Environmental justice and harm to humans - Environmental Harm: An Eco-justice Perspective - page 52

contributes to human rights and ecological rights violation.
(Adeola, 2000: 701)
Globalisation means that we are connected in many different ways.
It also means that producers and consumers are linked up through
complex commodity chains. In many cases, making one's own home
safe contributes to making someone else's a hazard.
Harm is a consequence of intended actions as well as general
negligence. In either case, there is little consideration for the actual
people who are victimised by acts or omissions, nor is there any sense
of a duty of care. Who is exploited is partly a function of what is to be
exploited, and where it is located.
Multinational mining, oil, and logging corporations are now
using advanced exploration technology, including remote
sensing and satellite photography, to identify resources in
the most isolated and previously inaccessible parts of the
world's tropical rain forests, mountains, deserts, and frozen
tundras. What the satellites don't reveal is the fact that native
peoples occupy much of the land containing these resources.
(Gedicks, 2005: 168)
In a shrinking world, the search for new development green fields and
for additional natural resources is intensifying and brings into play new
technologies that allow ever greater extraction and processing of the
Earth, as well as exploitation and victimisation of its people (Klare,
2012; Le Billon, 2012; Tsing, 2005).
Who is affected by activities carried out by powerful industries is also
partly a matter of where and when. For example, the Arctic region is
inhabited by some 4 million people including more than 30 indigenous
peoples. Eight states - Canada, Denmark/Greenland, Finland, Iceland,
Norway, the Russian Federation, Sweden and the United States - have
territories in the Arctic region. While ostensibly a pristine environment
where local peoples rely upon traditional food sources, for decades
numerous pollutants have been making their impact on the Arctic
and the people and animals that live there (UNEP, 2007; EEA, 2010).
This pollution originated elsewhere, especially in industrial heartlands
such as the US, but the effect of transference has been devastating. In
some parts of the Arctic, for example, breastfeeding mothers have been
advised to supplement breast milk with powdered milk in order to
reduce their baby's exposure to noxious chemicals.