Environmental Justice

Abstract

Abstract This chapter focuses on environmental justice. It explains how environmental issues restrict an individual’s or a community’s ability to enjoy a specific right that is guaranteed to them. In the 1980s, the environmental justice movement came into its own after protestors opposed the dumping of PCB-contaminated soil into the landfill of a community where primarily Black and poor persons resided. The environmental justice movement is concerned with the complexity of overlapping environmental issues, human rights, and ecological sustainability. The chapter provides information about the emergence and components of the global environmental crisis: climate change, human-caused environmental degradation, and environmental justice.