Environmental Justice in Telecoupling Research

Abstract

The authors of this chapter advocate for the integration of environmental justice thinking in telecoupling research. The chapter provides a succinct review of the history and conceptual foundations of environmental justice, which encompass distribution, recognition and participation issues, and it reviews the most recent empirical case studies in the telecoupling literature. The findings show that few empirical analyses of telecoupled systems have directly incorporated environmental justice in their analytical approach and those which address justice issues do so indirectly, with more focus on distribution than on participation and recognition. The chapter argues that addressing questions of recognition and participation more centrally in telecoupling research and combining both quantitative and qualitative methods can contribute to more systematic attention towards environmental justice in telecoupled systems.