcomes—with learners of all ages—across formal, community-based, and activist learning contexts. Findings have implications for scholars, educators, and practitioners across disciplines committed to educating for justice in the face of climate change.
... Climate Justice: Relationship Building and Ontological Change Groups that advocate for climate justice can be found all over the world. These climate justice organisations have grown out of the environmental justice movement, whose origins can be traced back to the 1982 protests about the disposal of PCB-contaminated soil into a landfill in North Carolina, USA (Schlosberg & Collins, 2014). The landfill was situated in a poor community of mostly African-American people and brought together environmentalists, civil rights activists and leaders of black communities to campaign against the injustice of the landfill's placement. ...
... While there were prior signals of its emergence, it was the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 that birthed the climate justice movement (Schlosberg & Collins, 2014). Climate justice is synonymous with equity: intra-and intergenerational equity; equity for all humans and equity for more-than-humans (Agyeman et al., 2016). ...
The School Strike 4 Climate New Zealand (SS4CNZ) movement have organised and led four strikes between 2019 and 2021. With each successive strike, adult support for students’ demands increased. Their most notable achievement was garnering sufficient support to pass Aotearoa New Zealand’s Zero Carbon Bill into legislation. However, tensions with SS4CNZ led to the Auckland Chapter announcing its disbandment in 2021. There were mixed responses to their decision. In this reflective essay I argue that this disbandment was a positive move forward because these youth were showing their willingness to re-build relationships with their Māori and Pacific Island activist peers. By disbanding, not only were these young leaders enabling their Māori and Pacific Island peers to lead future actions, they were acknowledging the connections between racism, colonialism and climate justice; responding to our relational crisis by demonstrating the importance of re-building robust and reciprocal relationships between humans and more-than-humans when advocating for ways to navigate towards a climate-just society.
... Climate justice recognises that impacts of climate change are spread unequally, unevenly, and disproportionately (Sultana 2021), leading to diverse forms of recognitional, distributional, cognitive, and procedural injustices. It emphasises that the burdens of change fall unequally on those who are the least responsible for creating climate change (Newell et al. 2021;Schlosberg and Collins 2014). This begs the following questions: How should these injustices be addressed, and whose voices count in the claims for justice? ...
... Although there is considerable literature on climate justice that emphasises its procedural, distributional, and intergenerational aspects, including questions of recognition (Schlosberg and Collins 2014;Newell et al. 2021), the meaning, scope, and practical implications of climate justice remain contested. Emerging literature now points towards decolonising climate justice, arguing that global North-centric frameworks of justice can potentially erode other ways of (re)conceptualising climate (in)justice and how it is experienced and realised (Álvarez and Coolsaet 2020;Newell et al. 2021;Chakraborty and Sherpa 2021). ...
As calls for climate action gain momentum, governments
and international organisations are committing to ambitious
climate targets and scaling up their climate action. In this
article, we argue that to address climate change, ‘just’ climate
action is required which moves away from portraying local
communities as ‘victims’ and/or ‘beneficiaries’ and focuses on
investing in their social and material capabilities so that they
determine their futures and pathways of change. Climate action
will have little meaning or will produce counterproductive results
unless it is mobilised to question deep-seated inequalities and
unjust framings that feed into epistemic closures and foreclose
possibilities of plural pathways towards radical social change. Drawing on our research with front-line communities in India, we emphasise the importance of processual aspects of addressing climate (in)justice. We underline why climate action must be steered from ‘below’ for transformative change, and why this
requires attention to more ‘vernacular’ forms of action
... Questions remained, however, about whether and how the conditions for DAC development might materialize, with attention by many to the equity across planning, construction, and operation phases. Skepticism over equity usually cited personal or community experiences with heavy industries, especially the fossil fuel industry, which has a well-documented history of environmental injustice (Boyce & Pastor, 2013;Schlosberg & Collins, 2014). In some cases, those negative experiences led participants to draw a line: if led by a fossil fuel company, a DAC project was not to be trusted. ...
Direct air capture (DAC) has gained traction in climate policy as a promising method for carbon dioxide removal. How – and whether – DAC should be pursued as a climate strategy and deployed as local infrastructure, however, will rely on its ability to secure social license to operate (SLO), given the frequent disconnect between broad public perceptions of technologies and perceptions among host communities. There is also a growing need for the deployment of climate infrastructure like DAC to be responsive to environmental justice (EJ) and just transition (JT) principles. However, relatively little research exists on how communities may respond to DAC deployment locally, and the EJ and JT considerations they may evoke. In this study, we use a mixed-methods approach to evaluate public and community perceptions of DAC. We find that while communities may be generally open to the idea of DAC being deployed in their communities, the conditions under which DAC is realized are likely to determine levels of acceptance and support. The most important determinants of project support are community involvement in planning and implementation and expected benefits. This is perhaps especially important for infrastructure like DAC, which offers few if any direct local benefits (i.e., clean energy or air quality improvements). Building on recent trends, policies aimed at advancing DAC could include designated resources for community involvement and benefits in order to improve the likelihood of projects securing SLO and abiding by EJ and JT principles.
... Thus, climate change impacts are not constrained to specific elements of risk within systems themselves. Rather, as vignerons, or any farmers, act to adapt to climate change, impacts disperse across social and environmental spheres depending on the social, economic, and ecological contexts within which change is experienced (Ford et al. 2013;Schlosberg and Collins 2014;Harrison et al. 2019;Poortinga et al. 2019). ...
Climate change is having complex impacts on agriculture worldwide, including viticultural systems in mountainous areas such as the canton of Ticino in southern Switzerland. Here, socio-ecological qualitative research is used to examine how vignerons are experiencing and responding to climate change. Even in wealthy Switzerland, with highly developed technical capabilities and support services, the immediate climate change impacts are driving major changes across industry, community, and place. Some change is positive in the short term, such as increased rates of grape development. Negative changes are associated with more extreme droughts, storms, and wet periods, which are increasing disease and pest control requirements. Niche adaptation opportunities exist, but as vignerons adjust their behaviors, more complex socio-ecological impacts are emerging and impacting across landscapes. Professional vignerons are adjusting their phytosanitary management systems: increasing monitoring, optimizing their chemical use, and shifting the susceptible and labor-intensive Merlot variety onto the valley floors to reduce costs. Part-time vignerons are trying to adapt, but are voicing concerns about the difficulties of the new management demands. The result is that changes in climate threaten the established regional niche of high-quality Merlot production in association with terraced landscapes. As decision-makers aim to adapt to climate change, they will need to support local learning to manage the immediate risks to both Professional and Part-time vignerons, as well as the broader risks that are dispersing across society.
... The Environmental Justice Atlas reveals cases of injustice in different parts of the world 19 and the Sabin Climate Litigation Database documents how justice is being addressed in the courts 20 . A growing literature addresses justice in solutions to environmental change including, for example, in climate mitigation and adaptation projects, the need for compensation for loss and damage, and just conservation, energy and food transitions 21 . There are also important contributions to principles of interspecies justice and our obligations to other living things 22 . ...
Living within planetary limits requires attention to justice as biophysical boundaries are not inherently just. Through collaboration between natural and social scientists, the Earth Commission defines and operationalizes Earth system justice to ensure that boundaries reduce harm, increase well-being, and reflect substantive and procedural justice. Such stringent boundaries may also affect ‘just access’ to food, water, energy and infrastructure. We show how boundaries may need to be adjusted to reduce harm and increase access, and challenge inequality to ensure a safe and just future for people, other species and the planet. Earth system justice may enable living justly within boundaries. Biophysical boundaries are not inherently just. A collaboration between social and natural scientists, the Earth Commission, defines and operationalizes Earth system justice to ensure that biophysical boundaries reduce harm, increase well-being, and reflect substantive and procedural justice.
... To summarize, climate justice involves the following for Indigenous, Black, Latinx and other impacted communities: (1) access, transparency and informed participation in climate policy decision making, implementation and accountability; (2) amelioration of the disproportionate harms of climate change and environmental degradation; and (3) the equitable distribution of economic benefits from climate policy. In other words, climate justice or climate equity 1 includes both procedural justice in terms of inclusive decision making (from coalitions to state agencies), as well as distributive justice by addressing disproportionate harms to communities of color, including harms caused by policies to address climate change, and equitably sharing policy benefits based on need (Schlosberg & Collins, 2014). This article focuses on procedural justice within coalition development and the structural, not just cultural, changes needed for shared decision making. ...
This article asks: How can climate coalitions challenge the predominantly white, political arena of the US environmental movement and become racially inclusive coalitions that advance climate justice? Methodologically, we draw on participant observation with an Oregon coalition from 2016 to 2020 and 80 interviews with: social justice, environmental justice (EJ), environmental and climate advocates; professional lobbyists (unions); state legislators and staff members. We find that racial inclusion is initially attempted through altering coalition culture and access, by (1) establishing explicitly shared values and goals in a principles document and (2) improving the racial diversification of the coalition by recruiting social and environmental justice groups and sharing resources to enable their participation. These initial steps to diversify the coalition, while insufficient, serve as a prerequisite for developing an effective and durable coalition that is racially inclusive. The cultural shifts mentioned above are a foundation, making possible structural changes in the coalition that include: (3) expanding the steering committee to add racially diverse social justice and EJ groups to leadership positions, (4) institutionalizing more robust platforms of communication that establish working networks and build trust, and (5) altering the coalition agenda to support both rural climate groups and their fight to block the Jordan Cove Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) Project and social justice groups in lobbying for climate equity in bill design. In the discussion, we argue that climate justice as an external policy goal is supported by internal structural changes for racial inclusion in the coalition.
... The fossil fuel-dominated energy system must transition to zero-carbon resources or continue to exacerbate climate change, a major threat multiplier and likely ongoing contributor to global inequality and injustice (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2014, Schlosberg and Collins 2014). Such a transition comprises two major processes: deindustrialization in the form of closing existing fossil fuel infrastructure, and industrialization in the form of dramatically expanding the zero-carbon energy system (Grubert 2020). ...
Large energy infrastructure is often socially and environmentally disruptive, even as it provides services that people have come to depend on. Residents of areas affected by energy development often note both negative and positive impacts. This reflects the multicategory nature of socioenvironmental outcomes and emphasizes the importance of careful and community-oriented decision making about major infrastructural transitions for processes like decarbonization. Quantitative tools like life cycle assessment (LCA) seek to collect and report comprehensive impact data, but even when successful, their value for decision support is limited by a lack of mechanisms to systematically engage with values-driven tradeoffs across noncommensurable categories. Sensitivity analyses designed to help decision makers and interested parties make sense of data are common in LCA and similar tools, but values are rarely explicitly addressed. This lack of attention to values – arguably the most meaningful set of decision inputs in such tools – can lead to overreliance on single issue (e.g., climate change impact) or proxy (e.g., monetized cost) outputs that reduce the value of holistic evaluations. This research presents results from preregistered hypotheses for a survey of residents of energy-producing communities in the United States (US) and Australia, with the goal of uncovering energy transition-relevant priorities by collecting empirical, quantitative data on people’s priorities for outcomes aligned with LCA. The survey was designed to identify diverse value systems, with the goal of making it easier for users to identify and consider value conflicts, potentially highlighting needs for further data collection, system redesign, or additional engagement. Notably, results reveal remarkably consistent priority patterns across communities and subgroups, suggesting that the common LCA practice of equal prioritization might be masking decision-relevant information. Although this effort was designed specifically to support research on energy transitions, future work could easily be extended more broadly.
... In 2004, academics, NGOs, and grassroots organizations gathered in Michigan to draft "The Climate Justice Declaration." The following year, a collaboration of academics and activists issued the "Durban (South Africa) Declaration on Carbon Trading," denouncing carbon trading and offset schemes as false-and inequitable-"solutions" to climate change and pointing out their negative impacts on poor people and communities of color (30). These discussions gave rise to several global alliances devoted solely to climate justice, including Climate Justice Now!, the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance, and Climate Justice Action. ...
Environmentalist, Indigenous, and agrarian and food justice movements that mobilize across and beyond national borders are demanding recognition and participation in debates and policies that shape planetary futures. We review recent social movements that challenge agendas set by corporations, elites, states, conservative movements, and some international governance institutions. We pay particular attention to novel concepts that emerged from or were popularized by these movements, such as environmental justice, climate debt, Indigenous-led conservation, food sovereignty, agroecology, extractivism, and Vivir Bien ("Living Well"). Such concepts and agendas increasingly enter international governance spaces, influence global policy debates, build innovative institutions, and converge across class, geographic, and sectoral lines. Although they face daunting obstacles-particularly the free-market zealotry that dominates international policymaking and the agribusiness, mining, energy, and other corporate-philanthropic lobbies-the visions proffered by these movements offer new possibilities for creating a world that prioritizes the intrinsic value of nature and all its beings.
... Based on this review, the paper ends with a discussion of the narratives that support community engagement in a SBE, through highlighting some of the internal contradictions in these agendas, and outlines tangible next steps to promote social (blue) justice for coastal communities in a sustainable blue economy. In this paper, social justice is understood as both a set of principles and as a social movement intended to achieve fairer process and outcomes for coastal communities in the ocean economy (sensu Schlosberg and Collins, 2014; see also Jentoft et al., 2022). . Coastal communities and the blue economy . . ...
New approaches to ocean governance for coastal communities are needed. With few exceptions, the status quo does not meet the diverse development aspirations of coastal communities or ensure healthy oceans for current and future generations. The blue economy is expected to grow to USD2.5–3 trillion by 2030, and there is particular interest in its potential to alleviate poverty in Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States, and to support a blue recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper presents a selective, thematic review of the blue economy literature to examine: (i) the opportunities and risks for coastal communities, (ii) the barriers and enablers that shape community engagement, and (iii) the strategies employed by communities and supporting organizations, which can be strengthened to deliver a ‘sustainable' blue economy and improve social justice for coastal communities. Our review finds that under business-as-usual and blue growth, industrial fisheries, large-scale aquaculture, land reclamation, mining, and oil and gas raise red flags for communities and marine ecosystems. Whereas, if managed sustainably, small-scale fisheries, coastal aquaculture, seaweed farming and eco-tourism are the most likely to deliver benefits to communities. Yet, these are also the sectors most vulnerable to negative and cumulative impacts from other sectors. Based on our evaluation of enablers, barriers and strategies, the paper argues that putting coastal communities at the center of a clear vision for an inclusive Sustainable Blue Economy and co-developing a shared and accessible language for communities, practitioners and policy-makers is essential for a more equitable ocean economy, alongside mainstreaming social justice principles and integrated governance that can bridge different scales of action and opportunity.
... While the western narrative and institutions of power continue to conceal the implications of colonialism on ecologies and confine climate action between national borders and green policy agendas, climate justice is bringing forward critical discussions that dissect marginalization, environmentalism, and the production of systemic inequalities, through the same prism (Mehan et al., 2022a;Nawratek & Mehan, 2021;Kozlowski et al., 2020;Schlosberg and Collins 2014;Pettit 2004). Climate justice forages for re-evaluating the governance system, including fossil fuel dependency, post-oil futures, fighting green gentrification, withstanding racial capitalism, racial discrimination, white supremacy, mobility injustice, and forced displacements (Sheller 2018;Vergès 2017;Jon 2021;Moore & Patel 2017). ...
Climate change poses a significant risk threatening the livelihood of people, communities, and cities worldwide. The stakes cannot be reduced to zero, so there is a constant need to re-theorize the collective action to address the climate change challenges. Doing so requires planning to reduce vulnerability to climate change. One of the most crucial challenges facing scientists, academics, citizens, and policymakers today is whether the collaborative, inclusive, and resilient climate change action can be implemented, assessed, and achieved. To respond to this question, this research aims to re-theorize, de-conceptualize, and analyze the collective effort to address the climate change challenges. First, the paper conceptualizes climate change resiliency as the ability to anticipate, prepare for, and respond effectively to climate-related risks, hazards, and threats. The existing challenges
toward implementing resilient and inclusive climate change action have been analyzed. The paper theorizes the urban commons
and collaborative governance to theorize collective efforts. This article concludes by identifying some critical determinants for the
up‐scaling of collective action to address the climate change challenges. It can be supposed that any future inclusive and resilient collective action to address climate change is based on social learning to support decision-making, emphasizing inclusion and equity, which came in line with the United Nation’s 2030 SDGs.
... These same communities are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change despite having historically contributed least to greenhouse gas emissions (Yeampierre 2020). The pattern of marginalized communities facing higher exposure to climate hazards holds true across scales, recognition of which brought climate justice to the international climate policy agenda at COP6 in 2000 (Schlosberg and Collins 2014). Educational transformation is an essential component of addressing the intersecting crises of racial injustice, economic precarity, and climate disruptions (Crow and Dabars 2015). ...
Moving beyond technocratic approaches to climate action, climate justice articulates a paradigm shift in how organizations think about their response to the climate crisis. This paper makes a conceptual contribution by exploring the potential of this paradigm shift in higher education. Through a commitment to advancing transformative climate justice, colleges and universities around the world could realign and redefine their priorities in teaching, research, and community engagement to shape a more just, stable, and healthy future. As inequitable climate vulnerabilities increase, higher education has multiple emerging opportunities to resist, reverse, and repair climate injustices and related socioeconomic and health disparities. Rather than continuing to perpetuate the concentration of wealth and power by promoting climate isolationism’s narrow focus on technological innovation and by prioritizing the financial success of alumni and the institution, colleges and universities have an opportunity to leverage their unique role as powerful anchor institutions to demonstrate climate justice innovations and catalyze social change toward a more equitable, renewable-based future. This paper explores how higher education can advance societal transformation toward climate justice, by teaching climate engagement, supporting impactful justice-centered research, embracing non-extractive hiring and purchasing practices, and integrating community-engaged climate justice innovations across campus operations. Two climate justice frameworks, Green New Deal-type policies and energy democracy, provide structure for reviewing a breadth of proposed transformational climate justice initiatives in higher education.
... According to social movement studies, climate justice is a discursive frame that allows for claims, mobilizing strategies, and protest practices to be narrated in a more intersectional and justice-oriented way (Della Porta and Parks, 2014; Schlosberg and Collins, 2014;Wright et al., 2018). Framing climate narratives through the lens of climate justice thus allows for issues, movements, and people to be aligned in a common picture-in the sense of both linking issues and struggles via intersectional campaigns and mobilizing in support of other groups or joint protest events (Benford and Snow, 2000;Della Porta and Parks, 2014). ...
The purpose of this second Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook is to systematically analyze and assess the plausibility of certain well-defined climate futures based on present knowledge of social drivers and physical processes. In particular, we assess the plausibility of those climate futures that are envisioned by the 2015 Paris Agreement, namely holding global warming to well below 2°C and, if possible, to 1.5°C, relative to pre-industrial levels (UNFCCC 2015, Article 2 paragraph 1a). The world will have to reach a state of deep decarbonization by 2050 to be compliant with the 1.5°C goal. We therefore work with a climate future scenario that combines emissions and temperature goals.
... Van klimaatverandering naar klimaatrechtvaardigheid: verhalen voor een systeemverandering van onderuit haar huidige populariteit via de vertolking door sociale bewegingen, meer bepaald als een verhaal dat ijvert voor diepgaande verandering van onderuit (Kenis en Mathijs 2014;Schlosberg en Collins 2014). Ik hanteer hierbij een narratieve lens. ...
Verhalen bepalen mee de klimaatstrijd. Tegenover een dominant verhaal van uitstootmanagement ontwikkelde zich een bewegingsverhaal van klimaatrechtvaardigheid dat door sociale strijden te linken gaat voor systeemverandering ‘van onderop’.
... La justicia climática ha sido definida de diversas maneras, pero se centra en abordar los impactos desproporcionados que tiene el cambio climático sobre las poblaciones más vulnerables y llama a la soberanía y funcionamiento comunitarios (Schlosberg y Collins 2014;Tramel 2016). Los grupos c ontemporáneos de justicia climática movilizan múltiples movimientos de justicia ambiental del Norte y Sur Global, así como de derechos de indígenas y campesinos, y se organizan como una red descentralizada de unidades semi autónomas y coordinadas (Claeys y Delgado Pugley 2017; Tormos-Aponte y García-López 2018). ...
Esta traducción del “Capítulo 14: Cooperación internacional de la contribución del Grupo de Trabajo III al Sexto Informe de Evaluación del IPCC” no es una traducción oficial del IPCC. Ha sido realizada por profesores y alumnos de la Maestría en Derecho y Economía del Cambio Climático de FLACSO Argentina con el objetivo de reflejar de la manera más precisa el lenguaje utilizado en el texto original.
Citar como: Patt, A., L. Rajamani, P. Bhandari, A. Ivanova Boncheva, A. Caparrós, K. Djemouai, I. Kubota, J. Peel, A.P. Sari, D.F. Sprinz, J. Wettestad, 2022: Cooperación internacional. En IPCC, 2022: Cambio Climático 2022: Mitigación del Cambio Climático. Contribución del Grupo de Trabajo III al Sexto Informe de Evaluación del Grupo Intergubernamental de Expertos sobre el Cambio Climático [P.R. Shukla, J. Skea, R. Slade, A. Al Khourdajie, R. van Diemen, D. McCollum, M. Pathak, S. Some, P. Vyas, R. Fradera, M. Belkacemi, A. Hasija, G. Lisboa, S. Luz, J. Malley, (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Reino Unido y Nueva York, NY, Estados Unidos. (Traducido por FLACSO Argentina) (2022).
... These insights suggest that there is relatively little research that addresses social sensitivity factors systematically and their connection to distributional aspects (Atteridge and Remling 2018). This gap is particularly salient given the well-established fact that climate change and other drivers of global change are reinforcing social injustices worldwide (Alexandrescu et al. 2021;Martinez-Alier et al. 2016;Schlosberg and Collins 2014). The vulnerability framework and its attention to sensitivity offers a platform to trace such injustices back to specific social, biophysical, and institutional preconditions, an opportunity which is yet to be untapped in the Spanish context. ...
Through a systematic review of scientific literature, we investigate the nature and the contents of vulnerability research in rural Spain. The studies reviewed (n = 137) are unevenly distributed across the country, with almost half conducted in the autonomous communities of Andalucía and Catalunya. We identify two main strands of research depending on the methodological approach (quantitative vs qualitative). The scale of analysis varies, from national to local level, while only 14% of the studies are grounded on vulnerability concepts (exposure, sensitivity, adaptive capacity) and related analytical frameworks. Climate change is the most studied driver of vulnerability, often considered in conjunction with other stressors such as environmental degradation, unsuitable policies, or unfavorable terms of trade. The studies reviewed pay minimal attention to sensitivity factors and to adaptive capacity, which often only appear in qualitative studies that focus on social systems. In the light of these findings, we identify research gaps and discuss the ambivalent role of rural development policy in either enabling or hindering adaptive capacity in Spanish rural areas.
... Foucault (2008, 313) mentioned different governmentalities can "overlap, lean on each other, challenge each other, and struggle with each other". We find many academics, NGOs, activists, and some states, draw from a governmentality of morality or justice, which can be traced to how climate change was first framed during its emergence as a governance object (Oels 2013) and the older environmental justice movement (Mohai, Pellow and Timmons Roberts 2009;Schlosberg and Collins 2014). Although neoliberal governmentality undergirds climate governance (Ciplet and Roberts 2017), there are multiple governmentalities present. ...
Loss and damage is the "third pillar" of international climate governance alongside mitigation and adaptation. When mitigation and adaptation fail, losses and damages occur. Scholars have been reacting to international political discourse centred around governing actual or potential severe losses and damages from climate change. Large gaps exist in relation to understanding the underlying power dimensions, rationalities, knowledges, and technologies of loss and damage governance and science. We draw from a Foucauldian-inspired governmentality framework to argue there is an emerging governmentality of loss and damage. We find, among other things, that root causes of loss and damage are being obscured, Western knowledge and technocratic interventions are centred, and there are colonial presupposed subjectivities of Global South victims of climate change, which are being contested by people bearing the brunt of the climate crisis. We propose future directions for critical research on climate change loss and damage.
... Climate change raises issues of global distributive justice because those countries that have benefited the least from fossil fuel use are facing the most severe impacts of climate change (Okereke & Coventry, 2016), and it is a matter of environmental justice wherein the production of fossil fuels contaminate fenceline communities (Johnson & Cushing, 2020). Indeed, the justice implications of climate change are myriad, intersecting larger issues of racism, colonialism, sovereignty, and the functioning of the global economy (Ranganathan & Bratman, 2019;Schlosberg & Collins, 2014;Sultana, 2022). ...
The imperative of climate change has inspired hundreds of cities across the United States to act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Yet in some contexts, urban greening and climate action have exacerbated social injustices, spawning green gentrification or increasing the cost of living. In response, cities are beginning to shift their governing institutions to foster collaboration between departments and build local capacities while leaning into the interconnected nature of climate change mitigation, housing affordability, and social justice. Through a cross-case comparison of Denver, Colorado and Salt Lake City, Utah, two cities committed to climate action while facing severe housing crises, this study argues that cities are entering a new phase of urban climate action, one that can build a more sustainable and equitable urban environment for all.
... As we are focused on climate-related buyouts, we consider justice as referring to environmental and climate justice, both of which closely connect to our topic. Environmental and climate justice both encompass many subcategories of justice; here we focus on distributive justice (how costs and benefits are allocated within a community [Rawls 1971]), and procedural justice (fairness in decision-making processes [Schlosberg and Collins 2014]). Closely related are Kraan et al.'s concept of interactional justice in buyouts, which concerns "the quality of interpersonal treatment people receive through a process" (Kraan et al. 2021, 482); and recognitional justice, or how groups experience justice-related issues, such as climate change, and their right to express those differences (Newell et al. 2021, 6). ...
Climate-related property buyouts increasingly affect people, communities, and planning systems, signaling the need for increased attention from practitioners and scholars. We review existing evidence about three phases of a tripartite process of equitable relocation in the United States: buyouts, relocation, and use of vacated land, each with potential to benefit or harm residents and communities. Seeing these pieces as interconnected and embedded in historical context allows us to reduce climate threats while addressing existing inequity. Future research, aimed at filling the gaps we have identified in this review, will be an important part of envisioning a new way forward.
... [1][2]. We build on a large literature that assesses social changes and climate impacts and mitigations through a justice lens (see Table S1 for key definitions) to highlight how choices over pathways and interventions depend on clearer understandings of stakeholder tensions (13)(14)(15) and the relationships between mitigating climate change and ameliorating social injustice (4,(16)(17)(18). We then examine current challenges at the interface of climate change science and social justice, providing a context, baseline and benchmark for future directions, before presenting realworld examples where emissions reduction and wellbeing improvements have occurred together and discussing a suite of approaches and interventions that center justice-based mitigation of climate change. ...
... Besides, activits and groups can have different philosophical foundations. There are groups and organizations rooted in more radical ideas from political ecology and environmental justice that deeply criticize modernity (based on globalization, capitalism, and industrialization) as the source of environmental degradation, and that recognize the failure of the mainstream political system to adequately address them (Berny and Rootes 2018;Giugni and Grasso 2015;Van Der Heijen 1999;Mihaylov and Perkins 2015;Schlosberg and Collins 2014). There are also groups based on ecological modernization and sustainable development that try to work within the established socio-political system to minimize environmental problems and some of its pervasive socioeconomic consequences (Berny and Rootes 2018;Giugni and Grasso 2015;Van Der Heijen 1999). ...
NGO is a wide-ranging category encompassing several types of organizations from civil society. They reflect the diversity of interests present in society and are based on good intentions of promoting positive social change. The socio-environmental NGOs working in the Amazon have been the target of misperception, intentional defamatory campaigns, or just a lack of knowledge about who they are and what they do. Therefore, this research shed some light on the socioenvironmental NGOs working in the Amazon, looking behind the curtains of the NGOs' work. It employed a multi-method qualitative analysis, weaving together “NGOgraphy,” narrative, and participatory action research. The results are based on in-depth interviews, participatory observations, social network analysis, and an online survey. The study shows that the action behind the scenes (being and acting as NGOs) is key to what happens on the main stage (NGOs’ intervention). The research revealed (i) the sources of identities and framing practices of socioenvironmental NGOs; (ii) the forms of funding and fundraising available to NGOs and their effects on how NGOs’ function; (iii) the forms of collaborative partnerships and networks that NGOs develop; and (iv) the means that NGOs have to reflect and learn about their practices and context of intervention. 18
Additionally, it addressed interconnections between the four main themes as dynamics of conservation and development and organizational structure in which NGOs operate. Overall, NGOs are constantly dealing with limitations of project-based action and seeking autonomy in their fundraising; Collaboration is an inherent practice, but NGOs face challenges for crossing organizational culture boundaries to engage with others; Social and organizational learning is intrinsic but not well institutionalized, systematized, and shared. However, NGOs have developed strategies to mitigate and adapt to structural limitations and take advantage of the resources and opportunities available, such as diversification of funders and approaches, engaging in collaborative networks managed by boundary-spanners, and developing and participating in intra and inter-organizational spaces of dialogue and exchange of experiences. These results demonstrate the resilience of NGOs. They have consolidated themselves as a key stakeholder in the socio-environmental movement in the Amazon and persisted even in the face of multiple adversities.
... In this paper, we provide an overview of potential climate mitigation strategies and associated justice consequences across a range of contexts ( Figure S1) and present a framework that highlights how climate change drivers and impacts ripple through spatial, temporal, and social dimensions (Figures 1-2). . We build on a large literature that assesses social changes and climate impacts and mitigations through a justice lens (see Table S1 for key definitions) to highlight how choices over pathways and interventions depend on clearer understandings of stakeholder tensions (13)(14)(15) and the relationships between mitigating climate change and ameliorating social injustice (4,(16)(17)(18). We then examine current challenges at the interface of climate change science and social justice, providing a context, baseline and benchmark for future directions, before presenting real-world examples where emissions reduction and wellbeing improvements have occurred together and discussing a suite of approaches and interventions that center justice-based mitigation of climate change. ...
... In doing so, cities become real-world 'laboratories' to test new mobility solutions and foster sustainable transitions of mobility and energy (Kern 2019). This adds another layer to the debate that has recently gained traction under the concept of "climate justice" (Bulkeley et al. 2014;Schlosberg and Collins 2014). With this conception of the issues surrounding AAQ, the 2002 EAP encapsulates the EU's reason for becoming active in the field of AAQ policy, that is, to preserve or reinstate a normatively desirable state that promotes livable conditions for citizens and the preservation of the natural environment. ...
EU environmental policies such as the Ambient Air Quality Directive 2008/50 are highly relevant in this age of the looming climate crisis and interconnected sustainable transitions. However, implementation efforts such as low-emission zones, road pricing, and driving bans affect citizens in heterogenous situations and in ways that evoke questions of socioecological justice. This has resulted in an increasingly polarized reluctance to respective governance across Europe. The EU policy implementation literature often omits these less clearly operationalized norms that EU policies transport and pays little attention to how stakeholders in cities discursively and practically translate EU directives. Constructivist norm research underlines the importance of ‘localizing’ by highlighting that justice does matter for norm translation. The environmental justice concept has, however, not been systematically introduced and referenced in the norm research literature. This article offers a heuristic to address this research gap by combining a translation perspective from International Relations norm research with an environmental justice lens. Following the journey of the Air Quality Directive 2008/50, we ask how urban implementation configures the Directive’s environmental justice dimension and why this is important for effective and sustainable EU governance. Empirically, we focus on action plans and participation processes regarding Directive 2008/50 in Brussels, Glasgow, and Hamburg. As a result, we show that EU environmental governance unfolds at the local level as a dynamic contestation of different distributive justice claims that then translate into concrete policies. The analysis indicates that those policies must procedurally integrate local knowledge and identity formation to enable comprehensively just sustainable transformations.
... B. entlang sozioökonomischer Kriterien sowie globaler und lokaler "color lines" und Geschlechterdifferenzen (siehe z. B. Schlosberg & Collins, 2014). ...
Kapitel 2 systematisiert entlang von vier Perspektiven in den Sozialwissenschaften weit verbreitete Theorien zur Analyse und Gestaltung von Strukturen klimafreundlichen Lebens. Das Kapitel möchte Leser_innen des Berichts bewusst machen, mit wie grundlegend unterschiedlichen Zugängen Forscher_innen Strukturen klimafreundlichen Lebens analysieren. Dies ist wichtig, um zu verstehen, dass es nie nur eine, sondern immer mehrere Perspektiven auf Strukturen klimafreundlichen Lebens gibt. Dieses Bewusstsein hilft, die Komplexität der Sozialwissenschaften und damit die Komplexität der Aufgabe – Strukturen für ein klimafreundliches Leben zu gestalten – zu erfassen. Unterschiedliche Zugänge zu sehen, bedeutet auch, ein besseres Verständnis von konfligierenden Problemdiagnosen, Zielhorizonten und Gestaltungsoptionen zu entwickeln und – idealerweise – damit umgehen zu können.
Faith actors shape understandings of what climate change is and what responses ought to be pursued at local and global levels and in civil society and policy arenas alike. As an issue which can be described and responded to in multiple and varied ways and given faith actors’ role and influence in local and global civil society, this article aims to provide a better understanding of the ways in which faith actors use framings of climate change. Framing is taken to be a broad notion encompassing the ways climate change is defined by faith actors and how it becomes embedded into the language of their faith, operational structures, and development work. Drawing on an analysis of data collected from the websites of 50 faith actors, we found that 45 situated climate change within moral and religious frameworks and 41 emphasized the effects on and effects of humans. Climate change is taken to be a moral and socio-political issue, and by 18 as a justice issue, on which humans have an imperative to act. Despite their diversity, the results indicate a distinctively faith-based ability to situate climate change in moral and religious frameworks whilst remaining connected to the practical effects thereof.
Increasing recognition of the multi-faceted injustices of climate change has led to growing interest in the actions people can take to advance climate justice (CJ). Yet, within the empirical literature on climate change action by everyday people, limited research has considered climate justice as a framework for action. To explore the current state of the literature on this critical topic, this systematic review examined 74 peer-reviewed articles (2008–2020) focused on CJ action. Within this rapidly-growing literature, we found that – in contrast to traditional definitions of action, which often emphasize individual behavioural shifts with consequences for the environment – people’s involvement in CJ action was largely framed as a collective pursuit with consequences for humanity. Moreover, in this multidisciplinary literature with data collected across 69 countries, CJ action was employed by children, youth, adults, and elders in diverse forms – from activism (e.g. protests) to community-based initiatives (e.g. restoration projects) – aimed at systemic change to prevent future climate-driven harms.
This paper seeks to examine how Australian environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs) communicate about and mobilise their supporters for climate justice. ENGOs play an important role in raising awareness and changing values, attitudes and behaviours related to climate justice. However, while a number of Australian ENGOs have begun incorporating language around climate justice in their communications, it remains unclear how they are conceptualised and enacted. Using data collected from 619 ENGO websites and 149 grant applications, we examine how ENGOs describe climate justice and the collective action frames they use to mobilise action. We found that while few ENGOs provided detailed explanations of climate justice on their websites, they primarily frame climate injustice as a procedural and distributive problem. The fossil fuel sector was most commonly identified as the cause of climate injustice, and First Nations communities most commonly affected. ENGOS consistently linked specific climate justice dimensions to relevant issues and solutions, suggesting a sophisticated understanding of how climate justice can be enacted. However, they primarily proposed incremental tactics involving education, solidarity and allyship behaviours, rather than radical actions through which to drive a transformative agenda of social, political or economic change. We conclude the paper with a discussion of applied implications for ENGOs and suggestions for future research.
We are very happy to publish this issue of the International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research. The International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research is a peer-reviewed open-access journal committed to publishing high-quality articles in the field of education. Submissions may include full-length articles, case studies and innovative solutions to problems faced by students, educators and directors of educational organisations.
To learn more about this journal, please visit the website http://www.ijlter.org.
We are grateful to the editor-in-chief, members of the Editorial Board and the reviewers for accepting only high quality articles in this issue.
We seize this opportunity to thank them for their great collaboration. The Editorial Board is composed of renowned people from across the world. Each paper is reviewed by at least two blind reviewers.
We will endeavour to ensure the reputation and quality of this journal with this issue.
This paper asks how the pandemic has affected climate governance, with a specific focus on just transition in cities. We respond to Westman and Castán Broto’s (Citation2021) challenge that three assumptions are frequently reproduced in the urban climate governance literature and ask: (1) Are social justice and environmental sustainability separated? (2) Does a sectoral perspective on cities constrain conceptions of climate justice? and (3) Is there action rather than just plans? We address these questions by studying three cities in the South West of England (Bristol, Bath, and Exeter) that have expressed aspirations for rapid and just transition to net zero. There are promising signs of climate action, although the pandemic slowed it down somewhat. Climate justice is not sufficiently embedded in plans or actions. Commitment to just transition is present but partial and often unspecified. Social justice and ecological sustainability are too often treated as separate goals, more likely to come into conflict with each other, than addressed jointly. Too much climate work in cities takes place in silos around energy and transport but separate from other sectors. There is a notable failure to engage with civil society for a just transition. We conclude that for cities to truly implement a just transition, better engagement with grassroots actors from across sectors and parts of society is necessary. The development of tools which support cities to analyse the complex interplay of distributional, recognitional, participatory and restorative aspects of justice could be an important part of delivering this change.
To promote a social-ecological transformation, the four destructive industries that most threaten our livelihoods must be transformed: These are energy, transport, industrial agriculture (including agribusiness), and security/the military-industrial complex. In exacerbating the current multi-faceted crisis, their interdependencies and relations with global finance and the tech sector are particularly noteworthy.
Experimentalism’s newfound prominence in relation to climate-change action invites questions—integral to this special issue—about whether it is capable of meeting the transformational challenges that societies face. Answers require greater clarity regarding what experimentalism is, and is not. To address this, I first conceptualize the available alternatives. Drawing from John Dewey’s influential account, these alternatives can appropriately be understood as “absolutist.” I argue that both policy insiders’ plans for carbon pricing and trading schemes and outsiders’ radical vanguardist visions fit here, each offering the false promise of a singular correct criteria by which to formulate and evaluate strategies for change. By contrast, experimentalism can be understood as a rich and promising method. While critics often characterize it as modeled on voluntary lifestyle initiatives, which can readily co-exist within a larger unsustainable order, an understanding of experimentalism ought not be limited to individualized or depoliticized projects. Properly understood, I argue that it includes approaches that can be scalable and political in ways that might foster systemic change.
Based on the 2030 United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it is urgent to effectively address the climate change’s urgency linked to all other 16 SDGs. This issue mainly reflects the progress made toward achieving the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG 13 binding targets including improving education and public awareness-raising mechanisms for raising capacities of management, participation, mitigation, and adaptation strategies especially focusing on marginalized communities. The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as the COP26 summit (UNFCCC), highlighted this importance by bringing 25,000 delegates from 200 countries together in order to enhance international ambition toward mitigating climate change as outlined in the Paris agreement.
Coastal Virginia, a region with economic and strategic significance at the state and national level, has been experiencing the highest sea-level rise (SLR) on the Atlantic coast of the United States. This has been accompanied by a variety of climate hazards such as flooding and more frequent storms, initiating adaptation planning and decision-making on multiple governance levels. A spatial understanding of climate risk and its associations with socioeconomic vulnerabilities raises essential questions about the underlying roots of such associations and can help local governments prioritize social vulnerabilities in their adaptation efforts. Using coastal flooding as a climate stressor in this region, this paper conducts analyses that strive to help policymakers more effectively utilize social vulnerability in adaptation planning. The analysis reveals significant associations between climate risk, represented by flood risk, and social vulnerability measures such as poverty, access to infrastructure, education, and housing in certain parts of coastal Virginia. The paper then discusses how associations between vulnerability and climate risk in the region could influence policymaking on the local and state level. This research presents several empirical relationships that raise important questions regarding the drivers of social equity in the face of climate adaptation in coastal Virginia. The methodology developed in this study may be modified to assess social equity in climate adaptation in other coastal communities in the United States and possibly other countries. Such modification can help to illuminate the associations between location-specific social vulnerabilities, such as social safety net policies, and climate risks.
Climate change is happening and it will have severe effects on human wellbeing and prosperity. These natural hazards will affect coastal, rural and urban areas. Besides effects on biodiversity and humans also property might be damaged or decrease in value. This requires disaster management, ranging from prevention to recovery. In order to manage the adverse effects, measures to increase resilience are necessary. These measures can be stimulated or done by the government, or by citizens themselves. This chapter focuses on the role of property rights in contributing to resilience. It discusses what property rights are—in common law and civil law systems, infringements of property rights, the remedies against these infringements and finally it reflects on the situation that natural hazards cause damage to property and different recovery mechanisms. The notion of property rights is placed in the wider context of justice.
Now, more than ever, there is a pressing need to focus overtly on justice issues in energy affairs as part of the socio-technical reimagining of energy futures. With reference to the energy justice and Just Transitions literatures - two popularised and increasingly intertwined concepts - this paper analyses how justice is conceptualised in policy practice through a case study analysis of energy policymaking in Scotland. It does so by drawing upon the analysis of 6 expert interviews and 148 legislative and government documents published between 2010 and 2020. Through the lens of this case study, the paper makes three contributions. First, it responds to appeals in the energy justice scholarship for practical applicability. Second, the paper re-grounds these justice literatures in political and economic realities within the Scottish case study, providing recommendations for academia, Scottish policy and wider contexts. Three, it reveals rich empirical detail. Throughout the analysis, four key thematic categories emerged, each articulating the manifestation of justice concerns in Scottish energy policy: affordability and fuel poverty, forms of recognition, energy in relation to political interests and decision-making, and the Just Transition as a cross-cutting theme.
Chapter 5 (Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation),
explores how mitigation interacts with meeting human needs and access to services. It explores, inter alia: sustainable production and consumption; patterns of development and indicators of wellbeing; the role of culture, social norms, practices and behaviour changes; the sharing economy and circular economy; and policies facilitating behavioural and lifestyle change.
This chapter is part of the Working Group III contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Electronic copies of this chapter are available from the IPCC website www.ipcc.ch; and https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_Chapter05.pdf
This paper presents an overview of emerging research at the Manifest Data Lab a collective of artists and climate scientists who employ climate data experimentally in public settings. We discuss one of our projects The Carbon Chronicles, a reverse-engineered climate data set, projected on prominent public buildings in London during the period of COP26. Our approach examines the potential of climate data visualisations to operate as a public form that surface issues of climate justice and historic responsibilities. We report on the project’s methodological framing, production and associated artistic strategies.
Decisions about climate change adaptation are informed by technical information, but they are also shaped by social and political factors and impacted communities. Given the realities of a changing climate, more research is needed to examine how technically trained practitioners and other actors describe their work in relation to social and political factors. This article contributes to knowledge on this topic by analyzing the narratives of 62 organizational actors in coastal Louisiana. Actors include scientists, engineers, modelers, planners, project administrators, government staff, and non‐profit employees working on climate adaptation and coastal risk reduction projects outlined in Louisiana's Coastal Master Plan. While scholars critique the Master Plan as overly technocratic, I show that people weave morals and values into narratives about science. However, I show how the motivations of acting boldly, morally, and urgently in the face of emergency clash with climate justice. Some individuals within these organizations do advocate for reforming or rethinking Master Plan projects to better serve coastal communities; however, these individuals also face resistance from colleagues who frame this work as secondary or outside of their organizational purview. To conclude, I argue that research connecting technical aspects of climate adaptation planning to power and social justice outcomes has the potential to bridge disciplinary divides.
South Africa has a coal‐based energy system and extractive economy, largely responsible for its high emission levels relative to countries with similar GDP. This extractive, coal‐based economy began during British colonisation and today shows few signs of transitioning rapidly to limit climate change. This paper interrogates the role of coloniality in climate delay, given that colonisation is responsible for establishing fossil fuel dependence in South Africa. Combining theory on decolonisation, specifically colonial hierarchies of power, with a critical discourse analysis, this research uses interview and policy data to show how colonial power hierarchies can lead to climate delay in South Africa, through normalising emissions intensive development and silencing alternatives. In doing so, it highlights the need to recognise the colonial foundations of climate change and the potential for a coalition between decolonisation and climate action to motivate for radical change both in South Africa and at a global level.
Countries all over the world are experiencing the devastating havoc of climate change. Drastic efforts directed at integrating climate change education into the school curriculum in South African Secondary schools have been unsuccessful due to a lack of training support for teachers teaching Climate Change Education in secondary schools. The purpose of this paper was to explore the role of teacher capacitation programs in assisting Geography teacher to integrate climate change education in their lessons. Shulman’s Model of Pedagogical Reasoning served as theoretical lenses for the study. Five secondary schools out of twenty which participated in the five days’ training program conducted by one higher education institution were purposefully selected. Data for the study was generated through one-on-one semi-structured interviews conducted with five participating Geography teachers in the selected schools according to the geographical location and close proximity to the training provider. It emerged from the data that teachers were lacking content and pedagogical knowledge on Climate Change Education and this capacitation program assisted in bridging that gap. The study concludes that training programs were according to selected Geography teachers’ views responsible for the improved pedagogical practices in the classroom. It is therefore recommended that teacher professional development programs on Climate Change Education for Geography teachers be organized on a continuous basis.
The risk profile of air pollution generates multiple meanings of justice for diverse stakeholders. We examined 535 articles from two Indian newspapers published between 2017 and 2020 and obtained 13 concepts of justice pertinent to ambient air pollution in Delhi. Employing the theoretical perspective of environmental justice, we observed the prevalence of procedural and distributive justice discourses with dominant participation from non-governmental organizations and academic institutions. Recognition justice emerged the most underrepresented of all discourses. We used Discourse Network Analysis to reveal the prominence of Indian citizens, the Supreme Court of India, and farmers in the justice debate, and an overall restricted participation of the government bodies. Our findings highlight polarization among the academic and the non-academic actors on the disproportionate effect of air pollution. For air pollution mitigation in Delhi, we suggest organized and inclusive participation by diverse stakeholders in decision-making, acknowledging socio-cultural differences among populations.
This review examines the interdisciplinary literature on the relationship between climate change and place. The concept of place is of interest to both humanistic geographers and environmental psychologists, who examine the ways in which individuals and groups interact with physical and cultural landscapes to form a sense of place and place attachments. As a multiscalar phenomenon that is global in its causes but local in its impacts, climate change presents several challenges to the concept of place. The relevant issues include 1) the extent to which climate-change impacts can be directly experienced, 2) the ways in which local place attachments can facilitate or impede adaptation to climate change, and 3) the grounding of climate-change mitigation in place. Drawing on literature from Earth science, human geography, and environmental psychology, the review explores how the global conceptualization of the environment prevalent in climate-change discourses can undermine notions of place, how deep connections to place can enhance the detection and attribution of climate change and contribute to climate resilience, and how climate activist movements reconcile the multiple spatial scales of climate change.
Communities resisting large coal mining projects navigate the significant tensions between imperatives of urgent climate action and economic growth in complex and contingent ways. Drawing on empirical research in a mining region of Central-Eastern India, this paper examines how the changing ‘agrarian’ context of rural livelihoods and household reproduction within mining-affected communities shapes the motivations of local anti-coal struggles, and the articulation of climate-change related concerns within them. It argues that such a conceptualization of political contestations over coal extraction points to crucial possibilities for building broader counter-hegemonic movements for more inclusive ‘just transitions’ away from coal.
Nations around the world are considering strategies to mitigate the severe impacts of climate change predicted to occur in the twenty-first century. Many countries, however, lack the wealth, technology, and government institutions to effectively cope with climate change. This study investigates the varying degrees to which developing and developed nations will be exposed to changes in three key variables: temperature, precipitation, and runoff. We use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis to com-pare current and future climate model predictions on a country level. We then compare our calculations of climate change exposure for each nation to several metrics of political and economic well-being. Our results indicate that the impacts of changes in precipitation and runoff are distributed relatively equally between developed and developing nations. In contrast, we confirm research suggesting that developing nations will be affected far more severely by changes in temperature than developed nations. Our results also suggest that this unequal impact will persist throughout the twenty-first century. Our analysis further indicates that the most significant temperature changes will occur in politically unstable coun-tries, creating an additional motivation for developed countries to actively engage with developing nations on climate mitigation strategies.
Climate Justice' is the name of the new movement that best fuses a variety of progressive political-economic and political-ecological currents to combat the most serious threat humanity and most other species face in the 21 st century. The time is opportune to dissect knowledge production and resistance formation against hegemonic climate policy making. One reason is the ongoing fracturing of elite power – including acquiescence by large environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) -in era of extreme global state-failure and market-failure. The inability of global elite actors to solve major environmental, geopolitical, social and economic problems puts added emphasis on the need for a climate justice philosophy and ideology, principles, strategies and tactics. One challenge along that route is to establish the most appropriate climate justice narratives (since a few are contra-indicative to core climate justice traditions), what gaps exist in potential climate justice constituencies, and which alliances are moving climate justice politics forward. This can be done, in part, through case studies that illustrate approaches to climate injustice spanning campaigns and institutional critique. But it is through positive messaging and proactive traditions of climate justice that the movement will gain most momentum for the crucial period ahead.
Environmental justice has been a central concern in a range of disciplines, and both the concept and its coverage have expanded substantially in the past two decades. I examine this development in three key ways. First, I explore how early work on environmental justice pushed beyond many boundaries: it challenged the very notion of ‘environment’, examined the construction of injustice beyond inequity, and illustrated the potential of pluralistic conceptions of social justice. More recently, there has been a spatial expansion of the use of the term, horizontally into a broader range of issues, vertically into examinations of the global nature of environmental injustices, and conceptually to the human relationship with the non-human world. Further, I argue that recent extensions of the environmental justice frame move the discourse into a new realm – where environment and nature are understood to create the conditions for social justice.
Society's response to every dimension of global climate change is
mediated by culture. We analyse new research across the social sciences
to show that climate change threatens cultural dimensions of lives and
livelihoods that include the material and lived aspects of culture,
identity, community cohesion and sense of place. We find, furthermore,
that there are important cultural dimensions to how societies respond
and adapt to climate-related risks. We demonstrate how culture mediates
changes in the environment and changes in societies, and we elucidate
shortcomings in contemporary adaptation policy.
In light of arguments that citizen science has the potential to make environmental knowledge and policy more robust and democratic, this article inquires into the factors that shape the ability of citizen science to actually influence scientists and decision makers. Using the case of community-based air toxics monitoring with "buckets," it argues that citizen science's effectiveness is significantly influenced by standards and standardized practices. It demonstrates that, on one hand, standards serve a boundary-bridging function that affords bucket monitoring data a crucial measure of legitimacy among experts. On the other hand, standards simultaneously serve a boundary-policing function, allowing experts to dismiss bucket data as irrelevant to the central project of air quality assessment. The article thus calls attention to standard setting as an important site of intervention for citizen science-based efforts to democratize science and policy.
In this article, we outline the important role that environmental justice organizations played in the development of AB 32, California's landmark climate change legislation (AB 32) in ensuring that a wide range of environmental justice ideas were incorporated into policy. We distinguish between the formal elements contained in the legislation and the discursive impacts, particularly in relation to public health concerns and about cap and trade and market mechanisms. Drawing from interviews, public documents, and legislative archives, we document the process by which these diverse environmental justice elements were incorporated into AB 32 to ask a seemingly simple question. Is California really "best in show" when it comes to climate and environmental justice policy? The complex politics involved in the drafting and passage of the legislation show to what extent environmental justice organizations played in AB 32's passage. We then argue that understanding the contentiousness in how AB 32 was drafted lends insight and context to the ongoing conflicts over the implementation of AB 32, specifically the role of cap and trade and market mechanisms more generally. Given the historical and continuing prominence of California in national and environmental policy development, the intersection of environmental justice movements with the development of state policy, described here, has larger implications for the broader climate justice movement and the complicated engagement between social movements and policy-making.
This article suggests that three widely shared commonsense principles of fairness or equity converge upon the same general answer to the question of how the costs of dealing with a global environmental challenge like climate change could be distributed internationally. The first of these principles is that when a party has in the past taken an unfair advantage of others by imposing costs upon them without their consent, those who have been unilaterally put at a disadvantage are entitled to demand that in the future the offending party shoulder burdens that are unequal at least to the extent of the unfair advantage previously taken, in order to restore equality. The second is that, among a number of parties, all of whom are bound to contribute to some common endeavour, the parties who have the most resources normally should contribute the most to the endeavour. The third commonsense principle is that, when a) some people have less than enough for a decent human life, b) other people have more than enough, and c) the total resources available are so great that everyone could have at least enough without preventing some people from still retaining considerably more than others have, it is unfair not to guarantee everyone at least an adequate minimum.
This article uses social movement theory to analyze environmental justice rhetoric. It argues that the environmental justice frame is a master frame that uses discourses about injustice as an effective mobilizing tool. The article identifies an environmental justice paradigm and compares it with the new environmental paradigm. In addition, the article discusses why the environmental justice movement grew so fast and why its adherents find the environmental justice frame so appealing. During the past decade, environmental justice thought has emerged as a major part of the environmental discourse. Though much has been written on the envi- ronmental justice movement (EJM), attention is focused on case studies, analyz- ing the spatial distribution of environmental hazards, and examining policy for- mulation. Despite the fact that the EJM has had profound effects on environmental research, policy making, and the environmental movement, little attention has been paid to the ideological foundations of the EJM. In essence, Why did this discourse and movement arise now? What are its antecedents? What are its underlying principles, and how are these related to the dominant environmental discourse? This article argues that environmental justice thought represents a new paradigm—the environmental justice paradigm (EJP). The article analyzes the rise of the EJP. First, it examines the social construction of environmental problems, and then it traces the development of the major envi- ronmental paradigms, showing how the EJP evolved out of these and other bod- ies of thought. The article also examines the new dimensions of environmental thought that the EJP introduces and how the paradigm is changing the environ- mental discourse. This article will help us understand how and why the EJP arose, and why it has had such a significant impact on the environmental move- ment in such a short time. The article views paradigms as social constructions; that is, they are ideological packages expressing bodies of thought that change over time and according to the actors developing the paradigms.
Environmental problems do not affect everyone equally. Environmental injustice occurs whenever innocent people bear disproportionate environmental risks, have unequal access to goods like clean air, or have unequal voice in imposition of environmental risks. Most minorities and poor people are victims of environmental injustice, either because of their increased health risks or because of the way their rights are limited, even in a democracy. 40,000 people die each year from pesticides that are mostly manufactured in the U.S., but banned in the U.S.and used abroad. And even in the U.S., 80 % of all hazardous‐waste facilities are sited in minority neighborhoods. But should everyone have equal rights to breathe clean air or drink clean water, independent of income? This book argues “yes.” Each chapter gives a detailed analysis of how and why a particular environmental‐ justice (E.J.) value is threatened. The book discusses democracy, distributive justice, participative justice, equality, procedural justice, informed consent, duties to future generations, equity, paternalism, just compensation, moral heroism, and citizens's responsibilities for E.J. Using case studies focusing on offshore oil, Appalachian coal, California farmland, Louisiana hazardous facilities, Nevada nuclear waste dumps, exploitation of indigenous people, African oil drilling, workplace risks, and shipment of banned products to developing nations, the author shows how flawed scientific methods, flawed ethics, and flawed policy contribute to environmental injustice. The final two chapters argue for ordinary citizens's duties to fight against environmental injustice, and it suggests some strategies for doing so.
Social movements take shape in relation to the kind of state they face, while, over time, states are transformed by the movements they both incorporate and resist. Social movements are central to democracy and democratization. This book examines the interaction between states and environmentalism, emblematic of contemporary social movements. The analysis covers the entire sweep of the modern environmental era that begins in the 1970s, emphasizing the comparative history of four countries: the US, UK, Germany, and Norway, each of which captures a particular kind of interest representation. Interest groups, parties, mass mobilizations, protest businesses, and oppositional public spheres vary in their weight and significance across the four countries. The book explains why the US was an environmental pioneer around 1970, why it was then eclipsed by Norway, why Germany now shows the way, and why the UK has been a laggard throughout. Ecological modernization and the growing salience of environmental risks mean that environmental conservation can now emerge as a basic priority of government, growing out of entrenched economic and legitimation imperatives. The end in view is a green state, on a par with earlier transformations that produced first the liberal capitalist state and then the welfare state. Any such transformation can be envisaged only to the extent environmentalism maintains its focus as a critical social movement that confronts as well as engages the state. © J. S. Dryzek, D. Downes, H. K. Hernes, C. Hunold, and D. Schlosberg 2003. All rights reserved.
Allen Thompson is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Oregon State University. Jeremy Bendik-Keymer is Elmer G. Beamer-Hubert H. Schneider Professor in Ethics and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of The Ecological Life: Discovering Citizenship and a Sense of Humanity. © 2012 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All rights reserved.
In this cutting-edge volume, leading scholars examine a diverse range of environmental inequalities from around the world. •Shows how far the field has moved beyond its original focus on uneven distributions of pollution in the USA. •Considers the influence of critical geographical and social theory on environmental justice studies. •Examines a range of possibilities for future research directions. •Explores the challenges of investigating and pursuing environmental justice at a time of rapid economic and environmental change.
It is now widely accepted that the world’s climate is undergoing some profound and long-standing changes. One of the most authoritative sources of information about global climate change is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In its most recent report, the Fourth Assessment Report, the IPCC confirmed that the Earth’s climate is getting warmer and is projected to increase in temperature. It concluded that the Earth has warmed by 0.74 degrees Celsius in the last 100 years and that, furthermore, that “[t]he rate of warming averaged over the last 50 years (0.13°C ± 0.03°C per decade) is nearly twice that for the last 100 years.” It devises six different scenarios. According to these six scenarios the likely increase in temperature ranges from 1.1°C to 6.4°C and the likely increase in sea-level ranges from 0.18 metres to 0.59 metres. The IPCC’s reports reflect the research of hundreds of climate scientists and represent the most comprehensive and thorough account of the causes and impacts of climate change as well as what mitigation and adaptation is necessary. It does bear noting, however, that some distinguished climate scientists predict more dramatic changes to the Earth. Stefan Rahmstorf, to give one example, argues that sea levels may rise by more than the IPCC’s projections. He argues that by 2100 they may have increased by between 0.5 to 1.4 metres compared to 1990 levels. James Hansen similarly has long drawn attention to the possibility of more serious climate scenarios.
The impacts of climate change are already being felt. Learning how to live with these impacts is a priority for human development. In this context, it is too easy to see adaptation as a narrowly defensive task - protecting core assets or functions from the risks of climate change. A more profound engagement, which sees climate change risks as a product and driver of social as well as natural systems, and their interaction, is called for. Adaptation to Climate Change argues that, without care, adaptive actions can deny the deeper political and cultural roots that call for significant change in social and political relations if human vulnerability to climate change associated risk is to be reduced. This book presents a framework for making sense of the range of choices facing humanity, structured around resilience (stability), transition (incremental social change and the exercising of existing rights) and transformation (new rights claims and changes in political regimes). The resilience-transition-transformation framework is supported by three detailed case study chapters. These also illustrate the diversity of contexts where adaption is unfolding, from organizations to urban governance and the national polity. This text is the first comprehensive analysis of the social dimensions to climate change adaptation. Clearly written in an engaging style, it provides detailed theoretical and empirical chapters and serves as an invaluable reference for undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in climate change, geography and development studies.
Future changes in climate pose significant challenges for society, not the least of which is how best to adapt to observed and potential future impacts of these changes to which the world is already committed. Adaptation is a dynamic social process: the ability of societies to adapt is determined, in part, by the ability to act collectively. This article reviews emerging perspectives on collective action and social capital and argues that insights from these areas inform the nature of adaptive capacity and normative prescriptions of policies of adaptation. Specifically, social capital is increasingly understood within economics to have public and private elements, both of which are based on trust, reputation, and reciprocal action. The public-good aspects of particular forms of social capital are pertinent elements of adaptive capacity in interacting with natural capital and in relation to the performance of institutions that cope with the risks of changes in climate. Case studies are presented of present-day collective action for coping with extremes in weather in coastal areas in Southeast Asia and of community-based coastal management in the Caribbean. These cases demonstrate the importance of social capital framing both the public and private institutions of resource management that build resilience in the face of the risks of changes in climate. These cases illustrate, by analogy, the nature of adaptation processes and collective action in adapting to future changes in climate.
Environmental justice has increasingly become part of the language of environmental activism, political debate, academic research and policy making around the world. It raises questions about how the environment impacts on different people’s lives. Does pollution follow the poor? Are some communities far more vulnerable to the impacts of flooding or climate change than others? Are the benefits of access to green space for all, or only for some? Do powerful voices dominate environmental decisions to the exclusion of others?
The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society presents an analysis of this issue that draws on the best thinking on questions of how climate change affects human systems, and how societies can, do, and should respond. Key topics covered include the history of the issues, the social and political reception of climate science, the denial of that science by individuals and organized interests, the nature of the social disruptions caused by climate change, the economics of those disruptions and possible responses to them, questions of human security and social justice, obligations to future generations, policy instruments for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and governance at local, regional, national, international, and global levels.
In this first ever theoretical treatment of the environmental justice movement, David Schlosberg demonstrates the development of a new form of ‘critical’ pluralism, in both theory and practice. Taking into account the evolution of environmentalism and pluralism over the course of the century, Schlosberg argues that the environmental justice movement and new pluralist theories now represent a considerable challenge to both conventional pluralist thought and the practices of the major groups in the US environmental movement. Much of recent political theory has been aimed at how to acknowledge and recognize, rather than deny, the diversity inherent in contemporary life. In practice, the myriad ways people define and experience the ‘environment’ has given credence to a form of environmentalism that takes difference seriously. The environmental justice movement, with its base in diversity, its networked structure, and its communicative practices and demands, exemplifies the attempt to design political practices beyond those one would expect from a standard interest group in the conventional pluralist model. The book is arranged in four parts: I. Environmentalism and Difference: The Pluralist Challenge (two chapters); II. Critical Pluralism in Theory (two chapters); III. Environmental Justice: Critical Pluralism in Practice (two chapters); and IV. Conclusion (one chapter).
Hurricane Katrina has exacerbated problems of environmental injustice and food insecurity in the Lower 9th Ward. Community leaders are attempting to address these issues through environmental restoration and community gardening projects, which could benefit public health by increasing access to healthy food and storm protection. Combining the environmental restoration and food security movements could increase the effectiveness of both by sharing resources, enlarging networks, and addressing multiple health concerns at once. Restoration of the Bayou Bienvenue Wetland Triangle, a local wetland, provides a case study of merging these two movements. The Lower 9th Ward has a history of direct food acquisition from the local environment, and a tradition of community activism. These characteristics have the potential to reconcile the immediate food security needs of the community with the long-term goals of environmental restoration. Using community-based participatory research, this article examines whether food security has a role in promoting community awareness and support for environmental restoration.
There are many uncertainties concerning climate change, but a rough international consensus has emerged that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide from its pre-industrial baseline is likely to lead to a 2.5 degree centigrade increase in the earth's mean surface temperature by the middle of the next century. Such a warning would have diverse impacts on human activities and would likely be catastrophic for many plants and nonhuman animals. The author's contention is that the problems engendered by the possibility of climate change are not purely scientific but also concern how we ought to live and how humans should relate to each other and to the rest of nature; and these are problems of ethics and politics.
In addition to lower carbon dioxide emissions, policies to reduce fossil fuel combustion can yield substantial air quality co-benefits via reduced emissions of co-pollutants such as particulate matter and air toxics. If co-pollutant intensity (the ratio of co-pollutant impacts to carbon dioxide emissions) varies across pollution sources, efficient policy design would seek greater emissions reductions where co-benefits are higher. The distribution of co-benefits also raises issues of environmental equity. This paper presents evidence on intersectoral, intrasectoral and spatial variations in co-pollutant intensity of industrial point sources in the United States, and discusses options for integrating co-benefits into climate policy design to advance efficiency and equity.
: Articulations of climate justice were central to the diverse mobilisations that opposed the Copenhagen Climate Talks in December 2009. This paper contends that articulations of climate justice pointed to the emergence of three co-constitutive logics: antagonism, the common(s), and solidarity. Firstly, we argue that climate justice involves an antagonistic framing of climate politics that breaks with attempts to construct climate change as a “post-political” issue. Secondly, we suggest that climate justice involves the formation of pre-figurative political activity, expressed through acts of commoning. Thirdly, we contend that climate justice politics generates solidarities between differently located struggles and these solidarities have the potential to shift the terms of debate on climate change. Bringing these logics into conversation can develop the significance of climate justice for political practice and strategy. We conclude by considering what is at stake in different articulations of climate justice and tensions in emerging forms of climate politics.
In this article, I examine matters concerning justice and climate change in light of current work in global justice. I briefly discuss some of the most important contemporary work by political philosophers and theorist on global justice and relate it to various considerations regarding justice and climate change. After briefly surveying the international treaty context, I critically discuss several issues, including climate change and human rights, responsibility for historical emissions and the polluter-pays principle, the ability to pay principle, grandfathering entitlements to emit greenhouse gasses, equal per capita emissions entitlements, the right to sustainable development, and responsibility for financing adaptation to climate change. This set of issues does not exhaust the list of considerations of global justice and climate change, but it includes some of the most important of those considerations. WIREs Clim Change 2012, 3:131–143. doi: 10.1002/wcc.158 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.
The Greenhouse Development Rights (GDR) framework provides a promising attempt at fairly distributing the burdens of climate change. This brief review critically examines the framework, with a particular focus on the individualism that the authors take to provide much of the moral justification for their account. The review concludes that the particular role played by individualism in GDR both blinds the framework to certain crucial features of development and leads to difficulties in attributing historical emissions more properly tied to states and collective entities than to individuals. WIREs Clim Change 2013, 4:225–231. doi: 10.1002/wcc.215
Conflict of interest: The author declares that he has no conflicts of interest in relation to this article.
For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.
Joan Martíinez-Alier discusses how environmental justice and economic degrowth are interlinked. Social metabolism refers to the flows of energy and materials in the economy. The study of social metabolism overlaps with industrial ecology. The small movement for degrowth in the North focuses on both physical variables and new social institutions. It breaks with the unquestioned assumption that the economy should grow forever. Peak population might be reached around 2045 at perhaps 8.5 billion people. As population stabilizes or declines slightly, the proportion of old people increases. The environmental justice movements are fighting a wide variety of abuses over their land, air, and water in traditional indigenous territory to urban environments. Energy cannot be recycled, therefore even a non-growing economy that uses large amounts of fossil fuels would need fresh supplies coming from the commodity frontiers.
The authors dispel a major myth that conceals enduring divisions in American life. While many people view the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as the end of government-sponsored discrimination in the United States, Transportation Racism confirms the obvious and ignored truth: equality in transportation has been established in name only. Case by case, Transportation Racism shows how—a half-century after the Montgomery bus boycotts—chronic inequality in public transportation is firmly and nationally entrenched.
Ever since climate change came to be a matter of political concern, questions of justice have been at the forefront of academic and policy debates in the international arena. Curiously, as attention has shifted to other sites and scales of climate change politics matters of justice have tended to be neglected. In this paper, we examine how discourses of justice are emerging within urban responses to climate change. Drawing on a database of initiatives taking place in 100 global cities and qualitative case-study research in Philadelphia, Quito and Toronto, we examine how notions of distributive and procedural justice are articulated in climate change projects and plans in relation to both adaptation and mitigation. We find that there is limited explicit concern with justice at the urban level. However, where discourses of justice are evident there are important differences emerging between urban responses to adaptation and mitigation, and between those in the north and in the south. Adaptation responses tend to stress the distribution of ‘rights’ to protection, although those in the South also stress the importance of procedural justice. Mitigation responses also stress ‘rights’ to the benefits of responding to climate change, with limited concern for ‘responsibilities’ or for procedural justice. Intriguingly, while adaptation responses tend to stress the rights of individuals, we also find discourses of collective rights emerging in relation to mitigation.
My aim in writing this book was to help reduce the huge gap between what is understood about global warming by the relevant scientific community and what is known by the public. The story describes my recent journey in trying to inform governments of the urgency of actions to stabilize climate, discovery of the universality of greenwash by governments that have no intention of bucking fossil fuel special interests, and realization of the implications for my children and grandchildren. In the year following the publication of this book the gap mentioned above has increased. Objective assessment of the science and lack of appropriate governmental response has clear implications for communication by the scientific community and actions by concerned public citizens, as will be discussed.
The "environment" is a cultural construct which is shaped by shared life experiences and which differs with ethnicity. Environmental justice requires attention to divergent environmental constructions. U.S. Latino environmental discourse differs from mainstream discourses, but is rarely heard. This paper sheds light on U.S. Latino environmental discourses by examining ideal landscapes, explanations for decline, and the relationship of the environment to ethnic identity. Latino discourses suggest the need to reexamine the environment/technology relationship, the importance of social class in shaping environmental consciousness, and the limits of impact assessment as a tool for achieving social justice. Sociological tools for retrieving Latino environmental discourse include literary criticism and analysis of Latino environmental social movements. The former helps to identify the cultural content of different environmentalisms and to clarify relationships between culture and environment; the latter indicates the political potency of different elements of Latino environmental discourse.
Environmental justice strives for equal access for all citizens to a healthy environment, and refers to unequal exposure to environmental contamination due to locational variables. Human health is often compromised by this contaminant exposure. "Communities of concern" are frequently communities populated by people of color and/or low income. In addition to air, water, and soil pollution, specific problems include degraded structures, poor schools, unemployment, high crime, and poor roads and transportation systems. This article addresses some of these issues and makes policy recommendations for business leaders, local government leaders, and those otherwise responsible for enhancing the quality of life in affected communities.