Short description:

The Handbook of Environmental Justice presents an extensive and cutting-edge introduction to the diverse, rapidly growing body of research on pressing issues of environmental justice and injustice.

Long description:

The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Justice presents an extensive and cutting-edge introduction to the diverse, rapidly growing body of research on pressing issues of environmental justice and injustice. With wide-ranging discussion of current debates, controversies, and questions in the history, theory, and methods of environmental justice research, contributed by over 90 leading social scientists, natural scientists, humanists, and scholars from professional disciplines from six continents, it is an essential resource both for newcomers to this research and for experienced scholars and practitioners.

The chapters of this volume examine the roots of environmental justice activism, lay out and assess key theories and approaches, and consider the many different substantive issues that have been the subject of activism, empirical research, and policy development throughout the world. The Handbook features critical reviews of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methodological approaches and explicitly addresses interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, and engaged research. Instead of adopting a narrow regional focus, it tackles substantive issues and presents perspectives from political and cultural systems across the world, as well as addressing activism for environmental justice at the global scale. Its chapters do not simply review the state of the art, but also propose new conceptual frameworks and directions for research, policy, and practice.

Providing detailed but accessible overviews of the complex, varied dimensions of environmental justice and injustice, the Handbook is an essential guide and reference not only for researchers engaged with environmental justice, but also for undergraduate and graduate teaching and for policymakers and activists.

"Environmental injustice can only be redressed if activists, citizens, lawyers, governments and others have the concepts, mechanisms and tools to make the world a better place. This book is a one-stop-shop for anyone who wants an advanced introduction to environmental justice. It attends to the substantive, procedural and practical complexities involved while, through powerful argument and example, showing that injustices can and should be tackled from the local scale to the global."

Professor Noel Castree, University of Wollongong, Australia

"This impressive collection provides a comprehensive overview of Environmental Justice Studies with a stunning sweep of theoretical approaches that include critical race theory, social movement theory, political economy, feminist theory, science and technology studies, and political philosophy; diverse and creative methodological approaches; and a broad array of empirical topics and geographical contexts. In emphasizing the roots of environmental inequalities, diverse visions of justice, and various strategies for change, this essential resource will help scholars, students, activists, policymakers, and others help fight for and secure a more just world."

Associate Professor Jill Lindsey Harrison, Department of Sociology, University of Colorado-Boulder, USA

Table of Contents:

1 Introduction: the worlds of environmental justice Part I: SITUATING, ANALYSING AND THEORISING ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE 2 Historicizing the personal and the political: evolving racial formations and the environmental justice movement 3 Social movements for environmental justice through the lens of social movement theory 4 Environmental justice movements and political opportunity structures 5 Environmental justice and rational choice theory 6 The political economy of environmental justice 7 Feminism and environmental justice 8 Opening black boxes: environmental justice and injustice through the lens of science and technology studies 9 Procedural environmental justice 10 The recognition paradigm of environmental injustice 11 A capabilities approach to environmental justice 12 Vulnerability, equality and environmental justice: the potential and limits of law 13 Environmental human rights 14 Sustainability discourses and justice: towards social-ecological justice PART II: METHODS IN ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE RESEARCH 15 Spatial representation and estimation of environmental risk: a review of analytic approaches 16 Assessing population at risk: areal interpolation and dasymetric mapping 17 Application of spatial statistical techniques 18 Historical approaches to environmental justice 19 The ethics of embodied engagement: ethnographies of environmental justice 20 Storytelling environmental justice: cultural studies approaches 21 Facilitating transdisciplinary conversations in environmental justice studies 22 Cumulative risk assessment: an analytic tool to inform policy choices about environmental justice 23 A review of community-engaged research approaches used to achieve environmental justice and eliminate disparities 24 Participatory GIS and community-based citizen science for environmental justice action PART III: SUBSTANTIVE ISSUES IN ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE RESEARCH 25 Streams of toxic and hazardous waste disparities, politics and policy 26 Air pollution and respiratory health: does better evidence lead to policy paralysis? 27 Water justice: key concepts, debates and research agendas 28 Environmental justice and flood hazards: a conceptual framework applied to emerging findings and future research needs 29 Climate change and environmental justice 30 Environmental justice and large-scale mining 31 Justice in energy system transitions: a synthesis and agenda 32 Transportation and environmental justice: history and emerging practice 33 Food justice: an environmental justice approach to food and agriculture 34 Environmental crime and justice: a green criminological examination 35 Urban parks, gardens and greenspace 36 Urban planning, community (re)development and environmental gentrification: emerging challenges for green and equitable neighbourhoods 37 Just conservation: the evolving relationship between society and protected areas PART IV: GLOBAL AND REGIONAL DIMENSIONS OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE RESEARCH 38 Free-market economics, multinational corporations and environmental justice in a globalized world 39 Globalizing environmental justice: radical and transformative movements past and present 40 Environmental justice for a changing Arctic and its original peoples 41 Environmental injustice in resource-rich Aboriginal Australia 42 Environmental justice across borders: lessons from the US-Mexico borderlands 43 The dawn of environmental justice?: the record of left and socialist governance in Central and South America 44 Urban environmental (in)justice in Latin America: the case of Chile 45 Environmental justice in Nigeria: divergent tales, paradoxes and future prospects 46 Sub-imperial ecosystem management in Africa: continental implications of South African environmental injustices 47 Environmental justice and attachment to place: Australian cases 48 Environmental justice in South and Southeast Asia: inequalities and struggles in rural and urban contexts 49 Environmental justice in a transitional and transboundary context in East Asia 50 Environmental justice in Western Europe 51 Environmental justice in Central and Eastern Europe: mobilization, stagnation and detraction