Global Environmental Justice: A Review of the Literature (April 2018)

This essay first appeared in the April 2018 issue of Choice (volume 55 | issue 8).

Introduction:

Environmental justice is the concern of activists, academic theorists, and policy makers who agree broadly that environmental burdens—such as climate change, pollution, and their associated health risks—are borne dispro-portionately by the poorest and most vulnerable of the population and tend to have the greatest impact on racial and ethnic minorities, no matter where they are in the world. This is what makes the empirical questions about the environment a normative question about justice. This essay examines the literature on the movement from the perspectives of philosophical and political theorists, environmental and ecological activists, and legal and policy makers.

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About the author:

Robert C. Robinson is a lecturer of philosophy at Georgia State University, Perimeter College. He is the author of Justice and Responsibility-Sensitive Egalitarianism (Palgrave MacMillan, 2014) and a forthcoming book on cosmopolitanism and environmental justice.