Victims’ Movement and the Global Principles of Environmental Justice

The concept of environmental justice has increasingly been applied to global environmental issues such as climate justice and energy justice. Although there is considerable debate over the definition and dimensions of environmental justice, including procedural and distributional justice, there remains considerable room for further examination of the “principles of environmental justice,” namely the principles that specify what a state of realized environmental justice would look like. This is likely because the investigation of justice principles has often been regarded as unsuitable for empirical research, and because such principles may vary across different societies and cultures. However, if environmental justice is to be applied to global issues, it is necessary to examine these principles whilst engaging with such diversity.

East Asia—comprising Japan, South Korea, China, and Taiwan—has experienced serious environmental justice issues, including pollution associated with rapid industrialization. Numerous victims’ movements have emerged in response, generating a variety of thoughts and forms of collective action. The ideas articulated through these movements embody diverse principles of environmental justice and provide an important starting point for exploring the nature of such principles. Furthermore, whilst East Asia exhibits distinctive characteristics from a global perspective, considerable variation can also be observed within the region itself.

In this session, taking East Asia as our point of departure, we will compare and examine the principles of justice articulated in victims’ movements across different countries and societies, and consider what global environmental justice should look like in these turbulent times.