Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
spatial dynamics associated with environmental injustice, these works
also are pointing to the ways multilevel institutions give rise to and rein-
force unequal exposure to environmental inequalities and differential
access to environmental goods (Holifi eld, Porter, and Walker 2010;
Walker and Bulkeley 2006; Pellow 2000).
The Globalization of Environmental Inequalities
The rise of transnational practices associated with resource depletion and
manufacturing and the increasing movement of pollutants and waste
across borders have created multiple spaces for new, critical understand-
ings of the relations between a globalized economy, environment, and
society. Indeed, as Szasz and Meuser (1997, 111) argue, “Environmental
inequality is a global phenomenon routinely generated by the normal
workings of international political economy.” For many years, as aca-
demics and activists from the global South have shown (e.g., Bello 1992;
Escobar 1996; Khor 1993; Shiva 1997), transnational corporations have
located their facilities in remote locations to obtain cheap labor and
supply chains have reached into the far corners of the earth to obtain
the raw materials that sustain global production and consumption. These
practices have given rise to countless examples of how communities that
rely on these enterprises for their livelihoods and resources for their
subsistence are exposed to unhealthy, unsustainable, and inequitable
forms of development (Byrne, Glover, and Martinez 2002; Sachs 2002;
Agyeman, Bullard, and Evans 2003; Newell 2005).
Inequalities stemming from foreign exploration, exploitation, and
investment have been taking place for many years and in many nations.
However, technological advances have made it possible for the perpetra-
tors of degradation and injustice to never set foot on foreign soil and,
in some instances, to not even be aware that they are causing harm in
other parts of the world. While emissions have long been recognized as
transcending international boundaries, issues such as the movement of
e-waste to developing countries or the impacts of climate change have
shifted the scale and spatial nature of the problem. The result is that in
addition to placing groups and communities at risk, in some instances
entire nations and continents are coping with threats as a consequence
of consumption patterns in distant lands (Adger et al. 2006; Roberts and
Parks 2007). The impacts of climate change, for instance, are exacerbat-
ing existing global inequalities as less developed countries are faced with
attending to a problem that is not primarily of their making and that
