Introduction

Concern for the environment has increased over the years since the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972. Many countries have signed, acceded to or ratified many international instruments providing for access to justice for the citizenry generally and in environmental decision-making specifically. Alongside this has been the growth of the women's rights movement beginning with the Women's Conference in Mexico in 1975 and the coming into force of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in the early 1980s. Christopher Stone, in his seminal article written in 1970, entitled ‘Should Trees Have Standing’, analogised the quest for the rights of trees to that for women's rights and the resistance that such quests elicit from the entities that have the power to bestow rights. Explaining the resistance, he noted that ‘until the rightless thing receives its rights, we cannot see it as anything but a thing for the use of us. It is hard to see it and value it for itself until we can bring ourselves to give it rights.’

Access to environmental justice (EJ) by persons at all levels is mediated by the power relations between different actors. Since environmental management shapes decisions and actions on how resources are developed and to whom they are provided, lack of equity in what choices and what resources are provided to whom is an EJ issue.