‘Just sustainability’: the emerging discourse of environmental justice in Britain?

TLDR

Environmental justice serves as a vocabulary for political mobilization and a policy principle guiding public decision making, having emerged in the US and UK to support community action against environmental injustices and now increasingly informing sustainable development and social inclusion agendas. The paper investigates the growing synergy between sustainability and environmental justice in the UK, focusing on how NGOs and government recognize and integrate these discourses. It examines how NGOs and government increasingly understand and link sustainability and environmental justice, highlighting the evolving conceptual integration between the two. The authors argue that the concept of “just sustainability” offers a unified discourse for policymakers and activists, merging the core dimensions of environmental justice and sustainable development.

Abstract

Environmental justice is both a vocabulary for political opportunity, mobilization and action, and a policy principle to guide public decision making. It emerged initially in the US, and more recently in the UK, as a new vocabulary underpinning action by community organizations campaigning against environmental injustices. However, as the environmental justice discourse has matured, it has become increasingly evident that it should play a role in the wider agendas for sustainable development and social inclusion. The links between sustainability and environmental justice are becoming clearer and more widely understood in the UK by NGOs and government alike, and it is the potential synergy between these two discourses which is the focus of this paper. This paper argues that the concept of ‘just sustainability’ provides a discourse for policymakers and activists, which brings together the key dimensions of both environmental justice and sustainable development.