Environmental justice: a critical issue for all environmental scientists everywhere

摘要

It is now commonly understood that much of the worldwide burden of environmental ill health falls disproportionately on poorer peoples [1,2]. There is also substantial evidence that much environmental damage internationally is the result of the actions of richer nations or richer groups within nations—with impacts on poorer nations and poorer groups within nations [1,3,4]. It is becoming clear also that poorer peoples internationally experience multiple environmental harms, and that these may have a cumulative effect. The world is becoming more urbanized, and cities are becoming the locus for many of the local issues of environmental damage and environmental harm [4,5]. But cities are also responsible for substantial international environmental damage: for example, it is increasingly evident that cities are one of the main generators of climate change, and that the actions of people in cities in the rich world are deeply linked to the well-being of the overall ecosystem and of people worldwide. Environmental justice is a concept that links the environmental health science documenting these harms, to debates around rights, justice and equity. It fundamentally deals with the distribution of environmental goods and harms—and looks at who bears those harms and who is responsible for creating those harms, in both a practical sense but also in terms of policy decisions. It is a radical environmental health movement that has evolved from civil society groups, angered at what they perceive as the `unjust' distribution of environmental resources for health and, conversely the `unjust' distribution of environmental harms. The movement now includes a collaboration of non-governmental organizations with environmental scientists, public health professionals, and lawyers, all working on the issue of the distributions of environmental harms and the rights of everyone to a healthy environment. This special issue is both timely and important. Environmental justice is moving conceptually and empirically. It started in the US as a movement of local civil society groups against local environmental injustice and distribution of environmental harms [6]. It is becoming a movement that encompasses international environmental injustices and issues of access to environmental goods—and it discusses environmental justice issues both across countries and also across generations. One such definition was pulled together by academics and NGOs in the UK in 2001: 'that everyone should have the right and be able to live in a healthy environment, with access to enough environmental resources for a healthy life' 'that responsibilities are on this current generation to ensure a healthy environment exists for future generations, and on countries, organisations and individuals in this generation to ensure that development does not create environmental problems or distribute environmental resources in ways which damage other peoples health' [7]. This kind of broad definition of environmental justice has been gaining currency internationally, and language around justice is moving into many topic areas of environmental science—shifting discourse on 'climate change' to 'climate justice', 'water pollution' to 'rights to clean water', 'air pollution' to 'rights to healthy air'. Policy is changing too. In Europe the public is gaining more access to information on environmental harms through policy mechanisms such as the Aarhus Convention [8,9] and internationally, civil society groups are becoming aware that there are mechanisms to support them if they challenge environmental pollution. As the public becomes more aware of the issues of environmental justice, and as policy shifts in this direction, environmental scientists have a challenge. We have some of the methodology necessary to measure the distribution of environmental harms and environmental responsibilities. But we also need to develop new methods to deal with the new challenges: for example, how do we measure when