One of the causes of the increasing number of ecological distribution conflicts around the world is the changing metabolism of the economy in terms of growing flows of energy and materials. There are conflicts on resource extraction, transport and waste disposal. Therefore, there are many local complaints, as shown in the Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJatlas) and other inventories. And not only complaints; there are also many successful examples of stopping projects and developing alternatives, testifying to the existence of a rural and urban global movement for environmental justice. Moreover, since the 1980s and 1990s, this movement has developed a set of concepts and campaign slogans to describe and intervene in such conflicts. They include environmental racism, popular epidemiology, the environmentalism of the poor and the indigenous, biopiracy, tree plantations are not forests, the ecological debt, climate justice, food sovereignty, land grabbing and water justice, among other concepts. These term...

Is there a global environmental justice movement

This article highlights the need for collaborative research on ecological conflicts within a global perspective. As the social metabolism of our industrial economy increases, intensifying extractive activities and the production of waste, the related social and environmental impacts generate conflicts and resistance across the world. This expansion of global capitalism leads to greater disconnection between the diverse geographies of injustice along commodity chains. Yet, at the same time, through the globalization of governance processes and Environmental Justice (EJ) movements, local political ecologies are becoming increasingly transnational and interconnected. We first make the case for the need for new approaches to understanding such interlinked conflicts through collaborative and engaged research between academia and civil society. We then present a large-scale research project aimed at understanding the determinants of resource extraction and waste disposal conflicts globally through a collaborative mapping initiative: The EJAtlas, the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice. This article introduces the EJAtlas mapping process and its methodology, describes the process of co-design and development of the atlas, and assesses the initial outcomes and contribution of the tool for activism, advocacy and scientific knowledge. We explain how the atlas can enrich EJ studies by going beyond the isolated case study approach to offer a wider systematic evidence-based enquiry into the politics, power relations and socio-metabolic processes surrounding environmental justice struggles locally and globally. Key words: environmental justice, maps, ecological distribution conflicts, activist knowledge, political ecology

https://journals.librarypublishing.arizona.edu/jpe/article/1932/galley/2191/download/

Mapping the frontiers and front lines of global environmental justice: the EJAtlas

Gender equality in science, medicine, and global health: where are we at and why does it matter?

In their own battles and strategy meetings since the early 1980s, EJOs (environmental justice organizations) and their networks have introduced several concepts to political ecology that have also been taken up by academics and policy makers. In this paper, we explain the contexts in which such notions have arisen, providing definitions of a wide array of concepts and slogans related to environmental inequities and sustainability, and explore the connections and relations between them. These concepts include: environmental justice, ecological debt, popular epidemiology, environmental racism, climate justice, environmentalism of the poor, water justice, biopiracy, food sovereignty, "green deserts", "peasant agriculture cools downs the Earth", land grabbing, Ogonization and Yasunization, resource caps, corporate accountability, ecocide, and indigenous territorial rights, among others. We examine how activists have coined these notions and built demands around them, and how academic research has in turn further applied them and supplied other related concepts, working in a mutually reinforcing way with EJOs. We argue that these processes and dynamics build an activist-led and co-produced social sustainability science, furthering both academic scholarship and activism on environmental justice. Keywords: Political ecology, environmental justice organizations, environmentalism of the poor, ecological debt, activist knowledge

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Between activism and science: Grassroots concepts for sustainability coined by Environmental Justice Organizations

The environmental movement may be “the most comprehensive and influential movement of our time” (Castells 1997: 67), representing for the ‘post-industrial’ age what the workers’ movement was for the industrial period. Yet while strike statistics have been collected for many countries since the late nineteenth century (van der Velden 2007),1 until the present no administrative body tracks the occurrence and frequency of mobilizations or protests related to environmental issues at the global scale, in the way that the World Labour Organization tracks the occurrence of strike action.2 Thus until the present it has been impossible to properly document the prevalence and incidence of contentious activity related to environmental issues or to track the ebb and flow of protest activity. Such an exercise is necessary because if the twentieth century has been the one of workers struggles, the twenty-first century could well be the one of environmentalists. This Special Feature presents the results from such an exercise—The Global Atlas of Environmental Justice— a unique global inventory of cases of socio-environmental conflicts built through a collaborative process between academics and activist groups which includes both qualitative and quantitative data on thousands of conflictive projects as well as on the social response. This Special Feature applies the lenses of political ecology and ecological economics to unpack and understand these socio-environmental conflicts, otherwise known as ‘ecological distribution conflicts’, (hereafter EDCs, Martinez-Alier 1995, 2002). The contributions in this special feature explore the why, what, how and who of these contentious processes within a new comparative political ecology. The articles in this special issue underline the need for a politicization of socio-environmental debates, whereby political refers to the struggle over the kinds of worlds the people want to create and the types of ecologies they want to live in. We put the focus on who gains and who loses in ecological processes arguing that these issues need to be at the center of sustainability science. Secondly, we demonstrate how environmental justice groups and movements coming out of those conflicts play a fundamental role in redefining and promoting sustainability. We contend that protests are not disruptions to smooth governance that need to be managed and resolved, but that they express grievances as well as aspirations and demands and in this way may serve as potent forces that can lead to the transformation towards sustainability of our economies, societies and ecologies.

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The Global Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas): ecological distribution conflicts as forces for sustainability

This article discusses the experience of the map of conflicts related to environmental injustices and health in Brazil and its potential contribution to international movements for environmental justice. Inventories and maps of environmental injustices are important instruments of struggle against injustice and racism, since they increase the visibility of populations, whose lives are threatened. The Brazilian map is published online since 2010 and was an initiative of FIOCRUZ, a public health and academic institution, and the NGO FASE, in cooperation with the Brazilian Network of Environmental Injustice (RBJA), created in 2001. Environmental justice arised in Brazil as a field of reflection and mobilization, and as a rallying point to identify the struggle of several groups and entities, such as rural and urban grassroots movements, indigenous peoples, traditional populations, and peasants affected by different hazards and risks, as well as environmentalists, trade unions, and scientists. Currently, the map has 570 emblematic environmental conflicts in all regions of Brazil. Many economic activities are causing the conflicts such as mining expansion, oil and gas extractions, infrastructure (roads, mega-dams), agribusiness, and pesticide pollution, often with the support of governmental institutions.

The map of conflicts related to environmental injustice and health in Brazil

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Injustiça ambiental e saúde no Brasil: o mapa de conflitos

This article discusses the importance of environmental conflicts and environmental injustice for the field of environmental health and its surveillance, expanding and redefining its scope through the solidary articulation with the demands of social movements and populations affected by economic ventures or the failure of public 1 Pesquisador do Centro de Estudos da Saude do Trabalhador e Ecologia Humana da ENSP/FIOCRUZ, membro da

Conflitos e injustiça ambiental em saúde no Brasil Conflicts and environmental injustice in health in Brazil Conflictos e injusticia ambiental en salud en el Brasil

Resumo O modelo de desenvolvimento brasileiro, fortemente baseado na producao de commodities e em industrias eletrointensivas para trocas nos mercados globais, gera desigualdades sociais e ambientais que desencadeiam diversos conflitos entre povos indigenas e grupos economicos envolvendo disputas por terra e bens comuns em contextos que influenciam fortemente a situacao de saude dessas comunidades. O objetivo deste artigo e apresentar um panorama dos conflitos socioambientais envolvendo os povos indigenas brasileiros, suas estrategias para garantir o acesso e a qualidade do Subsistema de Atencao a Saude Indigena (SASI), e alternativas que eles tem proposto para o enfrentamento dos problemas gerados. Esta analise se baseia em um mapeamento de conflitos ambientais baseado na revisao bibliografica de fontes secundarias (do movimento indigena ou seus parceiros) que subsidiaram a construcao de relatos sobre os conflitos e a analise das narrativas indigenas sobre o territorio onde vivem e suas lutas. A partir da qual concluimos que as estrategias de luta pela saude dos povos indigenas brasileiros sao influenciadas pelas suas disputas socioambientais e sao parte das mobilizacoes desses povos pelo reconhecimento integral de direitos.

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A luta dos povos indígenas por saúde em contextos de conflitos ambientais no Brasil (1999-2014)

Este artigo discute a importância dos conflitos e situacoes de injustica ambiental para o campo da saude ambiental e da propria vigilância, ampliando e ressignificando suas possibilidades a partir de sua articulacao solidaria com as demandas dos movimentos sociais e das populacoes atingidas por empreendimentos economico produtivos
ou pela omissao de politicas e instituicoes publicas. Acreditamos que tal
perspectiva se aproxima da Saude Coletiva e dos chamados determinantes sociais do processo saude-doenca em funcao de aproximar o SUS e seus trabalhadores dos territorios e disputas onde se concretizam historicamente as desigualdades socioambientais e a vulnerabilizacao das populacoes impactadas por diferentes projetos de
desenvolvimento e empreendimentos economicos. Para isso, o artigo apresenta o projeto Mapa dos Conflitos e Injustica Ambiental e Saude no Brasil, apresentando alguns resultados preliminares atraves de quatro casos selecionados que ampliam a concepcao de saude. Concluimos apontando algumas pontes entre os resultados do Mapa da Injustica Ambiental com a proposicao de Vigilância em Saude Ambiental mais
ampla, participativa e intersetorial.

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Tania Pacheco

Papers

The map of conflicts related to environmental injustice and health in Brazil

Injustiça ambiental e saúde no Brasil: o mapa de conflitos

Conflitos e injustiça ambiental em saúde no Brasil Conflicts and environmental injustice in health in Brazil Conflictos e injusticia ambiental en salud en el Brasil

A luta dos povos indígenas por saúde em contextos de conflitos ambientais no Brasil (1999-2014)

Conflicts and enviromentalinjustice in health in brazil