ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a theoretical foundation of justice and EJ, deals with the evolution of environmental justice, initial practical problems, why certain injustices exist, and the importance of human rights laws in the context of enforcement as one way of addressing environmental injustice.
The chapter finds that legal change came about owing to the activism of the civil rights groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and shows the inseparability of recognition, procedural, and distributive justice. It finds that injustice exists owing to interest protection and incapacity to challenge the injustice. It also finds that oil and gas activities have an inherent system of injustice that can be addressed by good governance to ensure environmental justice. Bringing the work into perspective, it discusses environmental justice in the oil industry and environmental justice in four other oil-producing developing countries and finds elements of environmental injustice in all the other four countries similar to Nigeria albeit at different levels, and the slow progress made has been with NGOs’ help.
It concludes that these common findings justify the reason why developing countries should review their governance approaches, and therefore recommends that to be prevalent in developing countries they should seek solutions outside those developing countries.
