Report
Teaser, summary, work performed and final results
Periodic Reporting for period 2 - EnvJustice (A GLOBAL MOVEMENT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: The EJAtlas)
Teaser
Is there a Global Movement for Environmental Justice that is helping to push society and the economy towards environmental sustainability? The EnvJustice project aims to prove there is. Research is being done on the many facets of this Global Movement for Environmental Justice...
Summary
Is there a Global Movement for Environmental Justice that is helping to push society and the economy towards environmental sustainability? The EnvJustice project aims to prove there is. Research is being done on the many facets of this Global Movement for Environmental Justice as we develop a theory of “ecological distribution conflicts†(EDC) drawing on Ecological Economics and Political Ecology. We delve beneath the surface manifestations of environmental conflicts related to unsustainable uses of mineral ores, hydroelectric dams, public infrastructures, biomass or fossil fuels extraction to uncover their root causes in the growth and changes in the social metabolism.
The EnvJustice project has three parts:
1) The Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas; http://ejatlas.org/)
The EJAtlas is a worldwide inventory of conflicts. It is directed by Leah Temper and Joan Martinez Alier and coordinated by Daniela Del Bene, at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. It started in 2012 with the EJOLT project (2011-15) and is substantially supported by the EnvJustice project (ERC Advanced Grant 2016-2021), and also by the ACKnowl-EJ project (Academic-Activist Co-Production of Knowledge for Environmental Justice, 2015-2018). The EJAtlas has still an uneven geographical and thematic coverage and this is why it needs to be updated and expanded. It is becoming a unique instrument to do comparative, statistical political ecology.
2) The vocabulary of the environmental justice movement
The EnvJustice project expands the scope and deepens the analysis of the Vocabulary of the Movement for Environmental Justice, from its beginning in the United States in 1982 (with terms like environmental racism, popular epidemiology and sacrifice zones) to its deployment in many countries with new cross-cutting concepts. We collect and study songs, banners, photos, documentaries, i.e. the cultural aspects across the globe of the movements for environmental justice.
3) The alliance between degrowth and the environmental justice movement
We analyze the elements for a possible alliance between the Global Environmental Justice movement and the small Degrowth (Décroissance, Post-Wachstum, “Prosperity without Growth†or “Steady-State Economyâ€) movement in Europe and the US. In relation to this, we organize summer schools on Degrowth and Environmental Justice. We have also launched at ICTA UAB a Master Degree in Political Ecology, Degrowth and Environmental Justice.
Work performed
The main overall achievements are:
a) The recruitment of a scientific team with 5 doctoral students (3 of whom financed by EnvJustice) and 5 post-docs (all of them financed by EnvJustice).
b) The increase in the number of new ecological distribution conflicts (EDCs) recorded in the EJAtlas.
c) The scientific publications and conference papers by members of the EnvJustice team.
d) The summer schools on Degrowth and Environmental Justice at ICTA UAB in 2017, 2018 and 2019 (See https://summerschool.degrowth.org/).
e) The start of a Master Degree in Political Ecology, Degrowth and Environmental Justice in September 2018 (See https://master.degrowth.org).
f) The dissemination of the work of EnvJustice through participation in academic conferences on ecological economics, political ecology, environmental justice and degrowth (such as ESEE; LASA; POLLEN; ISEE and Degrowth); our webpage and other media in several languages, including regular columns in The Ecologist.
See also http://envjustice.org/
1) The Environmental Justice Atlas (EJ Atlas; http://ejatlas.org/)
The EJAtlas is by June 2019 a large, purposive, expert-elicited sample of 2830 visible, previously reported EDCs from around the world collected and displayed on an open online digital platform, with expanding but still uneven geographical and thematic coverage. In summary, the achievements of the EjAtlas for the first 30 months of the project include:
a) Total number of cases: from 1650 cases recorded in May 2016 (just before the EnvJustice project started on 1st June 2016) to 2830 by June 2019, with new collaborations;
b) Technical development of the EJAtlas (e.g. new filter functions, improvement of cartographic and GIS tools);
c) Multi-language platform: English, Spanish, Chinese, French, Italian, Turkish and Arabic in preparation;
d) Public responses, including both congratulations and sometimes complaints;
e) Increasing user statistics (e.g. hits per day; see http://ejatlas.org/);
f) Cases analyzed in academic papers (e.g. comparative analyses);
g) Two special issues: 1) â€The EJAtlas: Ecological Distribution Conflicts as Forces for Sustainability†(Sustainability Science; 2018); and 2) “Ecological Distribution Conflicts in India†(Ecology, Economy and Society; 2019);
h) Featured maps: e.g. “Blockadia: Keep Fossil Fuels in the Ground!†(See: http://ejatlas.org/featured/blockadia).
2) The vocabulary of the global movement for environmental justice
We have identified and collected about 100 documentaries on environmental issues from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, about 150 from the globe.
3) The alliance between degrowth and the environmental justice movement
Different activities have taken place to explore this possible alliance: three summer schools, a special issue for the journal Ecological Economics, international degrowth conferences, knowledge transfer and policy-work.
Final results
Here, we give details about the expected results of the three parts of the project.
1) Environmental Justice Atlas
The EJAtlas is the largest global inventory of environmental conflict cases. When we reach 3000 cases as we shall do by the end of 2019 this implies an accumulated workload of 1500 weeks, equivalent to 30 person-years.
2) Cultural Expressions of the EJ movement
Understanding and increasing the Vocabulary of the Movement for Environmental Justice. Evidence will be provided by the EnvJustice project that the networks among local EJOs revealed in the EJAtlas are part of a global environmental justice movement that is developing a common terminology with many regional variations.
3) An alliance between the Global Environmental Justice movement and the Degrowth movement?
Escaping the compulsion to economic growth means paying attention to notions of “dematerialization†of the economy, voluntary simplicity in living style, the caring economy, happiness and not GDP, Degrowth also means listening to voices in the South (indeed, epistemologies of the South) that advocate finding original, innovative, culturally specific and individually-constructed paths to buen vivir or sumak kawsay, Ubuntu, eco-swaraj or Ashish Kothari’s “radical ecological democracyâ€, paths that lead to qualitative improvements in health, education, social services and environmental conditions. Many of these voices belong to the global EJ movement. For an inventory of these alternatives, see ‘Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary’ (AUF, 2019), a book born at the ICTA-UAB.
Website & more info
More info: http://envjustice.org/.