Theorizing Environmental Justice: The Expanding Sphere of a Discourse

David Schlosberg Professor of Environmental Politics

Overview
EJ has always challenged standard definitions
Environment and Justice

EJ discourse has expanded horizontally, vertically, and conceptually

More issues and countries, global focus, communities, and the nonhuman realm

EJ is the basis of a range of new movements

Climate justice, ecosystems, new sustainability

KEY: A shift from environment as symptom of inequity to environment as basis of justice

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Origins
Toxic dumps in low-income communities The intersection of poverty and race as indicators of environmental bads and goods

Defining Environment
Where we live, work, and play Environment is more than wilderness EJ attempted to bring a broader view of environment into practice

Defining (In)Justice
Distribution Race/Recognition and respect Participation Basic needs for functioning communities

Expanding Spaces of EJ
More issues transport, land use, food More places from Latin America to Russia to Australia Globalizing EJ analysis indigenous rights, global toxics trade, climate vulnerability Individual and Community analysis
Katrina, health, gas mining protests

EJ Framing for New Challenges 1

Climate Justice
Traditional justice approaches: equity, responsibility, participation, restorative justice Movement approaches: climate change as another manifestation of environmental injustice Now: adaptation, vulnerability But also, non-human nature
Katrina, again. Coal mining in Oz?

EJ Framing for New Challenges 2

Beyond the human focus justice to nonhuman Injustice = the interruption of the functioning of living systems
UNFCCC: focus is impact on climate systems Restoration: from history to functioning Constitutional rights Ecuador, Bolivia, New Zealand

Whanganui River

EJ Framing for New Challenges 3

New or Sustainable Materialism
EJ and Sustainability in one

Food justice movements

From food deserts to community gardens and markets

Just energy transition Engagement with practices that undermine sustainability

Creation of just material flows in everyday life
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Conclusions
Theory and practice in/of EJ The salience of environmental justice as a way of understanding experiences of human relationships with the nonhuman the experience of environmental disadvantage. The crucial shift: from environment as a symptom of inequity to environment as the precondition for social justice
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Theorizing Environmental Justice: The Expanding Sphere of a Discourse

David Schlosberg Professor of Environmental Politics