Environmental Justice

Environmental justice is an important idea in the larger context of environmental protection. It has gained importance globally: the UN, governments, and nongovernmental organizations now regularly address it. Environmental justice concerns the unfair treatment of underserved and disenfranchised people. It challenges all of us to acknowledge the responsibilities of affluent populations and developed countries to correct the environmental harms, such as disproportionate industrial pollution and rising seas from climate change, that they have, unwittingly or not, inflicted on those who are less powerful. Relying on the latest scholarship and highlighting relevant events, this book provides readers with the foundational knowledge of environmental justice: what it is and its causes, as well as governmental and international responses to it.