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Evolution of the environmental justice movement: activism, formalization and differentiation

A. Perez,Bernadette Grafton,P. Mohai,R. Hardin,Katy Hintzen,Sara Orvis

Published 2015 in Environmental Research Letters

ABSTRACT

To complement a recent flush of research on transnational environmental justice movements, we sought a deeper organizational history of what we understand as the contemporary environmental justice movement in the United States. We thus conducted in-depth interviews with 31 prominent environmental justice activists, scholars, and community leaders across the US. Today’s environmental justice groups have transitioned from specific local efforts to broader national and global mandates, and more sophisticated political, technological, and activist strategies. One of the most significant transformations has been the number of groups adopting formal legal status, and emerging as registered environmental justice organizations (REJOs) within complex partnerships. This article focuses on the emergence of REJOs, and describes the respondents’ views about the implications of this for more local grassroots groups. It reveals a central irony animating work across groups in today’s movement: legal formalization of many environmental justice organizations has made the movement increasingly internally differentiated, dynamic, and networked, even as the passage of actual national laws on environmental justice has proven elusive.

PUBLICATION RECORD

  • Publication year

    2015

  • Venue

    Environmental Research Letters

  • Publication date

    2015-10-13

  • Fields of study

    Physics, Economics, Political Science, Environmental Science, Sociology

  • Identifiers
    DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/10/10/105002
  • External record

    Open on Semantic Scholar

  • Source metadata

    Semantic Scholar

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