A conception of justice as it relates to the environment and to indigenous peoples must be community based. The following discussion will look at Australia’s unequal distribution of industrial air pollution to advocate that only policy derived from a community-based capabilities approach can address the freedom, opportunities and degree of justice experienced by indigenous communities and lower socio-economic classes.
In the vein of the environmental justice movement in the United States (Bullard, 1994) a recent study has shown the presence of similar environmental distributional injustices along socio-economic lines in Australia. The study consists of the integration of air emissions data from the National Pollutant Inventory with ‘information on the Indigenous status of the population and social disadvantage indices from the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (Chakraborty and Green, 2014, p2). It shows the concentration of industrial air pollution over these racial communities and economic classes.
When applying a libertarian theory of justice like Nozick’s (1974), there is an inability to conceive that the actions of an individual may impact on others. Omitted from his discussion of distributional theories is the distribution of bad, in this case environmental bads, and the rights of the recipient or ‘recipient justice,’ because it ignores ‘any right a person might have to give something’ (Nozick, 1974, p8). The inadequacy of this individualist theory of justice likely informs current national and state policy. The authors of the quantitative study suggest that local factors like ‘zoning, land-use restrictions, land values, and labor availability,’ which are legislative areas under state government control (Chakraborty and Green, 2014, p9), could have precipitated the present maldistribution. Sze (2015) notes a similar injustice in the ‘unequal protection of minority populations from environmental pollution by local, state and national regulatory agencies’ (Sze, 2015, p160).
In Australia, current state policies effected the current distribution of industrial air pollution. Perhaps state policies were individualistic resulting in the greater value of individual property rights or individual companies, over the rights of a community to remain healthy.
An opposing perspective suggests that where the rights of lower socio-economic classes and indigenous peoples have been misrecognised, there has been a maldistribution of environmental bads. By using Fraser’s (1997) discussion, we can remedy the current distribution of industrial air pollution. Two such remedies for this case would be; the revaluing of ‘cultural products of maligned groups’ (Fraser, 1997, p15), for example a recognition of traditional healing based on environmental balance as equal to Australian medical practices (Panzironi, 2006), and the ‘wholesale transformation of societal patterns’ of interpretation (Fraser, 1997, p15), regarding how Australian society values the environment. These two strategies are community-based approaches to changing perspectives and developing practical policy.
Amartya Sen’s and Nussbaum’s (2011) capabilities approach could create reformative policy proposals based on the notion of universal applicability, yet the approach would undermine the community’s claim of their right to a clean environment. Under Nussbaum’s list of ‘Central Capabilities’ the ‘right to bodily health’ would require regulatory agencies to manage the distribution of industrial air pollution equally or require the clean up of polluted spaces before any physical harm manifested itself (Nussbaum, 2011, p33). While this list may prove instrumental in the pursuit of a certain social standard, there is no recognition that the initial bad was not inflicted equally upon the Australian community as a whole, but rather on lower socio-economic and Indigenous communities. In contrast, Sen’s emphasis on the role of agency and democratic deliberation is instrumental for a context-related approach to eliminating air pollution, since they would have an active role in collective decision-making which would inform their respective local or states policies.
Lastly, for Schlosberg and Carruthers (2010) indigenous environmental justice is community-based and capabilities-centred. It separates from capabilities literature, where an emphasis on the individual is pervasive. Instead, they emphasise the preservation of the ‘inherited links between culture and nature’ to show that cultural reproduction is a collective right (Schlosberg and Carruthers, 2010, p30). As the Australian Constitution should recognise when the government ratifies the UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights. Their theoretical assertion that ‘the capabilities approach is indeed compatible with such demands and with community-level units of analysis’ highlights a strong framework from which to implement practical policy (Schlosberg and Carruthers, 2010, p18).
In the above discussion we have attempted to identify a theory of justice which best informs politically pragmatic policy remedies for the unequal distribution of industrial air pollution in Australia. While Fraser’s (1997) remedies focus on redistribution and recognition, they are only the means to an individual’s wellbeing. Sen focuses on the ends of development and the freedoms associated with that context, while Nussbaum’s (2011) interpretation is too focused on the individual. Schlosberg and Carruther’s analysis appears to offer practical policy solutions to the issue by outlining a clear adaptation of the capabilities approach to something more context-related and community-based, while also focusing on the ends of development which is ultimately freedom and well-being.
Bibliography
Schlosberg, D. & Carruthers, D. (2010). Indigenous struggles, environmental justice, and community capabilities. Global Environmental Politics, vol. 10(4). (pp. 12–35).
Chakroborty, J and Green, D. (2014). Australia’s first national level quantitative environmental justice assessment of industrial air pollution. IOP Publishing Ltd. Environmental Research Letters, Volume 9, Number 4. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/9/4/044010.
Sze, J. (2017). Gender and Environmental Justice from: Routledge Handbook of Gender and Environment Routledge. Accessed on: 21 Jul 2018 https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781315886572.ch10
Nussbaum, M. (2011). Creating capabilities: the human development approach. Chapter 2, (pp. 17-45). Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Panzironi, F. (2006). Indigenous People’s Right to self-determination and development policy. Thesis submitted to fulfil the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy. Sydney: University of Sydney Faculty of Law.
Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, State and Utopia. New York: Basic Books.
Bullard, R. (1994). Environmental justice for all. Unequal protection: environmental justice and communities of color. (Chapter 1, pp. 3-22). San Francisco : Sierra Club Books.