Environmental justice and harm to humans - Environmental Harm: An Eco-justice Perspective - page 33

TWO
Environmental justice and
harm to humans
introduction
Analysis of environmental harm is premised on the idea that someone
or something is indeed being harmed. Environmental justice refers to
the distribution of environments among peoples in terms of access to
and use of specific natural resources in defined geographical areas, and
the impacts of particular social practices and environmental hazards
on specific human populations (for example, as defined on the basis of
class, occupation, gender, age, ethnicity). In other words, humans are
at the centre of analysis. The focus of analysis is on human health and
well-being and how these are affected by particular types of production
and consumption.
Within these broad parameters a series of important questions can
be asked. For example, who, precisely, is victimised and why? Are there
specific patterns to environmental victimisation affecting individuals,
groups and communities? Is everyone affected by environmental harm?
Is everyone equally exposed to risk of harm, or is victimisation solely
related to social divisions such as class, gender and race?
Part of the answer to these questions lies in how the particular
questions are framed and in how particular events shape public
perceptions and actual experiences. Global warming and climate
change, for example, have implications for everyone on the planet
even if those first and most profoundly affected are the poor and
marginalised. Incidents such as the emission explosions at the Union
Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, and at the BP oil rig of the coast of
the USA in the Gulf of Mexico, are non-discriminatory at one level.
These events had an impact in some way on every person within range
of them, even though company directors and people living outside of
such 'production' zones were not directly affected. In many cases it
is the actions of activist groups and environmental social movements
that bring to public attention specific types of environmental harm,
including knowledge about which individuals and groups suffer the
most in particular places around the world.