People care deeply about their local environment because its quality affects their quality of life, wellbeing and contribution to environmental sustainability. Local environmental justice is a critical component of social justice. Like other forms of social inequality, environmental inequalities worsen health and wellbeing, hamper economic development and diminish social cohesion. Environmental justice matters because access to environmental benefits and protection from environmental harms constitutes basic human rights (UNEP, 2001). The history and origin of environmental justice go back to environmental justice movements (EJM) and their links with civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s in the United States. This was a time when the poor and predominantly non-white communities suffered most from pollution especially from toxic waste disposals. Today, the political reach of environmental justice has moved beyond race to include deprivation, age, gender and other vulnerabilities. The question of ‘who gets what’ has been extended to include other questions such as ‘who counts’, ‘whose voice is listened to’ and ‘what counts as a legitimate claim’. Similarly, its substantive scope has moved beyond toxic waste and hazards to incorporate a wide range of both environmental ‘bads’ (burdens) and environmental ‘goods’ (benefits). The breadth of issues covered in discussions of environmental justice reflects the pervasiveness of the environment in everyday life.

The four chapters that make up this section of the book address a number of local environmental concerns including, urban greenspace, local schools, transport and food. The authors draw on their knowledge and experience of Newcastle to provide examples of various ways in which people experience justice and fairness in the city. The section starts with Chapter 2, which focuses on urban greenspace and its benefits to local environmental quality and local communities. Drawing on their earlier work, Simin Davoudi and Elizabeth Brooks present a multidimensional framework for understanding justice that goes beyond a concern with the geographical distribution to concerns about recognition, responsibility and capability. Based on this framework, they develop a number of key principles that can be applied to judge claims of injustice in relation to urban greenspace in Newcastle city.