Chapter 1 sets out the foundations of the book, beginning with a basic discussion of what is climate change and the global climate crisis. The chapter then moves on to the important Global North-Global South colonial context and the fundamental issues of environmental justice, climate justice and carbon colonialism. From there, the discussion ventures into an overview of who bears the brunt of climate change, concluding in a final section on the calls for a gender-based approach to solving the global climate crisis and the rationale for the book.

Drawing on Islamic teachings and principles, Islamic environmental law offers a distinct perspective and values that contribute to its practical implementation in Muslim countries. This chapter proposes that empowering local communities to assume responsibility for their environmental obligations can foster a bottom-up approach to compliance, thereby cultivating a stronger sense of environmental stewardship and social responsibility among community members. To promote such a bottom-up approach, it is crucial to recognize Islamic environmental law as an academic discipline and encourage its inclusion in academic discourse. This recognition will inspire scholars and practitioners to explore how Islamic principles can be translated into concrete actions and policies that advance sustainability and environmental well-being.

Islamic environmental law presents a comprehensive approach to ecological preservation, grounded in religious principles and ethical responsibilities. This research explores the Islamic legal framework for environmental protection, positioning humans as stewards (khalifa) of nature rather than absolute owners. The study illuminates how Islamic jurisprudence integrates environmental conservation into a holistic system of social and spiritual responsibility. The research examines key institutional mechanisms within Islamic law for environmental management, including land reclamation (Ihia’ Al-Arad Al-Mawat), natural reserves (Al-Hima), protective zones (Al-Harim), and charitable endowments (Al-Waqf). Central to this approach is the principle of prioritizing collective welfare over individual interests, with a strong emphasis on preventing environmental harm and promoting sustainable development. The paper critically analyzes the potential for implementing Islamic environmental principles in contemporary legal frameworks, particularly in Muslim-majority countries. It advocates for a renewed environmental governance model that synthesizes religious ethics, scientific understanding, and proactive institutional strategies to address ecological challenges.

This chapter discusses social movements and their campaigns for climate justice. Focusing on the unequal distribution of environmental benefits and burdens, it explores how social movements address both local and global challenges of environmental injustice. The chapter defines environmental justice as the struggle for a safe and healthy environment, free from pollution, and emphasises its moral and justice dimensions. It highlights the significant role of grassroots activism and the diverse strategies employed by various environmental campaigns. The chapter also examines the intersection of environmental justice with human rights and the importance of inclusive, participatory approaches. Through case studies and examples, it illustrates the power of collective action in driving change and the need for continuous adaptation in response to evolving social, political and cultural landscapes. The chapter underscores the importance of resilience and flexibility in the pursuit of a more equitable and sustainable future.

This chapter focuses on issues of justice in sustainability transitions. Although there is an increasing focus in academia, policymaking and practice on the importance making sustainability transitions not only environmentally and economically sustainable, but also just and fair so that costs and benefits are shared equally, this chapter illustrates that social inequities can often be exacerbated rather than alleviated in the context of sustainability transitions. Indeed, people who are vulnerable and marginalised do not often benefit from sustainability transitions: they may have limited opportunities to actively participate as citizens and suffer from negative consequences of climate and energy policies and projects. Such injustices are often the reason for contestations of developments, projects, policies and initiatives that are part of sustainability transitions. This underlines the importance of considering questions of distributional, recognition, procedural, restorative, cosmopolitan, spatial, postcolonial, intergenerational and multispecies justice when designing, developing, and implementing sustainability transition policies and projects across all socio-technical systems.

This chapter explores the complex relationship between extractive industries, sustainable development, and Indigenous treaty law. It begins by examining the international law guidance available for extractive industries, analysing frameworks and principles that promote responsible and sustainable practices in resource extraction while considering the social, economic, and environmental dimensions. This chapter then focuses on the specific challenges of oil and gas exploration, highlighting the impacts on Indigenous communities and emphasizing the importance of meaningful consultation, consent, and fair benefit-sharing in alignment with Indigenous treaty rights. Furthermore, it explores the mining sector’s implications for sustainable development, considering the social, economic, and environmental aspects and emphasizing the role of Indigenous treaty law in ensuring responsible practices, equitable resource distribution, and the protection of Indigenous rights and lands. Thus, the chapter emphasizes the need for a balanced approach that respects Indigenous rights, integrates Indigenous perspectives and consent, and promotes sustainable practices.

Abstract: This chapter considers the moral potentialities of science education in the atomic age through the lens of Dewey’s Human Nature and Conduct (1922). Science education involves moral, ethical, social, economic, industrial, and political issues that go beyond the mere possession of scientific knowledge and the acquisition of skills. The education of scientifically literate citizens has become increasingly important of late. Izawa looks specifically at science education in Japan, showing that although Japanese students maintain relatively high academic achievements in science and mathematics, and their science literacy is high, science education in Japan is still on a new growth path; social and political interests in science and technology have not yet fully matured. This chapter illuminates how science education requires greater cultivation of political citizens who engage in moral and ethical issues. The chapter considers Dewey’s insights into not only the destructive use of science but also its peaceful use and links this with discussions in environmental ethics. Izawa discusses the implications of Dewey’s view for science education today by examining the case of Japan. He concludes that science education focused on the moral potential of physical science requires the creation of conditions for maturing environmental justice and enriching deliberative democracy.

Kerri Woods surveys how, when it comes to the environment, the anthropocentrism of most of the history of human rights politics meant that its incorporation of claims on behalf of nature and those most affected by its degradation have waited a long time. Nonetheless, in recent decades they have exploded. At stake is not just the recognition of who in particular among human beings environmental degradation hurts, or recognition of the moral significance of future generations, but potentially turning rights language into a tool for non-human protection as an intrinsic good, just as Davies suggests when it comes to artificial intelligence. At the same time, Woods shows, the intersection of environmental concern and rights history opens up new quandaries about assigning responsibility for harm and regulating supraterritorially.

This chapter provides an overview of contemporary technological transformations and their implications for labour, particularly in the Brazilian context. The advancement of digitalisation and the platformisation of labour has intensified precarisation and social inequalities, with ‘uberisation’ and the gig economy emerging as symbols of this new landscape. Algorithmic management, the lack of labour protections, and financial instability are challenges faced by workers, exacerbating social exclusion. The text highlights initiatives such as Fairwork, which aims to regulate digital labour and promote fairer working conditions. Furthermore, it proposes integrating Environmental Education into discussions of social and economic justice, arguing that labour issues are intrinsically connected to the fight for environmental justice. By linking the rights to decent work, life, and a safe environment, it suggests that Environmental Education offers a critical perspective that encompasses social, economic, ecological, and human rights dimensions, proposing new approaches to address inequalities worsened by technological acceleration.

Prominent policy debates about environmental justice center on drinking water. In California’s Central Valley, this engages a complex, multilayered regulatory landscape. Traditionally, a key gap has been protecting access to groundwater for disadvantaged communities that rely on domestic wells. Addressing this gap requires conceptualizing "what matters" to include groundwater levels, and "who matters" to include these communities. California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act substantially reformed California’s groundwater law. It addresses groundwater levels but deals unevenly with disadvantaged communities. It also misses a regulatory opportunity to take a cumulative view of these communities that would recognize that a threat to drinking water is one burden among many that adds to environmental injustice. This chapter introduces the use of the CIRCle Framework to assess rules for conceptualization and how they link to the other CIRCle Framework functions of information, regulatory intervention and coordination. It reveals omissions and mismatches that pose an ongoing challenge to securing environmental justice for communities facing critical threats to groundwater resources used for drinking.

At the core of regulating cumulative environmental impacts is understanding and articulating what and who we want to protect or restore from conditions of unacceptable cumulative harm. This central thing being protected or restored is the "matter of concern." Rules have an important role to play in articulating and formalizing the matter of concern. This chapter begins by analyzing how matters of concern vary, from an individual species, to a sacred site, to environmental justice, and how this variation affects how difficult it is to conceptualize the matter of concern. Addressing cumulative environmental problems requires rules to help in conceptualization by providing for articulating the environmental and human aspects of the matter of concern; describing its spatial boundaries; specifying cumulative threshold conditions, any further change from which would be unacceptable; and providing for adapting these things while avoiding "shifting baselines" that mask cumulative harm.

Chapter 3 synthesizes analyses of changes in both social justice movements and legal and policy institutions to broaden our understanding of interconnections among segregation, environmental disparities, and structural vulnerabilities in low-income communities of color. The Buchanan case highlights a relatively narrow framing of land-use injustice in the early twentieth century: zoning as a tool of racial segregation in housing. Throughout the twentieth century, the struggle for land use justice broadened to address the deep structural inequalities and systemic marginalization of all low-income communities of color, including land-use policies creating disparities in environmental conditions, community infrastructure, and vulnerabilities to disasters, shocks, and change. As both grassroots movements and institutions have evolved to grapple with the persistence and complexity of land use injustice in the United States, building the capacities, power, and resilience of low-income communities of color is critical to transformation and justice, and this growing focus on community capacities has come to characterize land-use justice movements.

New York City’s policy efforts in the first two decades of the twenty-first century emphasize the potential for local governments to materially improve their local environments. During the mayoralty of Michael Bloomberg (2002-2013), the city government sought from the top to remake the city’s physical environment to appeal to postindustrial elites to promote local economic development. Under Mayor Bill de Blasio (2014-2021), the administration explicitly prioritized equity alongside economic growth and this commitment was reflected in environmental policy in a focus on investing in community parks. Under both mayors, environmental policy came from community groups, as well as city leaders. For example, across the two administrations, prominent environmental justice advocates prompted the city to adopt measures to address longstanding inequities in the allocation of responsibility for solid waste management, although the injustices persisted at the end of the de Blasio administration. Overall, the history of New York City’s efforts to address problems such as lack of greenspace, contaminated lands, and solid waste management underscores that change can come from the top and the bottom, but that there are legal, fiscal and other constraints on the ability of cities to address even paradigmatically local environmental problems.

In the early twenty-first century, New York and other cities established targets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to help limit global climate change. Limiting these emissions is not an obvious task for local governments: no city’s efforts will materially affect planetary temperatures, and curtailing these emissions imposes costs on local actors mainly for the benefit of the world as a whole. Between 2007, when the city set its first GHG reduction target, and 2019, the city’s emission reduction efforts were consistent with the preoccupation of local elites with economic growth. The city did not impose costly requirements on local actors to reduce their emissions, and the city did not achieve significant emission reductions. However, in 2019, the city government passed a local law that establishes declining caps on greenhouse gas emissions from buildings, and portends real costs on private actors – including the owners of residential real estate – if the city enforces the law. This 2019 law emerged from the efforts of city insiders, and local progressive interest groups motivated by environmental, social justice and labor concerns in the first Trump presidency. The history of the city’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions illustrates the precarious politics of local decarbonization efforts.