When Does Unequal become Unfair? Judging Claims of Environmental Injustice

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it presents a pluralistic framework for justice that combines an expanded interpretation of distributive justice with concerns for recognition, participation, capability, and responsibility. It argues that the latter has not attracted the scholarly attention that it deserves in the environmental justice debate. Secondly, the paper demonstrates how this multidimensional framework can be applied in practice to inform practical judgments about particular environmental justice claims by using an example of traffic-related air pollution in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne in the United Kingdom.