Environmental Justice

The course explores how social inequalities, like social class, ethnicity and gender, relate with the environment; how they impact the environment and how the environment affects different social groups. Issues of power, environmental justice (distributive and participative), resource colonization, environmental insecurity and just sustainability are also analyzed. Environmental justice is concerned with the processes through which inequalities in distribution of resources and risks arise and are maintained through social, political and environmental decision-making. Resulting strategies and policies have been shown to place a disproportionate risk on certain groups at the local, regional, national, and international level, with security and sustainability implications. Questions that are significant in the understanding of environmental problems and in formulating effective solutions / approaches to them are: who has good quality and safe environment to live in, who experiences environmental pollution and risks more and who is more distanced from them, who accesses and consumes natural resources, who has limited access to them, who is able to shape and influence environmental decision making and who is not.