Environmental justice and education

• In Event: Education as and for Environmental, Epistemic and Transitional Justice

Proposal

Our frame our understanding of Environmental justice as a heterogeneous and pluralistic understanding of how humans define fairness in relation to their natural environment. It encapsulates distributive justice, particularly in considering how environmental ills (e.g. pollution, environmental degradation, and risk) are disproportionately suffered by marginalized communities. However, environmental justice also goes beyond distribution in considering the processes that give rise to these unequal distributions. In this respect, Fraser's concepts of ‘recognition’ and 'participatory parity' identify the way in which individuals and groups are included or excluded in distributional decisions. Here, there are clear intersections with epistemic justice, as 'the key to understanding recognitional injustice lies in understanding the social norms, language and norms that mediate our relation between those who are denigrated and so less well-off in the scheme of justice.’. The concept of environmental justice can also be further extended through perspectives of ecological justice, in which nature is considered as a subject with its own claims to justice. While the ecological approach contrasts with liberal notions of the social contract in which nature is viewed as a good rather than a subject, expanding the notion of subjectivity provides a new way to consider injustices that have no immediate human element but that may be considered deeply unjust by humans.

Authors

• Robin Shields, University of Bath

• Expedito Nuwategeka, Gulu University