Environmental justice and harm to humans - Environmental Harm: An Eco-justice Perspective - page 64

socially constructed as Other, and therefore free of the obligations
of compassion and compensation. Denial of harm on the part of
the advantaged and socially privileged is easier when stereotypes,
denigrating images and self interest are mobilised in order to ignore.
The fact that environmental victims are frequently drawn from the
ranks of the poor, the disadvantaged and the minority has significant
ramifications. Such victims fit into the category of 'socially expendable
victims' (Fattah, 2010). That is, no one really cares what happens to
these specific individuals and groups, since they are already devalued
in wider community terms. As Engel and Martin (2006: 479) put it:
'If victims are perceived as degraded in some sense, then it does not
seem so unfair when bad things happen to them.'
The 'value' of human life is thus constructed in social and economic
terms. Environmental injustice is accomplished precisely through the
devaluing of those who suffer the consequences of decisions made
somewhere else, for purposes not of their own making, and in the
interests of those who will never share their environmental risks and
harms.