Between activism and science: grassroots concepts for
sustainability coined by Environmental Justice Organizations
Joan Martinez-Alier
a 1
Isabelle Anguelovski
a
Patrick Bond
b
Daniela Del Bene
a
Federico Demaria
a
Julien-Francois Gerber
c
Lucie Greyl
d
Willi Haas
e
Hali Healy
a
Victoria Marín-Burgos
f
Godwin Ojo
g
Marcelo Porto
h
Leida Rijnhout
i
Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos
a
Joachim Spangenberg
j
Leah Temper
a
Rikard Warlenius
k
Ivonne Yánez
l
a
Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain
b
University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
c
Teri University, India
d
Centro di Documentazione sui Conflitti Ambientali, Italy
e
University of Klagenfurt, Austria
f
University of Twente, the Netherlands
g
Environmental Rights Action, Nigeria
h
Fundaçao Olwaldo Cruz, Brazil
i
European Environmental Bureau, Belgium
j
Sustainable Environment Research Institute, Germany
k
Lund University, Sweden
l
Acción Ecológica, Ecuador
_______________________________________________________________________________________
1
Prof. Joan Martinez-Alier, Emeritus Professor, ICTA, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain. Email:
joan.martinez.alier "at" uab.cat. This article draws on reports, books and meetings from two "Science-in-Society"
collaborative research projects funded by FP7 programs of the European Commission, coordinated by the ICTA,
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona: CEECEC (Civil Society Engagement with Ecological Economics 2008-2010),
(Healy et al., 2012) and EJOLT (Environmental Justice Organizations, Liabilities and Trade, 2011-2015),
(www.ejolt.org). We are also grateful to project CSO2010-21979 on Social Metabolism and Environmental Conflicts,
and the reviewers and editors, particularly Simon Batterbury.
Citation: Martinez-Alier J., Anguelovski I., Bond P., Del Bene D., Demaria F., Gerber J.-F., Greyl L., Haas W., Healy
H., Marín-Burgos V., Ojo G., Porto M., Rijnhout L., Rodríguez-Labajos B., Spangenberg J., Temper L., Warlenius
R..
and I.Yánez. 2014. Between activism and science: grassroots concepts for sustainability coined by Environmental Justice
Organizations. Journal of Political Ecology 21: 19-60.
Martinez-Alier et al. Grassroots concepts for sustainability
Journal of Political Ecology Vol. 21, 2014 20
Abstract
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
Résumé
Depuis le début des années 80, à travers leurs propres luttes et réunions stratégiques, les EJOS (Organisations
de Justice Environnementale) et leurs réseaux ont introduit quelques concepts différents d'écologie politique
qui ont été repris par le monde académique et par les décideurs politiques. Dans cet article, nous expliquons
les contextes qui ont promu l'émergence de ces concepts, et offrons des définitions pour un large ensemble de
concepts et de slogans lies aux inégalités environnementales et à la protection durable de l'environnement, et
nous explorons les connections entre eux. Ces concepts incluent: La justice environnementale, la dette
écologique, l'épidémiologie populaire, le racisme environnemental, la justice climatique,
l'environnementalisme des pauvres, la justice hydrique, la bio-piraterie, la souveraineté alimentaire, «les
déserts verts», «l'agriculture paysanne rafraichit la terre», la prise des terres (land grabbing), l'Ogonisation et
la Yasunisation, les plafonds de ressources, la responsabilité des entreprises, l'écocide, les droits indigènes
territoriaux, et quelques autres. Nous examinons comment les activistes ont inventé ces termes, construit des
demandes autour d'eux, et comment la recherche académique les a appliqués, et ensuite comment elle a offert
de nouveaux concepts, travaillant de manière symbiotique avec les EJOS. Nous argumentons que ces
processus et dynamiques construisent une science du développement durable conduite et co-produite par les
activistes, ce qui renforce ainsi la littérature académique et l'activisme sur la justice environnementale.
Mots-clés: Ecologie politique, organisations de justice environnementale, environnementalisme des pauvres,
dette écologique, connaissance activiste
Resumen
Desde el inicio de la década de 1980, las OJAs (organizaciones de justicia ambiental) y las redes que ellas
forman introdujeron diversos conceptos de ecología política en sus campañas y en sus reuniones para
determinar estrategias, que han sido adoptados también por académicos y por tomadores de decisiones. En
este artículo explicamos los contextos que dieron lugar a esas nociones, compilamos muchos conceptos y
lemas que se refieren a inequidades ambientales y a la sustentabilidad, examinando sus interrelaciones.
Dichos conceptos incluyen, entre otros, los siguientes: justicia ambiental, deuda ecológica, epidemiología
ambiental, racismo ambiental, justicia climática, ecologismo de los pobres, justicia hídrica, biopiratería,
soberanía alimentaria, "desiertos verdes", el lema "la agricultura campesina enfría la Tierra", acaparamiento
de tierras, Ogonización y Yasunización, topes al uso de recursos, pasivos ambientales y responsabilidad
ambiental empresarial, ecocidio y derechos territoriales indígenas. Estudiamos cómo los activistas de las
OJAs acuñaron tales conceptos configurando exigencias políticas a partir de ellos, y cómo los investigadores
académicos también los han aplicado y, a su vez, han aportado otros conceptos, en un proceso de
fortalecimiento mutuo. Estos procesos y dinámicas dirigidos por activistas co-producen y construyen una
ciencia social de la sustentabilidad, que apoya tanto el trabajo científico como el activismo, favoreciendo así
nuevos logros en favor de la justicia ambiental.
Palabras clave: Ecología política, organizaciones de justicia ambiental, ecologismo de los pobres, deuda
ecológica, conocimiento activista
Martinez-Alier et al. Grassroots concepts for sustainability
Journal of Political Ecology Vol. 21, 2014 21
1. Introduction
We review a set of concepts of political ecology that have origins outside academia. They have been
produced by civil society organizations and often by one specific form of NGO, the EJOs (environmental
justice organizations) that are leading the global environmental justice movement. EJOs are organizations
that constitute networks; sometimes they are formed by members of a community organized ad hoc as a
platform or as a coordinating committee for a specific cause, and sometimes they are permanent groups with
lives stretching over twenty or more years. On their own, or sometimes with the help of sympathetic
academics, the EJOs have introduced or adopted powerful concepts and principles to analyze and to cope
with environmental conflicts. They have produced a "political ecology from the bottom up". There is usually
a period of five to ten years between the time when a new concept is introduced by civil society at the cutting
edge of the global environmental justice movement, and the time when the same concept becomes an object
of mainstream research in the academic literature dealing with social sustainability. Through a review of the
definitions and the dates of origin of such concepts, we show that they are thematically connected, and
applied at different geographical scales. Here, civil society organizations and academics indirectly strengthen
each other's "mission" through an iterative process of examining and analyzing events, claims, strategies, and
conflicts.
2. Environmental justice
The first concept in our list of activist contributions to the social sustainability sciences is
Environmental Justice (EJ) born (in its sociological usage) in the United States, in struggles against waste
dumping in North Carolina in 1982 (Figure 1). Activist-authors such as Robert Bullard (1990), civil rights
activists with no academic affiliation, and members of Christian churches saw themselves as militants of
environmental justice. By 1991, a large assembly in Washington DC proclaimed the principles of
Environmental Justice. This history is well known. Since the 1980s, hundreds of reports have shown that
"people of color" and low-income populations have suffered from greater environmental harm from waste
sites, incinerators, refineries, transportation infrastructures than white and well-off communities (Bryant and
Mohai 1992; Bullard 1990; Downey and Hawkins 2008; Lerner 2005; Mitchell and Dorling 2003; Pellow
2000; Sze 2006; Varga et al. 2002). Workers from poor and 'minority' backgrounds are more likely to be
exposed to toxic pesticides and hazardous waste (Harrison 2011; Pellow 2002; Pellow and Park 2002; Smith
et al. 2006). Some years ago a new term emerged from the EJ movement, that of sacrifice zones. It has been
used in Latin America and no doubt it is appropriate for some regions of Africa and Asia. In the US, Samuel
Lerner (2010) told the stories of twelve communities that rose up to fight industries and military bases that
were causing disproportionately high levels of chemical pollution. He called these low-income
neighborhoods sacrifice zones.
The fight against the disproportionate incidence of pollution in predominantly Black, Hispanic or
Indigenous communities was seen by activists both as a fight for environmental justice and as a fight against
environmental racism (a concept coined in 1982 by activist Rev. Benjamin Chavis, a trained chemist).
2
This
concept traveled well beyond the United States. In the EJOs' idiom, environmental racism means the bad
treatment inflicted on people in the form of pollution or resource extraction on the grounds of membership in
particular ethnic groups, social class or caste. Thus, one can say that in the Niger Delta, Nigeria, Shell and
other oil companies exhibit environmental racism. They have shifted the social and environmental costs of
oil extraction onto indigenous, poor local communities.
For many groups fighting environmental racism, social class comes second to issues of racial
discrimination, while for other EJOs economic disadvantage is the most important criteria. In India, caste
(e.g. the poor treatment of Dalits) is an important consideration, while tribal affiliation often counts in many
other countries in the struggles against resource extraction (Kowasch 2012). While in the US "people of
color" and poor people are "minorities", in the world at large they are a majority, and therefore this offers a
great potential for a worldwide EJ movement.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
2
http://drbenjaminchavis.com/pages/landing/?blockID=73318 (accessed 4 Jan. 2014).
Martinez-Alier et al. Grassroots concepts for sustainability
Journal of Political Ecology Vol. 21, 2014 22
Figure 1: Environmental justice: protests against dumping PCB contaminated soil in an
African-American community, Warren County, North Carolina, 1982. Source: Jenny Labalme,
1987, A road to walk – a struggle for environmental justice (with permission).
The struggles against environmental injustice are growing, and the name EJ is now used more
frequently outside the USA. Thus, in Mozambique there is a very active group with the name of Justiça
Ambiental (a member of Friends of the Earth International). In Brazil there has been a Network of
Environmental Justice since 2001, formed by EJOs, unions, indigenous groups and university researchers.
3
Over the years, the US Environmental Justice movement helped reframe traditional definitions to
better fit the realities of the populations that EJOs are defending. For instance, in the 1991 First National
People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, EJ groups redefined the environment as a safe place to
live, work, learn, a definition that has been used by public health and planning experts as they examine the
relation between health and place, e.g. in studying the incidence of asthma (Maantay 2007). Urban ecology
scholars have used this definition as they examine new forms of EJ claims in cities, such as healthy
communities, or place-remaking and community reconstruction within degraded marginalized neighborhoods
(Agyeman et al. 2003; Anguelovski 2014; Corburn 2009).
3. Popular epidemiology
Evidence of the disproportionate incidence of morbidity or mortality is not always available from
official statistics because of the lack of health professionals, hospitals or reliable information systems in the
areas concerned, making the problem invisible. Hence the rise of so-called popular epidemiology, a concept
of relevance in many struggles inside and outside the United States (Figure 2). Think for instance of efforts
by the plaintiffs in the Ecuadorian Chevron-Texaco case in the 2000s to gather information related to the
incidence of cancer in the Sucumbíos region of the Amazon in the 1970s and 1980s. They resorted to the
memories of the local populations, drawing on studies that proved that such memories concentrated around
areas with oil wells, transfer stations, and pools for disposal of extraction water (Martin Beristain et al.
2009). Popular epidemiology (Brown 1992, 1997) implies that "lay" knowledge of illnesses from pollution is
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3
A map of environmental injustices in Brazil, with 400 cases, has been built by Dr Marcelo Firpo Porto of ENSP
(Fiocruz) and collaborators (Porto et al., 2013):
http://www.conflitoambiental.icict.fiocruz.br.
Martinez-Alier et al. Grassroots concepts for sustainability
Journal of Political Ecology Vol. 21, 2014 23
more valid than (the sometimes non-existent) official knowledge. Popular epidemiology is at least an early
warning system, a complement to, and partly a substitute for "normal" scientific epidemiological studies.
Figure 2: Popular epidemiology: Web site of the Health Popular Forum, Curitiba, Brazil,
announcing a talk on critical epidemiology, March 10, 2010. Source: FOPS‐Curitiba, Parana
http://fopspr.wordpress.com/sobre
The concept of popular epidemiology fits with the "post-normal science" approach which has been
influential in ecological economics (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993). The apparent neutrality and objectivity of
normal science is criticized because in many situations it makes hard facts explicit whilst concealing both the
values and the uncertainties in question, often neglecting local-situated knowledge and hiding hegemonic
interests. A similar critique is made by EJ activists, pointing out the need for integrating perspectives, values,
and legitimate lay knowledge (Porto 2012a). Post-normal science appeals to, or at least accepts, an "extended
peer review" in such situations, with participation of activist or other lay experts. Academics also talk about
"street science" through which the daily experiences of residents with environmental contamination and