What is environmental justice? How does globalization affect environmental justice? Give a specific example to support your answer.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Environmental justice means we are making sure some people aren't being exploited for the benefits of others, and that access to environmental resources is fair. Environmental justice requires that everyone be able to participate fairly in decisions about their environment regardless of their race, class, gender, or nationality, that no one coerce or force another to make an agreement, and that all stakeholders-the people who are affected by the decisions-are able to participate in the negotiation process.
A critical question to ask when we consider global warming, waste management, deforestation, and nuclear radiation is who benefits from the processes that create environmental problems like these, and who suffers.
Environmental justice is increasingly complicated in the age of globalization. Globalization means that if we are interested in environmental justice, we can no longer just focus on what is just for people within a country or society. To the extent that what happens in one area has impacts across the globe, we must think about environmental justice as a global issue. For example, some countries choose to have few or no environmental regulations as a strategy for attracting the subsidiary operations of wealthy transnational corporations. Because these subsidiaries are unregulated and foreign-owned, local populations suffering the environmental hazards and degradation they may create have little recourse. One outcome of this relocation of environmentally damaging production to poorer countries is the new international division of labor. Manufacturing jobs move to underdeveloped countries, while white-collar jobs stay in the industrial countries. Globalization makes it difficult to identify the stakeholders in environmental decisions, particularly given the scope and longevity of the outcomes.