Environmental justice encompasses distributive and political justice to address the interlocking relationship between environmental issues and social justice. Environmental justice can include a myriad of struggles experienced by local communities whose concerns include protecting the environments where people live, work, play, and pray. A central focus is on the environmental burdens of modern industrial society including, but not limited to, issues of toxic waste, pollution, workplace hazards, and unequal environmental protection. Another focal point involves the equal political representation of diverse groups in environmental values and decision-making processes. Environmental justice has served to effectively criticize the inequitable distribution of environmental benefits and harms that can be associated with many technological developments, often employing science to identify and assess these benefits and harms.

Historical Emergence

Because many of these issues are tied to specific grassroots organizations and networks, environmental justice fundamentally pertains to a larger social phenomenon...