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Project

What is the research project about?

Environmentalism is about Justice. Our economic system produces social and environmental injustices. Too many people, animals and plants are contaminated, displaced and killed. This is often linked to companies that provide our materials, food, water and energy. Communities and people try to resist pressures from these economic forces. But economic forces try to enforce increasingly violent digging and dumping on increasingly vulnerable and populated places. Alternative practices and narratives to the unsustainable economy exist and show the way forward.

What are the main aims?

The ENVJUSTICE project maps environmental conflicts along the supply chain.

The Action Plan of ENVJUSTICE comprises several points:

  • The expansion and updating of the EJAtlas database.
  • The production of scientific papers based on analysis of the EJAtlas database.
  • The expansion of the vocabulary of the degrowth and environmental justice movements.
  • Activities to spread awareness and contribute to the global environmental justice movement.

Who finances the project?

The ENVJUSTICE research project is paid by the European Union, through the European research Council (ECR). The ECR awarded Professor Joan Martinez-Alier a grant that runs from 1 June 2016 until 31 May 2021. The project is a continuation in different form of another EU-funded project. The Environmental Justice Organisations, Liabilities and Trade (EJOLT) project was an FP7 project supported by the European Commission that ran run from 2011-2015. EJOLT supported the work of Environmental Justice Organisations. It united scientists, activist organisations, think-tanks, policy-makers from the fields of environmental law, environmental health, political ecology, ecological economics, to talk about issues related to Ecological Distribution.

Who implements the project?

See the team page

Who oversees the project?

An international advisory board oversees the project’s activities

EnvJustice is a research project funded by an ERC Advanced Grant 2016-21 to Joan Martinez-Alier, ICTA, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Responsibility for the contents of this page lies exclusively with the project EnvJustice at ICTA UAB.

 

What are Environmental Justice Organisations?

EJOs are civil society groups involved in conflicts over resource extraction or waste disposal, which increase as the world economy uses more materials and energy. Costs of economic growth and development are dispro- portionately borne by the most socially and economically vulnerable sections of society, who often lack the political power to resist displacement, dispossession or exposure to environmental health risks. By giving these people a voice, EJOs practice "environmentalism of the poor". The EnvJustice project brings together university researchers and EJOs researching and supporting the global movement for environmental justice, building on a previous project EJOLT (2011-15) whose results are available in this webpage. Go here to subscribe to our newsletter.

Go to the EJ Atlas