⚖️ Environmental Justice
Core idea: Environmental justice means everyone has the right to a safe, healthy environment and fair access to resources, no matter who they are or where they live.
🌍 Why environmental justice matters
- Not everyone has equal access to food, water, energy, and housing
- Inequalities are linked to income, race, gender, and social background
- Some groups face more pollution and environmental damage than others
- Environmental harm often affects the poorest communities the most
Environmental justice is about fairness — who benefits, and who pays the price?
💰 Economic inequality and feedback loops
Economic inequality means wealth and opportunities are unevenly distributed.
- People with more money can invest and earn even more
- People with less money struggle to meet basic needs
- This creates a positive (reinforcing) feedback loop
- Inequality increases over time unless something changes
In exams, link inequality to reinforcing feedback loops that make problems worse over time.
🏛️ Power, politics, and regulation
- Wealthy individuals and large companies often have political influence
- They may lobby governments to protect their interests
- This can weaken environmental protection laws
- This process is called regulatory capture
When economic power shapes laws, environmental damage can continue even when risks are well known.
🚰 Access to basic resources
Environmental justice also focuses on whether people can meet their basic needs.
- Some people lack clean water, food, energy, or housing
- High prices can make essential goods unaffordable
- Markets alone do not always protect vulnerable groups
- Communities may depend on government or social support
🌐 Environmental justice at different scales
- Individual → daily choices and behaviour
- Community → local pollution and access to services
- National → laws, taxes, and social support systems
- Global → climate change and unequal impacts between countries
Environmental justice applies from the local to the global scale.
🧠 Exam-ready ideas to remember
- Environmental justice = fairness in environmental protection
- Inequality increases vulnerability to environmental harm
- Economic systems can reinforce inequality
- Fair policies should protect the most vulnerable
- Sustainability and environmental justice are closely linked
Always connect environmental justice to inequality, access to resources, and long-term sustainability.
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🌍 Trade, Resources, and Environmental Justice
Environmental justice looks at who benefits from resource use and who suffers the damage.
🔄 Trade and resource extraction
- Many high-income countries developed by taking resources from lower-income regions
- This happened during colonisation and continues today through global trade
- Resources often flow from the Global South to the Global North
- The benefits and profits are unevenly shared
Resource extraction may end officially, but unequal trade relationships can remain.
⚖️ Power imbalance between countries
- Richer countries often have more power in global organisations
- This can keep resource prices and wages low in poorer countries
- Some workers still face unsafe or exploitative conditions
- Overconsumption in rich countries increases global environmental damage
High consumption in one place often causes harm somewhere else.
🌪️ Unequal environmental and social impacts
- Pollution, water shortages, and climate change affect poorer communities more
- Many people live in vulnerable areas like floodplains and coastal regions
- These communities often contributed least to the problem
- Environmental damage can reduce health, income, and food security
Climate impact example: Flooding can severely affect low-emission countries due to climate change driven elsewhere.
🏭 Pollution linked to global production
- Factories are often located where labour is cheap
- Environmental rules may be weaker
- Rivers, soil, and air can become polluted
- Local communities carry the health and environmental costs
⚖️ Fair environmental policies
Environmental justice requires policies that protect people as well as the environment.
- Policies should not unfairly harm low-income groups
- Large projects can displace communities if poorly planned
- People affected should have a voice in decisions
- Costs of environmental action should be shared fairly
Justice = fair decision-making, fair outcomes, and shared responsibility.
👕 Case idea: Clothing and waste
- High consumption creates large amounts of clothing waste
- Second-hand clothing can overwhelm local markets
- Much clothing ends up as waste, polluting land and water
- Low-income communities often live near waste sites
Environmental justice asks: Who consumes? Who profits? Who cleans up?
📝 How to use this in exams
- Link trade and consumption to environmental harm
- Explain unequal impacts between rich and poor groups
- Mention power, policy, and participation
- Use examples of production, waste, or climate impacts
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IB-style question — environmental justice
Using a named example, explain how a lack of environmental justice can affect a community. [4]
How to answer it, step by step
- Define it
• everyone's right to a safe environment regardless of race, income or nationality
• 'lack of justice' = some groups bear harm others avoid - Named example → cause → effect
• e.g. low-income area next to a polluting factory
• community suffers health harm but gains little of the benefit → clear inequality
Final answer
Full marks = definition + named example + unfair cause→effect. 'Pollution is bad' without the justice/inequality angle does not score.