Individually and collectively, people around the world have opposed environmental injustice for hundreds of years. However, most commentators agree that the conceptualisation and use of the term ‘environmental justice’ first emerged in the 1980s, out of resistance to the siting of toxic facilities in black and other minority ethnic communities in the United States. A defining moment was the publication of research that reported that hazardous installations, such as toxic waste dumps, were often located in areas with higher percentages of ‘people of color’ (UCC, 1987). This study was followed by further investigations that confirmed that poor and minority ethnic communities in the US were disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards (for example, Bryant and Mohai, 1992; Adeola, 1994; Cutter, 1995) and received unequal protection under environmental law (for example, Kratch, 1995). These findings led to accusations of ‘environmental racism’ and the growth of an environmental justice movement made up of tenants’ associations, civil rights groups, agricultural workers, religious groups, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), academics, trades unions and other civil society organisations. However, unlike previous environmental groups in the US, which had focused on the protection of wilderness and endangered species, this movement focused on the environment in the workplace and the community.

Therefore, the term ‘environmental justice’ was originally applied to the socio-spatial distribution of pollution within national borders and, in particular, environmental racism in facility siting. It has since been taken up in other parts of the world and, over the past decade, the concept of environmental justice and its associated research methodologies have begun to be used in other countries around the globe, though more often by political and academic elites than by local activists (Walker, 2012). In the process of expanding its boundaries, environmental justice has become a somewhat contentious term. In general, it seems that activists have tended to promote a wider, and often more radical, use of the concept, applying it to more diverse contexts and issues, while policy makers and most academics have clung to a narrower definition.