ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE: AN EMERGING PUBLIC POLICY ISSUE

ABSTRACT

Environmental justice is a major issue today and of interest to citizens, administrators, and scholars of public administration. In this introduction, we review the emergence of the environmental justice movement and discuss the development of the field by presenting an overview of the literature and existent research on environmental justice. This research has focused to a large extent on siting issues and on the causes and explanations of environmental equity. In particular, five causes or explanations of environmental injustice have been emphasized in the literature: (a) race; (b) economic and market factors; (c) political and administrative issues; (d) attitudinal issues; and (e) post-materialism. We review the major pieces of research and evidence in these areas and compare and contrast the explanations of environmental injustice. for the most part we find that there is considerable controversy over the different explanations and causes of environmental injustice. In the third section of the paper, we highlight some of the issues that have not been explored so far and the unfulfilled gaps, in academic research on environmental justice issues. We conclude by presenting a brief synopsis of the articles in this symposium.