Environmental Justice

At the expense of the environment, urbanization and industrialization have been primary modes of economic development. In their article The Sustainability of Privilege: Reflections on the Environment, the Third World City, and Poverty, Olpadwala and Goldsmith discuss urbanization, environmental problem, and poverty in the Third World. The rapid and continuing urbanization of these countries places more pressure on the earth’s fragile environment. Olpadwala and Goldsmith explain that although the poor are blamed for this environmental degradation, they are often not the root vehicles of destruction. The agents of environmental degradation are the decision makers in developed countries. Poor people shoulder a disproportionate burden of environmental problems; “the real environmental crisis is not that of air, forests, or water, or the rest of nature, but the trauma of the poor, present today as it has been for ages” (630).  The results of environmental degradation are not just super storms and higher temperatures, but adverse health and socio-economic affects on the poor. In their paper Urban Political Ecology, Justice and the Politics of Scale, Swyngedouw and Heynen explain, “there are a series of urban and environmental processes that negatively affect some social groups while benefiting others. A just urban socioenvironmental perspective, therefore, always needs to consider the question of who gains and who pays”(902).