Using the definitions of Environmental Justice that we have read and discussed as well as any others you have encountered in your research, write your definition of the term environmental justice. Put all of the sources into conversation in order to explain how and why you came to your particular definition. Which sources support your definition? Which sources challenge it? Explain why you define is as you do, despite those differences.

How my definition is similar to those of others.

Step 1:

Open your section with a sentence stem that explains to your reader what you are doing and why you are doing it. It might look like one of these:

Though my argument relates to ___, I would like to begin by clarifying how I am using the term environmental justice.

Before I begin, let me clarify how I will use the term environmental justice.

In this paper, environmental justice will . . .

Step 2:

Use ACEITCEIT structure to provide AT LEAST TWO pieces of evidence that support your definition of environmental justice. For each CEIT, provide context on the source, a quotation, analysis or interpretation of the quotation, and an explanation of how it supports your definition of EJ.

How my definition is different from others and why I still believe in my own conception of EJ.

Step 1:

Open your section with a sentence stem that explains to your reader what you are doing and why you are doing it. It might look like one of these:

Many critics would disagree that ___.

Though I define environmental justice ___, others might argue that ___.

My definition of environmental justice runs counter to many others, which contend ___.

Step 2:

Use ACEITCEIT structure to provide TWO pieces of evidence that contradict your definition of environmental justice. For each CEIT, provide context on the source, a quotation, analysis or interpretation of the quotation, and an explanation of how it supports your definition of EJ. Be sure your tie back explains why you still believe in your definition despite having others who disagree with you.

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Below are a number of discussions of environmental justice, some of which we have looked at together and analyzed and some we have not. Please feel free to draw from these or other definitions/discussions you have encountered in your research.

Buell, Lawrence. The Future of Environmental Criticism. Malden: Blackwell, 2005.

“[T]he sheer moral force of ecojustice revisionism’s critique of the demographic homogeneity of traditional environmental movements and academic environmental studies, including early ecocriticism, should not be underestimated. Indeed this has been a simmering anxiety for the ecocritical movement from the beginning. The contributors to The Environmental Justice Reader may underestimate how strongly that tide will continue to run in their favor.

As for impediments, two may be especially consequential, other than simply the inertial resistances of prior commitments and internal solidarity on both sides. One is the sensitive question of how closely ‘environmental justice’ should be seen as tied to the problem of ‘environmental racism.’ Certainly in the US and probably also worldwide, racial and ethnic minorities have been subjected to disproportionate environmental immiseration. Certainly within the US and perhaps also worldwide the awareness of this has been pivotal in attracting sizeable numbers of minority activists and scholars to engaging (some) environmental issues. Yet it remains a ‘contentious issue’ as to ‘which groups or populations to include under the environmental-justice umbrella. Should income or regional location count as much (if at all) as race or ethnicity in environment-justice schemes’ (Rhodes 2003: 18). The preamble to the 1991 Principles calls specifically for ‘a national and international movement of all peoples of color,’ but its 17 points are generally couched in universalizing form (‘mutual respect and justice for all peoples’) (Merchant 1999: 371). Conversely, The Environmental Justice Reader’s opening editorial statements define environmental justice initiatives broadly, as attempts ‘to redress the disproportionate incidence of environmental contamination in communities of the poor and/or communities of color’ (Adamson, Evans, and Stein 2002: 4); but the ensuing historical sketch focuses solely on the emergence of minority opposition to environmental racism” (Buell 115-116).
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Heise, Ursula. Sense of Place, Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global. New York: Oxford UP, 2008.