Toward eco-justice for all - Environmental Harm: An Eco-justice Perspective - page 153

humans and nonhuman animals (for example, in the form of pollution
and toxicity levels in air, water and land). The processes and technologies
that enhance production can pose major threats to bio-diversity and
shrink numbers of plant and animal species. This occurs through
the legal and illegal trade in species, as well as large-scale industrial
production and extensive use of genetically modified organism (GMO)
technologies (White, 2011). Meanwhile, one impact of unsustainable
environmental practices is that it puts even more pressure on companies
to seek out new resources (natural and human) to exploit as existing
reserves dwindle due to over-exploitation and contamination from
already produced waste (Klare, 2012).
Production and consumption within the capitalist mode of
production are subversive of basic needs, and disrespectful of the subject
status of humans, of nonhuman animals and of specific environments.
The 'value' of animals, specific eco-systems and distinct groups of
people is measured instrumentally and anthropocentrically, from the
point of view of corporate profit rather than inherent rights. As part
of this, humans are alienated from nature, from themselves, and from
taking responsibility through the routinised and largely unconscious
everyday regimes of work and shopping. Individualised guilt and blame
that exist generally do so within the wider field of structured patterns
of consumption that intertwine at the existential level to promote a
deep desire to consume in particular ways (White, 2002, 2013). Not
surprisingly, then, social movements based upon environmental justice,
ecological justice and species justice spend a lot of time exposing
the falsehoods and injustices of contemporary global systems that
perpetuate precisely the harm that many take for granted as simply
'normal'. Developing counter-hegemonic strategies and propaganda
is essential to challenging the ruling ideas of the present era.
Environmental harm is symptomatic of basic divisions in society that
at their core revolve around the private ownership and control of the
means of production. Within the context of political economy and the
different forms and types of social power, the justice-based approaches
to harm at the very least provide insight into how and why things are
as they are, if not how best to resolve key moral and ethical issues.
Environmental harm, from the point of view of political economy, is
related to exploitation of environments, animals and humans by those
who control the means of production. Profitability very often means
adopting the most unsustainable practices for short-term gain, with
negative consequences for all. Challenging the logic of existing systems
of production and consumption - of capitalism - is a central task of the
radical social movements (Pellow, 2013). In the social harm approach, it