Ryan Holifield is Associate Professor of Geography and Urban Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His research interests include environmental justice policy and practice, social and political dimensions of urban environmental change, and stakeholder participation in environmental governance. He is a co-editor of Spaces of Environmental Justice (2010) and the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Environmental Justice, and he serves on the international advisory board for the journal Antipode. His articles appear in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Antipode, Geoforum, and several other geography and environmental studies journals.

Abstract:
Diversity, Disproportionate Impact, and EPA Policy: the Challenge of Addressing Difference in Environmental Justice Communities

Diversity and difference within the environmental justice movement, both in the USA and internationally, has been a source of both strength and challenge. On the one hand, it has enabled the movement not only to grow, but also to embrace and make connections among an ever-increasing variety of issues, including but now extending far beyond the movement’s initial focus on exposure to toxic chemicals. On the other hand, critical assessments suggest that the staggering diversity of issues and situations it now addresses poses threats to the movement’s cohesiveness and potential effectiveness.

In this paper I suggest that an additional challenge for the movement, beyond the diversity of communities and environmental problems it encompasses, is the diversity of dimensions within the concept of environmental justice itself. The initial focus of much environmental justice activism and scholarship in the United States was the distributive dimension of justice, which implied an emphasis on how environmental amenities and disamenities are distributed among different populations and communities. Although this served as a powerful tool for mobilizing activism and influencing policy, it also to some degree narrowed the focus of debate to the question of whether marginalized groups are in fact disproportionately impacted by environmental problems or solutions. In this sense, it reduces the question of justice to a “matter of fact,” in theory verifiable or falsifiable by a set of expert techniques. The history of environmental justice analysis and policy in the US shows not only that disproportionate impact has proven to be ambiguous and elusive, but also that the focus on it has to some degree obscured the other diverse dimensions of justice, including procedural justice, capacities, and recognition of profound differences and inequalities within the movement itself. I reflect on potential ways forward in addressing these diversities, not only for the US Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice initiatives and the environmental justice movement in the USA, but also for the increasingly international and global movement for environmental justice.