Environmental Justice: Key Issues

by Brendan Coolsaet (Editor)

Environmental Justice: Key Issues is the first textbook to offer a comprehensive and accessible overview of environmental justice, one of the most dynamic fields in environmental politics scholarship.

The rapidly growing body of research in this area has brought about a proliferation of approaches; as such, the breadth and depth of the field can sometimes be a barrier for aspiring environmental justice students and scholars. This book therefore is unique for its accessible style and innovative approach to exploring environmental justice. Written by leading international experts from a variety of professional, geographic, ethnic, and disciplinary backgrounds, its chapters combine authoritative commentary with real-life cases. Organised into four parts--approaches, issues, actors and future directions--the chapters help the reader to understand the foundations of the field, including the principal concepts, debates, and historical milestones. This volume also features sections with learning outcomes, follow-up questions, references for further reading and vivid photographs to make it a useful teaching and learning tool.

Environmental Justice: Key Issues is the ideal toolkit for junior researchers, graduate students, upper-level undergraduates, and anyone in need of a comprehensive introductory textbook on environmental justice.

Genres: Environment

342 pages, Hardcover

Published July 7, 2020

Reviews

[Marisa Duarte]

This is a well-organized and expertly selected collection of essays on integral methodological, axiological, and social organizational dimensions of environmental justice work. Since the mid-1990s, EJ efforts have highlighted how and why poor, immigrant, and people of color communities experience greater combined and cumulative impacts of environmental contamination, disaster, and degradation of healthy habitats including watersheds, woodlands, coastlines and prairies. This collections draws from the expertise of researchers, activists, advocates, scholars and scientists who have effectively merged community organizing skill with their understanding both legal landscapes and local ecologies. I used several chapters from this book to teach my grad students about the importance of procedures of participatory deliberation, decolonial approaches to EJ, and history of EJ in the US. I recommend this book for folks who are interested in learning about the range of justice applications in communities and countries with a plurality of worldviews. Also helpful in this book: learning objectives, definitions and guiding questions embedded in each essay.

[Sam(antha)]

I read this book for my environmental justice class and I really liked it. It does a good job introducing its reader to various environmental justice issues and theories of justice. I would definitely recommend to anyone wanted to learn (more) about environmental justice.

[Julia]

read this for a class on environmental justice!