Environmental justice in the case of the chagos marine protected area: Implications for international social work

Abstract

Between the late 1960s and the early 1970s, the British government forcibly removed about 15,000 Chagossians from the Chagos Archipelago. Current legislation based on the declaration of the Chagos-Marine Protected Area (MPA) plays a crucial role in preventing the Chagossians from returning to their homeland. In this particular case study, the article aims to analyze discourses related to the establishment of the Chagos-MPA using an environmental justice framework, to consider the implications for international social work practice. Materials from court rulings, official government reports, and academic/journalist publications on the MPA, as well as from seven semi-structured interviews with key informants from three Chagossian communities based in Mauritius, Seychelles, and the United Kingdom were analyzed using ATLAS-ti 8.4 software. The main findings of the deductive critical discourse analysis are discussed concerning substantive, distributive, and procedural environmental justice for the Chagossian community (This term is used for referring different Chagossian communities from Mauritius, Seychelles, and the United Kingdom as a single homogenous group). This article calls for international social work interventions through transnational alliances between international organizations in challenging the socio-political forces that are having deleterious impacts upon the marginalized and disenfranchised populations and their biophysical environment.