Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
often hug trees to protect them. Indeed, the resistance to the environmental, social
and economic exploitation of developing world nations by developed nations is
viewed by some analysts (Agyeman, 2005; Escobar, 2006a) as primary examples of
environmental justice action adamantly and articulately defending their places,
environments and ecosystems. Environmental justice activists have long been
dissatisfied with the narrow environmental focus of many traditional green groups,
which tend also to be predominantly white, middle class and frequently anti-urban.
Habitat conservation and ecological restoration are certainly important issues
impacting on the quality of people's lives, but environmental justice encompasses
much more - transport and access, air quality, toxic pollution, poverty, poor housing,
unemployment and all the other major concerns of disadvantaged people. This has
meant that the environment is broadly interpreted as denoting where people live,
learn, work and play. Given this, environmental justice campaigns are inevitably
quite anthropocentric in orientation, but Agyeman (2005) passionately argues for a
fusion of environmental and sustainability campaigns at local, regional and national
levels that clearly articulate justice and equity as central defining principles. With
reference to Shutkin (2001), he notes that, although narrowly based civic environ-
mentalism has a role, a more broadly focused civic environmentalism conceptualizing
sustainability holistically through addressing gender, age and race is pivotal in
fashioning a more pro-active 'just sustainability'.
In Britain the Environment Agency (Mitchell and Walker, 2003) and Defra (Lucas
et al
., 2004) have identified environmental injustice and social deprivation as
very real problems for many communities, making clear reference to transport, local
services, housing, health, urban regeneration, waste, climate change, quality of life
and related issues. Noting that research into environmental justice in the UK has
not been as sophisticated or extensive as in the US, Lucas and her co-writers conclude
that:
Where a neighbourhood or area experiences one environmental problem, this is
rarely in isolation.
Ill health and reduced quality of life is usually the result of an accumulation
of these problems (poor housing, inadequate local services, etc.) over an
individual's lifetime or even over a number of generations.
Some sectors of the population are consistently more adversely affected than
others, and these are almost always those that are already recognized as the
most vulnerable.
Environmental ills may not only self-perpetuate, but also lead to other
environmental, economic and social problems if left unaddressed.
(Lucas
et al
., 2004: vi)
Environmental justice is also about reconnecting. In an article in
Resurgence
and
more fully in his book
Soil and Soul
(2004), the academic and activist Alistair
McIntosh has written eloquently about the restoration, to the people living on the
Hebridean island of Eigg, of their land, their community, their culture and their
historical memory. For McIntosh, environmental justice means retrieving a spiritual
connection to the land, to nature and through this to oneself. It refers to community
members experiencing what the radical educator Paulo Freire (1996) once termed
'conscientization', a combination of conscience and consciousness, that reveals a
