Environmental issues

Hambach Forest protest against coal mine expansion

Environmental conflicts or ecological distribution conflicts (EDCs) are social conflicts caused by environmental degradation or by unequal distribution of environmental resources.[13][14][15] Parties involved in the conflict may include locally affected communities, states, companies and investors, and social or environmental movements;[16][17] typically environmental defenders are protecting their homelands from resource extraction or hazardous waste disposal.[13] Environmental degradation resulting in conflict creates resource scarcities (such as by overfishing or deforestation), strains the environment's ability to respond to pollution, and degrades the living space for humans and nature.[18] Frequently these conflicts focus on environmental justice issues, the rights of indigenous people, the rights of peasants, or threats to communities whose livelihoods are dependent on the ocean.[13]

Environmental conflict can complicate response to natural disaster or exacerbate existing conflicts – especially in the context of geopolitical disputes or where communities have been displaced to create environmental migrants.[19][15][18]

Environmental justice is a social movement to address the unfair exposure of poor and marginalized communities to harms associated with resource extraction, hazardous waste, and other land uses.[20] The movement has generated hundreds of studies establishing this pattern of inequitable exposure to environmental harms,[21] as well as a large interdisciplinary body of social science literature that includes political ecology, contributions to environmental law, and theories on justice and sustainability.[20][22] The environmental justice movement began in the United States in the 1980s and was heavily influenced by the American civil rights movement.

The original conception of environmental justice in the 1980s focused on harms to marginalised racial groups within rich countries such as the United States and was framed as environmental racism. The movement was later expanded to consider gender, international environmental discrimination, and inequalities within disadvantaged groups. As the movement achieved some success in developed and affluent countries, environmental burdens have shifted to the Global South (as for example through extractivism or the global waste trade). The movement for environmental justice has thus become more global, with some of its aims now being articulated by the United Nations.

Levels of air pollution rose during the Industrial Revolution, sparking the first modern environmental laws to be passed in the mid-19th century

The environmental movement (sometimes referred to as the ecology movement), also including conservation and green politics, is a diverse philosophical, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues. Environmentalists advocate the just and sustainable management of resources and stewardship of the environment through changes in public policy and individual behaviour. In its recognition of humanity as a participant in (not enemy of) ecosystems, the movement is centered on ecology, health, and human rights.