Abstract
In recent years, scholars have noted a broadening of environmental justice research, both geographically and conceptually, to include global issues that expand beyond the spatial distributions of environmental ‘goods' and ‘bads' to include other dimensions including recognition, participation, and capabilities. The purpose of this report is to consider how this broadening has influenced research topics and themes, the geographic locations of researchers, and the future course of environmental justice research. We searched for articles identifying environmental justice as a keyword from 2000 to 2009 in Scopus, Web of Science, and GeoBase. While the number of articles published looking at environmental justice has increased over the past decade, our search contradicts the previous claims that environmental justice research has greatly expanded conceptually or geographically beyond its traditional origins. Our findings show that environmental justice research remains firmly rooted in the United States, focusing on the distributional aspects of environmental harms. We introduce alternative research methodologies that can be used to inform a more holistic and just approach to research in this area.
I Introduction
Always, I am amazed at what we tell How much faith we put in it. Never really knowing who is listening How they’re going to take it, where. (Bronwen Wallace, cited by Stuart McLean, 1994: emphasis added)
Now that we have your attention, a more apt title for this article is ‘Where in the world is environmental justice research by geographers?’ Although environmental justice is not solely a geographic research theme, geographers are, arguably, uniquely poised to understand human-environment relations, spatial and social distributions of environmental goods and bads, and to theorize the origins and perpetuation of inequality and injustice (Walker and Bulkeley, 2006). Indeed, early and ongoing research focusing on the spatial and social patterns of environmental hazards and associated activism demonstrates the power of a geographic perspective.
In 2004, Anne-Marie Debbané and Roger Keil suggested that there had been a ‘fast conceptual transfer of EJ (environmental justice) beyond the borders of the US, where it originated’ (Debbané and Keil, 2004: 210). In a following editorial, in 2006, Gordon Walker and Harriet Bulkeley (2006: 656) asked about the implications of such a shift. They suggested that the concept of environmental justice was becoming broader in scope, more globalized, with a focus on the distribution of ‘justice’ as a concern that is not just spatial but also social in character. In this report, we ask: where is conceptual and empirical research on environmental justice being conducted now? From what locations do the researchers originate? What are the primary themes now being explored? Inspired by the poem that leads this article, where are these ideas going and to what effect?
II The geographic focus of environmental justice research
We began by undertaking a quantitative search of articles published in the years 2000-2009 that identify environmental justice as a keyword. We focused on articles available through Scopus, Web of Science, and GeoBase. Each of these databases has a different emphasis and consequently they pick up different sources. 1 Hence, the numbers of articles identified in each database differ. We recognize the weaknesses of this kind of analysis if it were used as a precise measure of the field. Many fields that also address justice issues may not be represented. For example, political ecologists and those studying the cultural politics of environment are also focused on issues of environmental justice, but they may not use the keywords ‘environmental justice’ and so may not be represented at all. There is value, however, in this analysis if it is used as a heuristic. While these omissions may alter the numbers of articles identified within each database, the overall trends likely remain. Further, because geographers use these databases to shape their research, our review looks at the materials that will inform future environmental justice research conducted by geographers. It is in this spirit that our observations are made.
As indicated in Figure 1, the number of articles between 2000 and 2009 has notably increased. Indeed, research that identifies environmental justice as a keyword has more than tripled over the past decade. Table 1 lists the journals publishing the most articles focusing on environmental justice in each of the databases listed over the same time period. Of the articles identified, Local Environment, Environmental Health Perspectives, Environmental Politics, and Society and Natural Resources have been the primary venues for publication. Many of the journals to which geographers also contribute are explicitly interdisciplinary (e.g. Local Environment, Society and Natural Resources); however, three leading Geographic journals are also represented (Geoforum, Antipode, Environment and Planning A), suggesting that geographers are both engaged in these topics and equipped to discuss them.
The number of articles published identifying environmental justice as a keyword between 2000 and 2009 listed in selected databases
Journals with the most articles listing ‘environmental justice’ as a keyword published from 2000 to 2009, as listed in the GeoBase, Web of Science, and Scopus databases
*Information accessed from databases on 24 September 2010. Rank refers to the number of articles that have been published in each journal from 2000 to 2009. A ranking of ‘1’ refers to the journal that has the most articles that identified environmental justice as a keyword in that database (Geobase, Web of Science, or Scopus). The numbers beside each journal title refer to the number of articles published in that journal with ‘environmental justice’ as a keyword from 2000 to 2009.
Our search, however, belies the claim that environmental justice research has strayed very far from its origins. Environmental justice research remains firmly centralized in the United States. For example, of the environmental justice literature in 2009 identified in GeoBase, only 46 of 114 articles presented a case study that was outside the United States. Only 15 were undertaken across a range of developing countries. 2
Looking at the contributing authors between 2005 and 2009, most of the environmental justice research has been conducted by scholars located in the United States, with the United Kingdom consistently coming in a distant second. In 2009, almost half of the authors with articles published in a journal identified in Geobase were affiliated with an American institution, followed by the United Kingdom with about 20%. Authors from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Canada have been rather constant, with yearly representation in the articles published on environmental justice. But the number of articles published by researchers from these countries on environmental justice remains relatively low. In recent years, contributing authors affiliated with other countries, including Germany, France, Hungary, and the Netherlands, have begun to contribute more readily, diversifying the list of contributing countries. However, research in this area remains heavily focused in the United States, with one-half of all environmental justice research consistently produced by authors at American institutions. Less than 10% of the articles come from scholars in the developing world.
The overall conclusion of these observations is that ‘environmental justice’ as a research theme remains at its core an American concept, with a heavily skewed representation from American scholars. These findings co-exist with our observations that the conceptual and empirical focus of environmental justice has expanded only marginally and that the disconnection between theory and practice threatens to persist. We discuss each issue briefly.
III Thematic emphases
Focusing now on papers published in 2009, conceptually speaking, environmental justice research is still primarily framed around the sociospatial distributions of environmental hazards. Most prominent among these are discussions of air pollution, landfill sites, and toxic waste (e.g. Gallagher, 2009; Schelly and Stretesky, 2009), albeit with increasingly sophisticated tools such as innovations in GIS (e.g. Higgs and Langford, 2009) and community information systems (e.g. Lloyd-Smith, 2009). There has been some topical expansion, by which we mean that conventional concepts such as distribution have been applied to new topics. This expansion includes topics such as the justice implications of new technologies (e.g. Tyree and Greenleaf, 2009), ecotourism (e.g. Meletis and Campbell, 2009), housing reconstruction (e.g. Rajotte, 2009), ecological restoration (e.g. Tomblin, 2009), and the burgeoning field of climate justice (e.g. Kaswan, 2009; Klinsky and Dowlatabadi, 2009; Okereke and Schroeder, 2009; White-Newsome et al., 2009).
In terms of social distributions, there is surprisingly little research that links gender inequality to environmental justice (cf. Buckingham and Kulcur, 2009; Di Chiro, 2008; Ebi, 2009; Ellaway et al., 2009; Loughnan et al., 2008). Thus far, this appears to be a missed opportunity. We know from our history that the introduction of feminist scholarship in geography was not simply a matter of introducing ‘gender-based analyses' into our methodological toolkit. Rather, feminism brought with it a wholesale rethinking of fundamental concepts, tossing a few out the window (e.g. economic man), while introducing new ones (e.g. standpoint) and exploring the theoretical and methodological implications for the practice of human geography. New epistemological and methodological opportunities are also offered through other, complementary, avenues including critical race theory and indigenous methodologies.
While environmental justice scholars have frequently considered the burdens born by racial minorities and indigenous peoples (e.g. Bullard, 2005; Mascarenhas, 2007; Robinson et al., 2007; Smith, 1999; Trainor et al., 2007), the epistemological foundations and methodologies used to formulate research projects on environmental justice issues remain heavily prescribed by traditional academic discourses. A more dramatic turn in environmental justice research might be to consider indigenous methodologies. During the ‘Decade of Indigenous Peoples', 1994-2004, a thorough critique of western epistemologies and methodologies ensued (Denzin et al., 2008; Kovach, 2009; Smith, 1999; Wilson, 2008). Combining indigenous methodologies with critical theory, including political ecology, critical race theory, and feminism, drives politically relevant and more morally robust research that promotes social (and environmental) justice. This type of research paradigm not only allows for an expanded definition of environmental justice to be explored through research (looking not only at the distribution of environmental ‘goods' and ‘bads', but taking into account the procedural aspects of achieving environmental justice, including participation, recognition, and capabilities), but also better exemplifies a just and equitable distribution of power between the researcher and the researched (Denzin et al., 2008). Indigenous methodologies advocate for research methods that are both empowering and emancipatory, based on recognizing the research interests of the participants, encouraging community participation in the research process (including fieldwork, analysis, dissemination, and integration), relationship-building between the researcher and the researched, promoting accountability and giving back to the community (Kovach, 2009). Broadening the scope of environmental justice research perhaps requires not only broadening of the definition of environmental justice or the research topics explored, but also broadening of the research process and the individuals who are recognized to undertake it.
One means to broaden the scope of environmental justice research has thus far been by making a conceptual connection between environmental justice and multiscalar politics (e.g. Sze et al., 2009). According to Bickerstaff and Agyeman (2009: 781) this connection involves simultaneous consideration of ‘people, texts, machines, animals, devices and discourses in relations that collectively constitute - and scale - environmental justice’. As with the arguments that environmental justice researchers become more sensitive to context, this approach offers to broaden the conceptual reach of environmental justice research, but it also poses a serious tension. Research that draws on the politics of scale is often theoretically complex (Reed and Bruyneel, 2010). Its structure, as expressed in the vocabulary and grammar of its authors, is often far removed from the daily struggles of activists who are grappling with the consequences of environmental injustices. Furthermore, as concepts and theories become more complexly expressed, the ability of academics to offer practical advice for political change may be reduced. Consequently, researchers are cautioned that the long-observed disconnect between theory and practice in the field of environmental justice (Agyeman et al., 2009) may be exacerbated should academics become more concerned with theoretical refinement over progressive, practical, and possible change.
Attention to context has been debated within the environmental justice literature for some time. Agyeman et al. (2009) suggest that environmental justice issues in other countries have been contextualized and expressed using different language, typically within the scope of the social justice or human rights rather than environmental justice. In their critique of environmental justice research, Glyn Williams and Emma Mawdsley (2006) suggested three considerations for future work that would be sensitive to context, based on their research in India. First, they suggested that national state power will remain enormously influential in ‘developing’ nation states. Its partiality (referring to both its incompleteness and the discriminatory ways in which it is applied) should be an important focus of investigation. Second, they argued that the theme of recognition should gain greater consideration in environmental justice research, particularly in nation states where class, caste, and other social divisions are more pronounced than in some western democratic states. Finally, and not surprisingly, they called for greater attention to the ways in which researchers treat differences between those from within and outside western-based democracies. 3 They point out that sensitivity to difference should not be focused on how ‘the South’ may ally itself with a so-called global environmental justice movement. Instead, to pay close attention to context means including issues of history, culture, state structure, and public discourse in conceptual and empirical research efforts. Gordon Walker (2009a, 2009b) makes contributions to how sensitivity to context can be successfully achieved, while Anna Stanley (2009) offers critical engagement with the politics of meaning as an alternative to liberal spatial frameworks.
The argument over sensitivity to difference and local context has parallels with debates in industrial countries where scholars have long struggled with the ‘integration’ of traditional and western-based forms of ecological knowledge (e.g. Brook and McLachlan, 2005; Gilchrist et al., 2005; Nadasdy, 1999). The politics associated with knowledge creation, distribution, legitimation, exchange, and evaluation are all critical to the adjudication of injustice of environmental decisions and the strategies promoted to address it (Walker, 2010). There is much we can learn from experiences and debates with traditional and western forms of ecological knowledge and their relative influence in environmental management practices and governance regimes.
IV Towards justice in environmental justice research: The spatial is social
For us, these comments suggest that the spatial distribution of research and researchers is important if we are serious about doing justice to environmental justice research. Academic contributions from developing countries (or from marginalized populations within industrialized countries) are still at the margins and the voices of these scholars are still muted. Some readers may recall that this point was made in the first of this series when describing gender-based research (Reed and Christie, 2009). It seems to us that a first step in understanding context is to make room for other voices within these debates. One positive example lies in the edited volume Speaking for Ourselves: Environmental Justice in Canada, wherein Julian Agyeman, Peter Cole, Randolph Haluza-DeLay, and Pat O’Riley offered readers ‘an expanded, many-faceted, and polyvocal appreciation of and effort for environmental justice in Canada’ (Agyeman et al., 2009: 22). Their book began with the voices of the ‘Original Peoples of what is now called Canada’ (p. 20), continued to give voice to First Nations speakers throughout the work (e.g. Chief Bernard Ominayak with Kevin Thomas, 2009), and concluded with an enactment of Aboriginal storytelling by Coyote and Raven (O’Riley and Cole, 2009), thereby encouraging readers to adopt new ways of listening and learning.
Their intervention is important. We believe it makes a difference not just where our studies and stories go, but also from whence they come. If scholars from the margins - be they in developing countries or in industrial countries - view and express environmental justice differently from those who adopt western principles and theories, and they are less likely to publish in highly ranked, widely read, peer-reviewed international journals and books, are we, that is, scholars of western, post-industrial, mainly democratic countries and traditions, taking seriously the call to expand our definitions? What strategies can we employ to give voice to other researchers and participants who may have less privilege and less access to the byways of scholarly publication? How can we learn to listen to them?
One strategy is to consider how research conducted in ‘developing countries’ or non-western contexts may bear on circumstances and understandings in ‘the West’. This strategy has been successfully employed in political ecology (see McCarthy, 2002). A second strategy may be to draw insights from marginalized scholars more directly. Perhaps the next set of environmental progress reports will come from a scholar in a developing country, rather than merely from one of the (former) colonies. Opportunities for stronger research partnerships between scholars of the west and institutions internationally may suggest new ways of theorizing and carrying out research that would not only expand the definition of environmental justice conceptually, but would also encourage its application and expand its practice spatially. We also need to expand our criteria for academic publication. To our minds, however, academics cannot come close to advocating successfully for environmental justice without justice in the distribution of research. And to achieve justice in this distribution we will have to practice recognition, participation, and capability in the practices of scholarship.