ABSTRACT
The intensification of economic globalization has generated a growing disjuncture between those who enjoy the benefits of economic modernization and those who suffer the negative ecological and social ‘side-effects’.* While Ulrich Beck has suggested that ‘. . . poverty is hierarchical, while smog is democratic’ (Beck 1995: 60, his italics), the environmental justice movement and Third World political ecologists have pointed to the many ways in which racial minorities, the poor, and heavily indebted developing countries tend to suffer a disproportionate share of the ecological and social problems generated by economic modernization. Accordingly, the green political challenge raised by the ecological crisis involves the double challenge of not only finding ways of reducing ecological and social risks wherever possible but also finding ways of minimizing the unfair externalization and displacement of risks onto innocent third parties in space and time.
