Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables, figures and boxes
- About the author
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- one Justice-based approaches to environmental harm
- two Environmental justice and harm to humans
- three Conservation, ecological justice and harm to nature
- four Species justice and harm to animals
- five Toward eco-justice for all
- References
- Index
three - Conservation, ecological justice and harm to nature
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables, figures and boxes
- About the author
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- one Justice-based approaches to environmental harm
- two Environmental justice and harm to humans
- three Conservation, ecological justice and harm to nature
- four Species justice and harm to animals
- five Toward eco-justice for all
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction
The notion of ecological justice refers to the health and wellbeing of ‘nature’, that is comprised of specific eco-systems and plants and animals that together constitute the environment as a whole, and the intrinsic value of the natural environment. Analysis in this instance is directed at environmental harm that is directly linked to specific eco-systems.
Global environmental harm is not new. For many centuries humans have done things to the environment that have fundamentally transformed local landscapes and regional biodiversities. From bringing plants and animals from the ‘homeland’ to new parts of the world, to polluting rivers and seas with industrial outfall, to fire burning in particular local biospheres, ecological change has been part and parcel of how humans have worked with each other, and nature, for millennia. Not all such activities have been viewed as harmful, and the transformation of environments has not always been seen as a negative. In ecological terms, however, there are, today, several areas of acknowledged harm that are garnering ever greater attention and concern from the scientific community and from the population at large. The main reason for this is a consensus that the relationship between human activity and environmental wellbeing is essentially toxic – we are killing the world as we know it. (White, 2010a: 3)
If this is indeed the case, then the purpose of ecological justice moments is to expose the ways in which ecological health and wellbeing is being undermined by human practices.
Such exposure has a number of relevant dimensions and reflects quite different foci when it comes to environmental protection and preservation. Key questions that arise include which environments are destroyed and why, and which are not? There is, for instance, both selective destruction of eco-systems and bio-spheres (for example, the clearfelling of forests), and selective protection of such (for example, preservation of national parks and marine sanctuaries). Which ecosystems and bio-spheres are privileged or valued above others is an important consideration in critical evaluation of environmental harm as this pertains to ecological justice.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Environmental HarmAn Eco-Justice Perspective, pp. 75 - 110Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2013