Description

Reflections on Environmental Justice: Children as Victims and Actors

This article begins with a brief discussion of the history of the environmental justice movement and of the reasons why race, ethnicity, class, and occupation (and, to lesser and problematic extents, geopolitical location and gender) are theorized in the literature, while age is ignored as a significant dimension of environmental justice thinking. The author’s focus is on children, but this discussion could be productively extended to include the special environmental vulnerabilities of the elderly as well. The article then discuss ways in which perspectives on children as a distinctive environmental “special interest group” offer important possibilities for developing a more inclusive and effective environmental justice movement, both within the United States and internationally.

children, victims

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 23, No. 4 (1996): 62-86