ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how two lines of thought—environmental justice and political ecology—can be brought to bear on the whole endeavor of stream restoration. The Environmental Protection Agency provides the most widely accepted definition of environmental justice (EJ). The goals for EJ include all individuals and communities across the nation enjoying the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards, and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn and work. In addition to the theoretical framing of EJ, two principles of justice have been embraced in EJ literature, distributive and procedural, with race being a major focus for each principle. The approach to EJ in the US context is very different from that of the global context. It has been proposed that urban political ecology, specifically that characterized as Marxist Urban Political Ecology, provides an underlying theoretical frame for application to EJ.
