Environmental Justice in World Politics

Abstract

All environmental problems in one way or another are involved in the question of justice. The concept of
“environmental justice” has been in circulation for some time underlining the justice dimension of
environmental issues. Given the globalization of environmental problems since 1970s, the environmental
justice discourse has been increasingly used to frame various international or global environmental issues
like toxic waste trade, ozone depletion, biodiversity protection, and global warming.1 There is now quite a
number of phrases that can help us to think environmental justice outside state borders: “global
environmental justice,” “transnational environmental justice,” “international environmental justice,” and
“international environmental equity.”2 Environmental scholars using these terms often fail to draw
meaningful distinctions among them. I argue that this multiplicity of phrases signifies more than an
inadvertent inflation of terminology. The terminological diversity we encounter in IR literature actually
corresponds to different modes of environmental justice in world politics.

Keywords

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