Global Social and Environmental Justice: Intersections and Dialogues

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue calls for contributions from a diverse group of international scholars regarding various innovative, theoretical, empirical, and policy studies on social and environmental justice, particularly their intersections, in different local, national, regional, and transnational contexts concerning the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The social dimension of sustainability and its relationship to human rights and environmental justice is often neglected (Atapattu et al. 2021). Scholars have pointed out that currently, the intersection of social and environmental justice is critical, as the two major ecological and social injustice crises (related to the collective experience of COVID-19 and conversations about social/racial inequity) (see Solomonian and Di Ruggiero, 2021, for example). An intersectional framework provides a “pivot” to understanding the underlying reinforcers of identity-based inequalities as well as drivers of differential vulnerabilities (Amorim-Maia et al., 2022). Equally important is the interaction between “different forms of knowing” from the Global South and the Global North and an understanding of non-Western struggles/practices based on “non-Western conceptions of justice, nature, difference, culture and identity” (Álvarez and Brendan, 2020).

The UN SDGs include 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) laid out in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by all UN members states in 2015 as an “urgent call for action by all countries–developed and developing–in a global partnership” (sdgs.un.org). The goals recognize the importance of linking goals and actions across social, economic, environmental, and climate arenas by emphasizing that “ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests“ (sdgs.un.org). The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2022 states that “cascading and interlinked crises are putting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in grave danger, along with humanity’s very own survival” (unstats.un.org) and “The confluence of crises, dominated by COVID-19, climate change, and conflicts, are creating spin-off impacts on food and nutrition, health, education, the environment, and peace and security, and affecting all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” (unstats.un.org).

Motivated by a reversal of years of progress as we are approaching the halfway point of the 2030 Agenda, this Special Issue calls for contributions from a wide array of scholars which address the ongoing challenges related to the SDGs and the most recent critical/urgent intersectional issues to be addressed. This SI is open to all research articles that can make a creative contribution to the theories/conceptualizations, methodologies/methods, empirical cases, and policies relevant to issues, including but not limited to linking social justice, inequity, and/or poverty with environmental, health, and climate justice; disadvantaged, marginalized, or underprivileged groups and environmental justice; women’s, migrants’, and ethnic or racial minorities’ experience; indigenous knowledge; social, racial, gender inequity; and their intersections with community/social-ecological resilience; and/or sustainable development, in various urban and rural settings and from local to regional scales. We particularly encourage submissions from underrepresented scholars or regions.

References

Álvarez, Lina, and Brendan Coolsaet. 2020. Decolonizing Environmental Justice Studies: A Latin American Perspective. Capitalism Nature Socialism. https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2018.1558272

Amorim-Maia, Ana T., Isabelle Anguelovski, Eric Chu and James Connolly. 2022. Intersectional climate justice: A conceptual pathway for bridging adaptation planning, transformative action, and social equity. Urban Climate. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2021.101053

Atapattu, Sumudu A., Carmen G. Gonzalez, Sara L. Seck. 2021. The Cambridge Handbook of Environmental Justice and Sustainable Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Leah Thomas. 2022. The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet. New York: Voracious.

Lucas Chancel. 2020.Unsustainable inequalities: social justice and the environment. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Solomonian, Leslie, and Erica Di Ruggiero. 2021. The critical intersection of environmental and social justice: a commentary. Global Health. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12992-021-00686-4

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Sustainable Development Goals. Available online: https://www.undp.org/sustainable-development-goals

United Nations (UN). The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2022. Available online: https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2022/

Dr. Guo Chen
Guest Editor

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• social justice, poverty, and inequity
• environmental, health, and climate justice
• disadvangated/marginialized/underprivileged populations and vulnerable groups
• women, migrants, minorities, and indigenous populations
• social, gender, and racial equity
• community and social-ecological resilience
• Sustainable Development
• Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)