An idea I took away from the reading Globalizing Environmental Justice by Leah Temper
This is one of my classmate\’s answer
An idea I took away from the reading Globalizing Environmental Justice by Leah Temper is that environmental justice is often thought of through a Westernized lens, which detracts from the fact that EJ is a global issue and is thus informed by non-Eurocentric beliefs and practices. For example, the reading describes one spiritually motivated movement in India led by the Bishnoi people, who defended trees with their bodies which a local Maharaja had ordered to be cut down. The Bishnoi belief in the equality of a human life to the life of a tree, to the extent that they martyred themselves attempting to save the trees, was largely influenced by non-Western spirituality. Movements like this are often excluded from the EJ narrative due to their failure to fit a conventional mode of what the largely Western, scientifically-driven climate activism looks like.
The second reading, an excerpt by Ryan Holifield, makes frequent allusions to the institutionalization of environmental justice over the past few decades. In his writing, this language refers to the adoption of a concept of environmental justice by government agencies. This reading prompted a question for me: in some ways, might the institutionalization of environmental justice do more harm than good, as often it promotes a placebo of sorts by redirecting environmental hazards from disadvantaged communities, but fails to stem the cause of these hazards? Often, the government and large corporations work together, rather than in opposition; thus, does institutionalization of environmental justice fail to be the solution to the overall problem due to the government giving too much leeway to corporations and industry?
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