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Terms: Environmental Justice, Equality, Ethnocentrism
Environmental Justice
Phonetic Pronunciation: uhn-vai-urn-men-tl juh-stuhs
Definition:
"Environmental justice" is a movement that seeks fair and meaningful inclusion of affected people and ensures equal sharing of benefits and costs when making decisions about the environment. It recognizes and addresses that Indigenous, racialized, and marginalized communities faced inequities throughout the decision-making process (1).
History:
Environmental justice can be traced back to the 1980s, when it was initiated by the African American community in Warren County, North Carolina. In that year, their community had been designated as a hazardous polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) landfill. In response, 500 activists protested and were subsequently arrested. Although the protest failed to halt the landfill construction, it served as a catalyst for the Environmental Justice Movement (2).
Current Usage:
Currently, environmental justice is widely accepted to be categorized into 3 dimensions: procedural justice (the meaningful inclusion of the affected group in decision-making), recognitional justice (the acknowledgement of the well-being, knowledge, and perspectives of affected groups as valued members of society), and distributive justice (the distribution of costs, risks, and benefits) (3).
Examples:
A situational example is: Aamjiwnaang First Nation lives closely to an area called "Chemical Valley", which is filled with more than 60 chemical plants and oil refineries. This is approximately 40% of Canada's petrochemical industry (4). The people there are exposed to high levels of benzene, which puts them at higher risk of cancer (5).
A sentence example is: "One way to achieve environmental justice is by limiting industrial development near residential neighborhoods."
Perspective:
Other perspectives of environmental justice include "corrective justice", which means that if harm has been done, attempts must be made to restore the victim to the condition they were in before the unjust activity occurred (6).
Environmental justice is also considered to be a human right because, as the UN Human Rights Council declared in 2022, everyone has the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment (7).
Did You Know?
A recent development in environmental justice in Canada is the passage of Bill C-226, National Strategy Respecting Environmental Racism and Environmental Justice Act, to become law. This mandates the development of a “national strategy to promote efforts across Canada to advance environmental justice and to assess, prevent, and address environmental racism.” (1)
Sources:
Environmental Justice and Environmental Racism
History of Environmental Justice
Defining and conceptualizing equity and justice in climate adaptation
Living in the shadow of Chemical Valley
How Ontario could have cracked down on Chemical Valley pollution — but chose not to
A Taxonomy of Environmental Justice
In historic move, UN declares healthy environment a human right
Resources:
Equality
Definition:
“Equality means each individual or group of people is given the same resources and opportunities, regardless of their circumstances. In social and racial justice movements, equality can actually increase inequities in communities as not every group of people needs the same resources or opportunities allocated to them in order to thrive.” United Way
Sources:
United Way Equality vs Equity 2021
Resources:
Ethnocentrism
Phonetic Pronunciation: eth-no-sen-tri-zm
Definition:
The belief that one's culture is superior to others.
History:
The term ethnocentrism originated in the social sciences. It was coined by sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz's 1879 book The right of nationality and languages in Austria-Hungary. The work of William Graham Sumner helped to popularize the term (and he is often miscredited as its creator). (1)
Current Usage:
While the kind of ethnocentrism described by Sumner and other sociologists who used the term focused on ethnocentric behaviours done by a group, individuals can be considered as being ethnocentric in today's average use of the word. (9)
Examples:
A situational example is: The justification of 19th and 20th century new imperialism as being a virtuous act of "civilizing" non-European groups.
A sentence example is: "The textbook was criticized for its ethnocentrism."
Perspective:
Ethnocentrism is seen as a universal effect that people of all cultures (2), (4), suggesting that it is an unconscious bias.
Some argue that applying your own cultural standards to other cultural is acceptable if their ideas are objectively incorrect. One article gives the example of certain cultures believing that disease is caused by special forces rather than hygiene (7).
Did You Know?
Cultural relativism, where cultural behaviours are assessed from the perspective of the culture in question, rather based on the standards of an outside culture, attempts to counteract ethnocentrism by encouraging open-mindedness and understanding. (3)
Sources:
(1) Who Coined the Concept of Ethnocentrism? A Brief Report
(2) Ethnocentrism | Ethnic and Cultural Studies | Research Starters
(3) Ethnocentrism and Cultural Relativism
(5) Implicit and Explicit Ethnocentrism: Revisiting the Ideologies of Prejudice
(6) The Problem of Ethnocentrism – Interserve USA
(7) Ethnocentrism
(8) Ethnocentrism: Theories of Conflict, Ethnic Attitudes and Group Behavior