Environmental justice and ecological limits

Readings of this week have discussed environmental justice from the different levels and perspectives. Environmental movement is usually considered as a big global movement driven largely by inter-governmental and international non-governmental organizations. This is of course the most powerful strand of global environmentalism and it has implications all over the world. However, there are other strands of environmentalism distinct from the big globalocentric perspective. They have become more visible with the rise of climate change discourse. Assigned readings have helped delineate various strands of environmentalism and understand how they conceive or not conceive justice.

The first reading by Peter Singer has discussed inequities in climate change between countries in the global north and countries in the global south based on their historical contribution. This notion is closer to the developing countries' official notions of climate justice often reflected in "common-but-differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities" approach. Such approach was supported by the CSE's seminal piece by Agarwal and Narain. They elaborated inequities between developed and developing countries in terms of environmental colonialism and argued for compensation to developing countries. This approach is still present very strongly in the global environmental politics. Although their position sounds closer to the Third World government's official position, they actually shared the Third World non-governmental perspectives. For example, at one point they have cautioned, "None of this means that India should not regenerate its environment nor that it should not become more efficient in its use of energy."

Besides the globalocentric perspective and developing countries' governmental and non-governmental perspectives, there are voices of several grass-root movements in the First World as well as in the Third World. Bullard echoed voices of USA's grass-root movements for environmental justice which is against environmental racism. This also applies to countries in the global south where exists other forms of discrimination and hence grass-root movements in response to such discrimination. Such grass-roots movements highlight the issue of identity like race (in USA) or caste (in South Asia), beside income and wealth, in the environmental movement discourse. It complicates the idea of justice that is solely based on redistribution of wealth and therefore demands for recognition of minority groups' unique issues in larger environmental movement. For example, Bullard argued that only the increase in income of a black household would not be adequate to overcome the problem of lead poisoning without addressing geographical segregation and housing discrimination. According to Bullard, mainstream environmental movement has hardly incorporated ideas of social justice. It is also true for developing countries where there was also a divergence between grass-root movement for social justice and environmental movement for protection of environment. To make this distinction conceptually clear, Guha and Martinez-Alier proposed concept of varieties of environmentalism, that is one of affluence and another of poor. According to them, the later one is more focused on defending environment for livelihoods, rather than simply protecting wilderness.

Seemingly overlapping with above two forms of environmentalism, Wapner has discussed two versions of environmentalism: pro-sacrifice and pro-comfort. Although his discussion is mostly based on developed countries, the obsession with the new Promethean environmentalism is even stronger in developing countries, where comfort oriented environmentalism is justified in terms of justice. This is clearly reflected in the official position of government of developing countries. Very recently, objective of comfort has helped to merge the official environmentalism of developing countries with that of developed countries. As a result, chances for a new global climate agreement has been increased. It is because of convergence of notions of win-win between economy and environment with the help of appropriate technology and policy choices. Therefore it is not clear whether so called perspectives of global south as argued by Singer and Agarwal and Narain, would remain as developing countries' official position since they are moving closer to the comfort-type environmentalism, rather than demanding for justice.

Change in the official environmentalism might have been shared by burgeoning middle class in those developing countries. However, it undermines justice to the vulnerable communities. For example we have seen several past and recent disasters, from Bhopalto the recent trends of droughts, storms, floods, as a result of increasing material aspiration without considering ecological limits. These incidences have put poor and marginalized people in more vulnerable situation. In such context, idea of sacrifice, which is still inherent in the vulnerable communities worldviews, should allow them platform to voice for environmental justice. For that sacrifice oriented environmentalism should connect with environmental justice movement and clarify several issues, for example where it stands on separation between human and nature; whether poor and marginalized people also need to make sacrifices to take care of nature and so on. Since things are rapidly changing in developing countries and aspiration for material wealth is growing, it is now urgent to establish the sacrifice-based environmentalism firmly at the global level and connect it strongly with the demand of environmental justice by vulnerable groups around the world.