Dear colleagues,
We are excited to launch this call for papers for a special issue on the
spatial dimensions of environmental justice in Europe in the journal Belgeo,
the Belgian journal of geography (free of charge, diamond open access
journal!). We welcome submissions in English and in French; abstracts by the
30th of September. Please find all details below and please share widely within
your networks.
Best,
Brendan Coolsaet
Environmental justice in Europe, spatial dimensions
Guest editors
Brendan Coolsaet, Research Professor, FNRS/UCLouvain, Belgium; Sophie Moreau,
Associate Professor, Université Gustave Eiffel, France;
Sophie Vanwambeke, Professor, UCLouvain, Belgium ; Edwin Zaccaï, Professor
emeritus, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.
Environmental justice analysis emphasises the unequal distribution of
environmental costs and benefits, and seeks to understand both the proximate
and underlying drivers of this inequality. In the USA, scholars and
environmental justice activists have built an established scientific track
record ever since 1st-generation environmental justice studies documented the
unequal spatial distribution of toxic pollution in the 1980s (Bullard 1990).
Almost 40 years later, an environmental justice community is now also slowly
emerging in Europe. This can be observed, for example, in the increasing
adoption of ‘climate justice’ by large parts of the European environmental
movement (Cassegård & Thörn 2017), through the study of issues and concepts
(eg. energy justice, just transition, planetary justice) established and
developed primarily through European scholarship (eg. Sovacool & Dworkin 2015;
Routledge et al 2018; Biermann & Kalfagianni 2020), and through emerging policy
initiatives at the intersection of social difference and environment.
Unlike in the USA, however, empirical evidence of the spatial distribution and
production of environmental inequalities in Europe is inconsistent, in part due
to the considerable heterogeneity of the available data and the absence of
common, cross-European analytical frameworks. Examples of currently available
data include studies showing how waste incinerators in France are more likely
to be situated in the most deprived and ethnically diverse areas (Laurian and
Funderburg 2014); how Roma and travellers communities across Europe are
disproportionately exposed to hazards due to the siting of travellers sites
near noxious facilities (Acker 2021; Harper et al 2009); how access to green
spaces in cities follow predictable patterns of inequality (Anguelovski et al.
2018); how environmental health inequalities are prevalent across Europe (WHO
2019; Paavola 2017), and how the consequences of climate change (eg. heat
waves, floods) hit minorities harder (Ballester et al 2023; Poussard et al
2021), to name a few.
This special issue aims at strengthening the pool of evidence on the spatial
dimensions of environmental (in)justice in Europe. Drawing on the concept of
“spatial justice” (Harvey 1996; Bret and Moreau 2019) and the subsequent study
of the plural “geographies of environmental justice” (Walker and Bulkeley
2006), it asks if and how environmental injustices are spatially constituted in
Europe. We are interested in studies that empirically document not just the
distribution but also the processes of (re)production of environmental
inequalities in Europe, including those taking place at the intersection of
multiple inequalities and across multiple and dynamic spatial scales. Suggested
topics include, among others :
* Empirical case studies on the spatial dimension of environmental
(in)justice in Europe, today or at any point in the past. We use a deliberately
broad understanding of the spatial, including “spatialities of different forms,
of different things and working at different scales” (Walker 2009). Examples
include (but are not limited to):
* socio-spatial patterning of environmental “goods” and “bads”,
including, for example the locations of waste, landfill and industrial sites;
access to environmental amenities; exposure to pollutants and environmental
risk; etc;
* spatiality of responsibility for the production of environmental
inequalities;
* multiscalar analysis of the causes and consequences of environmental
justice cases;
* the role of space in environmental political claim-making,
environmental activism, for environmental movements in Europe.
* Conceptual and theoretical explorations on the role and the meaning of
space and place of environmental (in)justice in Europe, including on the deeper
processes through which certain spaces are chosen for unwanted land uses or
become devalorised;
* Methodological considerations, including (geo)spatial data applications,
for the study of environmental justice in Europe.
Importantly, proposed papers should critically engage with the use of the
environmental justice framework. They should seek to discuss how their original
findings challenge and/or expand upon contemporary environmental justice
scholarship by explicitly situating the work in the broader field (for an
overview of the field, see Coolsaet 2020 and Hollifield et al 2018).
Submission Guidelines/Instructions
Queries to the Guest editors regarding your topic proposal and/or abstract
prior to submission are encouraged. We welcome submissions in English and in
French.
Abstracts (maximum 500 words) are due by 30 September 2024 and should be sent
in electronic format to
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> and
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. For accepted proposals, full
papers will be due by 31 March 2025 at the latest, but authors are encouraged
to submit as early as possible. Submissions of full papers must follow the
Belgeo journal’s editorial standards for manuscripts available at:
https://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/7117
Accepted papers will be published on a rolling basis as soon as possible
following peer-review and will be part of volume 2025/4 of the journal.
About the journal
Belgeo is the Belgian journal of geography. It is a peer-reviewed, free of
charge diamond open access journal hosted by the Royal Belgian Geographical
Society. Published articles are made available under Creative Commons license
CC BY 4.0. More information on https://journals.openedition.org/belgeo/67
About the Guest editors
* Brendan Coolsaet
([email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>) is
tenured Research Associate with the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS)
and Research Professor at UCLouvain (Belgium). He studies environmental
(in)justice in Europe. He is the editor of Environmental Justice: Key Issues
(Routledge, 2020), the principal textbook in the field.
* Sophie Moreau
([email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>) is
Associate Professor of geography at the Université Paris-Est-Marne la Vallée
and at the Université Gustave Eiffel (France). She works on environmental and
social justice in both the Global North & the Global South.
* Sophie Vanwambeke
([email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>) is
professor in geography at the Centre for Earth and Climate research, Earth &
Life Institute, UCLouvain. She studies health as a manifestation of
human-environment interaction, with a focus on infectious diseases.
* Edwin Zaccai ([email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>), professor
emeritus at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Ex-director of the Centre
d’Etudes du Développement Durable, he co-edited “Environnement et inégalités
sociales” (ULB, 2007).
References
Acker, William (2021) Où sont les « gens du voyage » ? Inventaire critique des
aires d'accueil. Paris: Editions du Commun
Anguelovski, I., Connolly, J. and Brand, A.L. 2018. From landscapes of utopia
to the margins of the green urban life: For whom is the new green city? City
22(3): 417-436.
Ballester, J., Quijal-Zamorano, M., Méndez Turrubiates, R.F. et al. (2023)
Heat-related mortality in Europe during the summer of 2022. Nat Med 29,
1857–1866
Biermann, F., & Kalfagianni, A. (2020). Planetary justice: a research
framework. Earth System Governance, 6, 100049.
Bullard, R.D. 2008. Dumping in Dixie: Race, class, and environmental quality.
Avalon Publishing
Coolsaet, B. (2020) Environmental Justice: Key Issues. Routledge.
Harper, K., Steger, T., & Filčák, R. (2009). Environmental justice and Roma
communities in Central and Eastern Europe. Environmental Policy and Governance,
19(4), 251-268.
Harvey, D (1996) Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference. Oxford,
Blackwell Publishers
Holifield, R., Chakraborty, J., & Walker, G. (2018). The Routledge handbook of
environmental justice. London, UK: Routledge.
Laurian, L. and Funderburg, R. 2014. Environmental justice in France? A
spatio-temporal analysis of incinerator location. Journal of Environmental
Planning and Management 57(3): 424-446.
Moreau, S, Bret, B. (2019) Justice spatiale et environnementale. Sainsaulieu,
I. ; Barozet, E. ; Cortesero,R. ; Melo D. Où est passée la justice sociale ?,
Presses universitaires du Septentrion 2019.
Paavola, J. Health impacts of climate change and health and social inequalities
in the UK. Environ Health 16 (Suppl 1), 113 (2017).
Poussard, C., Dewals, B., Archambeau, P., & Teller, J. (2021). Environmental
inequalities in flood exposure: A matter of scale. Frontiers in Water, 3
Routledge, P., Cumbers, A., & Derickson, K. D. (2018). States of just
transition: Realising climate justice through and against the state. Geoforum,
88, 78-86.
Sovacool, B. K., & Dworkin, M. H. (2015). Energy justice: Conceptual insights
and practical applications. Applied energy, 142, 435-444.
Walker G. 2009. Beyond distribution and proximity: exploring the multiple
spatialities of environmental justice. Antipode 41:614–36
Walker, G., and Bulkeley, H. 2006. Geographies of Environmental Justice.
Geoforum 37(5): 655-659.
WHO (2019) Environmental health inequalities in Europe. Second assessment
report. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe; 2019.
[cid:[email protected]]
Brendan Coolsaet
Research professor
Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS)
UCLouvain - Institute for the Analysis of Change in Contemporary and Historical
Societies (IACS)
Sciences Po – Paris School of International Affaire (PSIA)
http://brendan.coolsaet.eu<http://brendan.coolsaet.eu/>
Book : Environmental Justice: Key
Issues<https://www.routledge.com/Environmental-Justice-Key-Issues/Coolsaet/p/book/9780367139933>.
Routledge, 2020
Recent publications
• Dawson et al (2024) Is it just conservation? A typology of Indigenous
peoples’ and local communities’ roles in conserving
biodiversity<https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2024.05.001>. One Earth (in press)
• Coolsaet & Deldrève (2023) Exploring environmental justice in France:
Evidence, movements, and
ideas<https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/object/boreal:281029>. Environmental
Politics (in press)
• Pickering et al (2022) Justice and Equity in Transformative Biodiversity
Governance<https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/transforming-biodiversity-governance/rethinking-and-upholding-justice-and-equity-in-transformative-biodiversity-governance/FD7F2B68E7DAD53D94AA422FB49EFE42>.
Cambridge University Press
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