ABSTRACT
Environmental justice encompasses both social movements that focus on addressing inequalities in the distribution and impacts of environmental hazards and multidisciplinary scholarship that seeks to analyze and document such inequalities. This chapter introduces key concepts, definitions, and dimensions of environmental justice that are pertinent to environmental hazards research and provides a historical overview of environmental justice analysis of hazards. It also considers two case studies – Hurricane Harvey in the Greater Houston metropolitan area of Texas and industrial hazards in India – that illustrate how environmental justice concepts can be applied in various contexts. Overall, this chapter demonstrates how environmental justice represents an important and useful framework for engaging with differences and inequalities in the racial/ethnic and socioeconomic outcomes of environmental hazards.
