Environmental Justice

Environmental justice is a term used to describe a social movement and concept that focuses on the ways in which specific environmental issues and policy decisions have a disproportionate and negative impact on marginalized communities, which includes low-income working-class individuals, women, and people of color. The environmental justice movement recognizes that race and structural racism are historically embedded in the mainstream environmental movement and environmental policies. Race, socioeconomic class, and gender influence how environmental justice activists come to understand environmental problems.

Leaders of the environmental justice movement argued they were not included in the mainstream environmental movement’s agenda. The environmental movement was critiqued for not considering race, class, and gender and focusing on improving amenities that only some of the public benefited from due to availability ...