SurveysIssues in environmental justice within the European Union
Highlights
► Issues within the European Union (EU) at the juncture of social justice demands and environmental concerns. ► Definition of environmental justice and environmental inequalities in the European context. ► Focus on vulnerability and exposure to environmental disaster and risk. ► Focus on fairness in environmental taxation, including fuel poverty.
Section snippets
Introduction: The American Background of Environmental Justice
Although it emerged as a public concern as early as 1820,1 the notion of “environmental justice” was really born in the United States in the mid-1980s, in the context of the struggle for racial equality. It first served to designate at once racial and ethnic inequalities in exposure to environmental risk (pollutions, toxic waste) and the exclusion of racial minorities, especially African-Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans, from the definition and
Adapting and Adopting Environmental Justice in the European Union
Before getting to practical issues regarding European environmental justice, it should be made clear that two dimensions of the question co-exist: a first dimension has to do with the important ecological debt the European Union has been accumulating at least since the industrial revolution vis-à-vis poor and developing countries in terms of carbon budget and resources use (global environmental justice); the second dimension regards intra and inter-generational aspects of environmental justice
Vulnerability to Social–Ecological Disasters, Exposure to Environmental Risk
In the context of the growing concern regarding climate change impact, the notions of vulnerability, exposure, sensitivity and adaptation have gained momentum. UNEP (2007) defines vulnerability as “a function of exposure, sensitivity to impacts and the ability or lack of ability to cope or adapt” and adds that “the exposure can be to hazards such as drought, conflict or extreme price fluctuations, and also to underlying socio-economic, institutional and environmental conditions. The impacts not
Fairness in Environmental Taxation and Fuel Poverty
Climate change mitigation requires the mobilization of all available economic instruments (regulation, cap-and-trade, carbon taxes) in order first to put a price on carbon, and then to increase it gradually so as to phase out the use of fossil fuels and foster low carbon economic growth and development. In this perspective, carbon taxes are a under-used but efficient economic instrument to curb so-called “diffuse pollutions”, i.e. decentralized greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions stemming from
Conclusion: Policies, Behaviors and Attitudes
How to better acknowledge, measure and eventually reduce environmental inequalities in the European Union? Pye et al. (2008) make a number of useful recommendations in this direction to European policy-makers in order to progress and catch up not only with the US but also with best European practices:
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The concept of environmental justice should be adopted as a guiding principle for policy development at the European level and across all Member States as a means of addressing social concerns
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2022, FuturesCitation Excerpt :The central focus of Environmental Justice is on discrimination, and it depends on the cultural and legal background of public policy in different countries. For example, in most European countries, environmental justice issues are predominantly perceived, analysed and framed in terms of social categories rather than in racial and ethnic terms as it is in the U.S.A. (Laurent, 2011). The Environmental Justice is commonly recognised as having two main dimensions: Distributive Justice and Procedural Justice.