The political ecology of environmental justice: Environmental struggle and injustice in the Yeongheung Island coal plant controversy.

摘要

From the perspective of environmental justice, the construction of the coal plant on Yeongheung Island in South Korea is environmentally unjust. Procedural justice has been completely ignored and excluded from the conflict between development and the environment. One important debate in environmental justice is about the realization of procedural and distributive justice. The most important factor toward the realization of environmental justice, has been distributive justice; as a result, procedural justice has not been considered an issue. Economic issues related to financial and educational support and compensation for the local residents by coal plant developers seems to mislead one to believe there is a realization of distributive environmental justice. However, the emphasis on distributive justice clearly shows procedural injustice. Without consideration of procedural justice, environmental justice can never be realized. In addition, a series of environmental symptoms such as coal dust, noise of power transmission towers, and destruction of tidelands means environmental injustice in that the region is composed of senior citizens and low-income residents.;Environmental injustice is easily observed from most places where environmental problems occur, therefore it can be said to be a prevalent phenomenon. Therefore, simple observation of environmental injustice does not hold the key of the solution for the injustice. In other words, activists and academic analysts need a larger framework to explain a chain of processes of how environmental injustice is produced, reproduced, and manipulated.;Political ecology is a useful framework to investigate environmental injustice. Political ecological framework functions to explain: (1) degradation and marginalization, (2) environmental conflict, (3) conservation and control, and (4) environmental identity and social movement (Robbins 2004). Those elements are all associated with what we call environmental justice. Environmental injustice is concerned with: (1) the marginalization of local residents from environmental discourses, (2) conflicts between developers and environmentalists and the exclusion of local residents, (3) the identity of local residents who are not able to conserve and control their own land, and (4) environmental movements that do not take into consideration local residents' life. Therefore, the political ecological framework improves and enlarges the discussion of environmental justice from a larger social, political, and economic perspective. It uncovers the structures and relationships that underlay procedural injustice.;In this respect, the political ecological framework helps to investigate the problems of environmental injustice and concealment of environmental injustice. Environmental injustice is observed everywhere environmental problems occur. In the study area, environmental injustice is evident because local residents are low-income farmers and fishermen and are the victims of potential environmental pollutions. The more important finding is the way environmental injustice is subtly hidden by: (1) unequal social relations, (2) neoliberal capitalism, and (3) the social construction of nature, environment and scales. As proven by the failure of the environmental movement that took place during the 1990s, the social relations between the different groups (environmentalists, developers, governments, and local residents) are unequal. The central government and developers tend to subvert the legal processes by adjusting existing policies and by manipulating consent form from local residents. This kind of environmental injustice suggests that procedural justice should be emphasized and that it has been relatively belittled in comparison with distributive justice.;Neoliberal capitalism in a global context is another way of hiding environmental injustice. Neoliberalism is relevant in understanding economic crisis or depression. This is no exception in the case of coal energy in Korea. In the name of the free trade-stimulus between Korea and China, the utilization of cheap coal from China was no longer in doubt, regardless of environmental concerns. In this way, global capitalism and developmentalism justified coal as the preferred energy source.;In addition, developers socially construct nature, environment and scale to hide environmental injustice. The project of developers for the breeding of short-neck clams and their manipulation of the plant's environmental impact assessment are clear examples that demonstrate the social construction. These findings are measurable through the political ecological framework. In other words, understanding the conflict of the coal plant in the study area, which demonstrates localized environmental injustice, requires a political ecology approach that explains social relations, capitalism and social construction of nature and environment. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)