Week 3 - Politics of justice

Is justice political?

In popular media and writings, there is a common dichotomy which is often referred to in environmental situations. Nature v's people

This is a false dichotomy as 'people' does not relate to one type of person, one type of economic background, one social group. It is a multitude of different factors who have different opinions. 

Environmental justice is not about justice for nature, it is a fraught political terrain. 

Conservation of natural resources is a profoundly political process. The regulation of a group's access to and use of resources implies the existence of relations of power that will enable such regulation to take place (Seberwal and Rangarajan 2003, 4).

What do we mean by the politics of justice?

Refers to how problems are constructed in social discourse.
Distribution vs recognition. 

Recognition in society: 

• Acceptability of interest and viewpoints of particular social groups within social discourse
• Legitimisation and marginalisation of dominant and subordinate group interests
• Discourse creation, representation and framing
• Storyline's can enrol powerful institutions with profound unjust outcomes
• material/distributive aspects of justice intertwine with justice as recognition

Environmentalism

Environmentalism or Environmental rights is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental protection and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements.

A way of thinking politics and society based upon an understanding of environmental problems.

Nature-for-nationlism/Eco-nationalism - an influential breed of environmentalism in India. Deep colonial roots; development of national consciousness.

Eco-naturalism - uniquely Hindu construction of nature-people symbiosis. Lends itself easily to popular discourses to censure 'foreign domination'.  India has used the american way of conservation by bounding nature away from human use through national park status etc. this is often done via the use of gates, guards and guns and often the local people lose their connection with the nature they lived with.

Middle class environmentalism

Middle class environmentalism is an extremely influential discourse about environmental problems like pollution and the proper use of public spaces that is gaining ground in Indian cities.

Cows, cars and cycle-rickshaws: The Politics of Nature on the streets of Delhi (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOxtid-rrdo)

An example of this is shown in the you tube video. The main points are outlined below:

Who are the middle classes? - City dwellers who have salaries

How do they construct the problem of public order and public space? - Public health on the street, health and safety

What do they see as the biggest obstacles to solving these problems? - The cows of the urban village, rickshaw pullers and anyone who is blocking their way to getting home

What strategies do they resort to? - The courts, judicial system

Which groups are marginalised in the process and how? - Stall owners, cow owners, rickshaw pullers

Week 2 - Conceptions of Environmental Justice

Week 2 of study notes and interesting things from the FutureLearn course...

Why don't we all agree what is just and unjust?

We all have different opinions about what is and isn't right. There are different conceptions of justice such as:

• The view of nature and society that we hold
• Who we believe to be morally relevant subjects
• What dimensions of justice we hold to be important
• What principles of justice we apply to decide what is right and wrong.

There are three Western traditions of ethics. 

Duty based principles (deontological)

• Do the right thing. 

• Do it because it's the right thing to do.

• Don't do wrong things.

• Avoid them because they are wrong

Under this form of ethics you can't justify an action by showing that it produced good consequences, which is why it's sometimes called 'non-Consequentialist'. Someone who follows Duty-based ethics should do the right thing, even if that produces more harm (or less good) than doing the wrong thingUtilitarian (consequencialism)
Deontological (duty-based) ethics are concerned with what people do, not with the consequences of their actions.

Utilitarianism (consequentialism)

Consequentialism is based on two principles:

• Whether an act is right or wrong depends only on the results of that act

• The more good consequences an act produces, the better or more right that act

Utilitarianism states that people should maximise human welfare or well-being (which they used to call 'utility' - hence the name).

Virtue ethics (character based ethics)

Virtue ethics is person rather than action based: it looks at the virtue or moral character of the person carrying out an action, rather than at ethical duties and rules, or the consequences of particular actions.Virtue ethics not only deals with the rightness or wrongness of individual actions, it provides guidance as to the sort of characteristics and behaviours a good person will seek to achieve.

Environmental Justice struggles sometimes about seeing that justice is done in a context where there is a broad agreement about what justice is.

Justice pluarism

Pluralism is used in different ways across a wide range of topics. It denotes a diversity of views and stands rather than a single approach or method of interpretation.

 f we want to understand why different individuals or community groups make their decisions. What are the big traditions where the communities are coming from; we have to look at the context they are making these decisions.

"There may not indeed exist any identifiable perfectly just social arrangement on which impartial  agreement would emerge" (Sen 2009)

Love Canal Disaster

Love Canal was a neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, located in the LaSalle section of the city. It officially covers 36 square blocks in the far southeastern corner of the city, along 99th Street and Read Avenue. Two bodies of water define the northern and southern boundaries of the neighborhood: Bergholtz Creek to the north and the Niagara River one-quarter mile (400 m) to the south. In the mid-1970s Love Canal became the subject of national and international attention after it was revealed in the press that the site had formerly been used to bury 22,000 tons of toxic waste by Hooker Chemical Company (now Occidental Petroleum Corporation).

Love Canal, along with Times Beach, Missouri, are important in United States environmental history as the two sites that in large part led to the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA). CERCLA is commonly referred to as "Superfund" because of the fund established by the act to help the clean-up of toxic pollution in residential locations such as Love Canal. It has been stated that Love Canal has "become the symbol for what happens when hazardous industrial products are not confined to the workplace but 'hit people where they live' in inestimable amounts."^[39]

Week 1 - What is environmental justice?

So this is my next blog for another FutureLearn course - Environmental Justice run by the University of East Anglia.

Again, I will post my findings from the course and anything interesting things i find - this is primarily a record of my course notes.

Background behind environmental justice

What is Justice?
Justice is what is morally right. The definition on wikipedia is:

Justice, in its broadest context, includes both the attainment of that which is just and the philosophical discussion of that which is just. The concept of justice is based on numerous fields, and many differing viewpoints and perspectives including the concepts of moral correctness based on ethics, rationality, law, religion, equity and fairness. Often, the general discussion of justice is divided into the realm of societal justice as found in philosophy, theology and religion, and, procedural justice as found in the study and application of the law.

What is Environmental Justice?
This is justice applied to environmental problems. Environmental problems occur due to injustice. e.g. Forests - Environmental justice would ask, you who gets to use the forest, govern it and how do these influence the sustainability of the forest.

Many environmental problems are social. Any environmental change has a social impact.
Environmental Justice movement started in the USA in 1990's and focused on race and pollution. It is now a global issue.

Why does justice matter?

"We can live together as brothers, or die together as fools" Martin Luther King

Dimension of environmental justice

There are 3 dimensions of environmental justice which are:

Distribution - Allocation of environmental good's and bad's

• Good's - Natural resources, environmental amenities
• Bad's - Natural hazards, environmental risk

Participation - Roles of different people in environmental decision making e.g.

• Who decides how much timber to harvest?
• Who decides where a waste incinerator goes?

Recognition - acknowledgement of collective identities and histories. Respect for social and cultural differences

• Indigenous knowledge
• Gender differences in forest management
• environmental racism in the siting of waste incinerators

Examples of issues touching on these dimensions:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2tuXXfyo5WSt6fH9uM6e5oomAcLQiBFR

Coursework - Describe and environment problem

What’s driving the problem? 
The cost of waste is increasing and commercial waste producers and those in the waste game are finding it increasingly hard to dispose of waste/recyclables at an affordable rate.

Who is involved? 
Any commercial business producing waste but mainly those smaller company's such as construction and demolition. It also includes waste transfer sites themselves who are finding it hard to dispose of the larger quantities of waste after processing. 

Can you come up with a simple question about the social dynamics producing the problem?
Why do people feel that they can break the law and dispose of waste illegally?


Links for further reading:
https://ugc.futurelearn.com/uploads/files/3a/42/3a421670-4771-4099-bd24-201125f1d652/published_version.pdf

https://ugc.futurelearn.com/uploads/files/1e/f1/1ef14467-58da-44ab-a4f9-656c1ee53625/Why_GEJ_-_DEV_research_briefing.pdf

http://ejatlas.org