This chapter defines the concepts of environmental justice, pollution, human rights, compliance, enforcement, and public interest litigation.

It finds that the meaning of environmental justice depends on the context; however, it links ethnicity, race, income, and equitable distribution of environmental goods and burdens, access to information, participation, and access to justice. It discusses extensively the factors that affect EJ in developing countries using the Nigerian case study. The factors found include inadequate laws, enforcement incapacity, corruption, political structure, conflict of interest in oil, combination of licensing, governance, and enforcement roles and many more which need to be surmounted before achieving environmental justice. Finally, it discusses the challenges of reforms which will be in context in the substantive chapters.

Analysing the legal design and penalties, it concludes that the Nigerian laws are ineffective, encourage environmental injustice, and do not provide a benchmark for effective enforcement. It also concludes that though there are many definitions of environmental justice there are unifying points, and that there are many challenges to be surmounted if the quest to achieve environmental justice in Nigeria using enforcement will become a reality.