Environmental Justice BT - Environment and Society: Concepts and Challenges

Abstract

This chapter clarifies the substantial impact of environmental justice on scholarship and policy-making by addressing the core questions of this volume. It reviews the assumptions and contributions of the concept of environmental justice, which are argued to be numerous and influential. The scholarly idea and the social movement of the same name are not going to disappear: environmental justice is being used more than ever in the scholarly and policy literatures. The economic, socio-political and racial discrimination explanations for why environmental injustices exist drive different explanations for existing patterns, and divergent policy approaches for addressing the issue. As it heads to the end of its fourth decade, environmental justice research has a vast open agenda with great promise, both within national and local realms, and at the international level as well.