Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface and acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: dimensions of justice in environmental law
- Part I The notion of justice in environmental law
- Part II Public participation and access to the judiciary
- 6 Participatory rights in natural resource management: the role of communities in South Asia
- 7 Public participation and the challenges of environmental justice in China
- 8 Environmental justice through courts in countries in economic transition
- 9 Environmental justice through environmental courts? Lessons learned from the Swedish experience
- 10 Environmental justice in the European Court of Justice
- 11 Environmental justice through international complaint procedures? Comparing the Aarhus Convention and the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation
- Part III State sovereignty and state borders
- Part IV North–South concerns in global contexts
- Part V Access to natural resources
- Part VI Corporate activities and trade
- Index
- References
8 - Environmental justice through courts in countries in economic transition
from Part II - Public participation and access to the judiciary
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 June 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface and acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: dimensions of justice in environmental law
- Part I The notion of justice in environmental law
- Part II Public participation and access to the judiciary
- 6 Participatory rights in natural resource management: the role of communities in South Asia
- 7 Public participation and the challenges of environmental justice in China
- 8 Environmental justice through courts in countries in economic transition
- 9 Environmental justice through environmental courts? Lessons learned from the Swedish experience
- 10 Environmental justice in the European Court of Justice
- 11 Environmental justice through international complaint procedures? Comparing the Aarhus Convention and the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation
- Part III State sovereignty and state borders
- Part IV North–South concerns in global contexts
- Part V Access to natural resources
- Part VI Corporate activities and trade
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
Discussing environmental justice in any societal context, including multinational contexts relevant to globalization debates, requires an examination of fundamental principles and the disentanglement of the concept from the particular legal background. While open for slightly different understandings, a narrow, traditional notion of environmental justice would be based on the concept's obvious roots in American theory related to social or distributive justice, where the disadvantaged – in particular minorities, indigenous peoples and certain socioeconomic groups – were the beneficiaries. In this form it has even been addressed by a Presidential order. But, like the term ‘sustainable development’, environmental justice has received currency or been invoked to reinvigorate long-standing debates. Thus, a concept originally focused on landfills and industrial sites has played a prominent role in critiques of globalization through its application to issues such as climate change and its intergenerational attributes. In sociological or environmental studies literature, ‘environment-related justice’ has been invoked in terms of intra-generational distributive justice, intergenerational justice, and ecological justice (just treatment of non-human entities in nature).
Certain limitations are apparent in order to ascertain a functional concept of environmental justice in the field of comparative law. As ecological justice – that is, a notion of justice that extends beyond human interaction to nature itself – is hardly recognized in law, a functional concept of environmental justice must rely on intra-generational distributive justice and the less-developed field of intergenerational justice.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Environmental Law and Justice in Context , pp. 158 - 175Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
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