ABSTRACT
In recent decades, distributive justice issues have become centrally important in risk assessment of environmental risks and hazards. Recognition of social inequalities in the spatial distribution of toxic pollution hazards and risks – first in the United States and then globally – has spawned a vibrant social movement, policy debates, and a large body of research. Under the rubric of environmental justice (EJ) analysis, numerous quantitative spatial studies have focused on examining whether toxic risk burdens are distributed evenly across people and places, or the extent to which racial/ethnic minority, lower class, or other oppressed communities are disproportionately exposed to toxic pollution hazards (see Chapters 25 and 26). Various statistical and spatial analytic techniques (see Chapters 15, 16, 17) have been employed in a variety of locational contexts worldwide. The majority of studies indicate that racial/ethnic minorities, people of low socioeconomic status and other socially marginalized groups experience disproportionate residential exposure to hazards such as air pollution, chemical releases from industrial facilities, and residual risks from inactive hazardous waste sites (Chakraborty et al. 2011; Walker 2012). The impacts of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and subsequent state response failures catalysed academic inquiry and activism to address social injustices associated with events such as hurricanes and floods. More specifically, concerns regarding the uneven impacts of Katrina on African-American, elderly and low-income residents of New Orleans led to an expansion of empirical EJ research to include the unjust implications of flooding (Bullard and Wright 2009; Colten 2007; Ueland and Warf 2006; Walker and Burningham 2011).
