Environmental justice in Central and Eastern Europe

Steger, Tamara; Filcˇák, Richard; Harper, Krista

doi:10.4324/9781315678986-51

Cited by 12 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…Lucie Laurian showed that poor and immigrant minorities are disproportionately exposed to environmental risks and hazardous facilities (Laurian 2008;Laurian 2014). The same trends are visible in Italy 13 or in Germany, where, as Tamara Steger shows, Turkish immigrants, for example, work in unsafe conditions and live near highly polluting factories (Steger 2007). With others, Steger has also revealed the same trends in Central and Eastern Europe, while the Roma people (and especially the Romani from Central and Eastern Europe) seem to be the most impacted population (Harper et al 2009).…”

Section: Promoting Environmental Rights and Justice Within The Eumentioning

confidence: 97%

Integrating Environmental Justice into EU Policymaking

Toussaint¹

2021

The Well-Being Transition

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We live in times of crisis. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, all environmental signals were turning red in Europe and globally: 1 climate change is accelerating, biodiversity is disappearing at a breathtaking pace, resources are being overconsumed and wasted, people are dying prematurely from pollution exposure and four out of nine planetary boundaries have been exceeded (nitrogen and phosphorus cycles; biosphere integrity; climate change and land system change) (Rockström et al. 2009;Steffen et al. 2015). On the social front, inequalities are rising, 2 and although From 'Beyond GdP' to the envIronmental actIon ProGrammes: strenGths and Weaknesses oF the eu's aPProach to the Well-BeInG transItIon An Uncertain and Long Overdue RevolutionIn 1997, the EU enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty of Amsterdam its determination to promote sustainable development. As early as in 2001, the Commission published a communication entitled 'A Sustainable Europe for a Better World: A European Strategy for Sustainable Development' (European Commission, 2001).In 2007, the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Club of Rome, the OECD and the WWF hosted a high-level conference entitled 'Beyond GDP'. In his opening speech at the conference, the then Commission President, José Manuel Barroso, called for a 'breakthrough' in promoting alternative visions of wealth and development. In 2009, the Commission adopted a communication containing a roadmap entitled 'GDP and Beyond: Measuring Progress in a Changing World', aimed at complementing GDP with high-level indicators on environmental protection, quality of life and social cohesion. This communication referred to 'clean environment' among other indicators that need to be developed, as well as establishing a comprehensive environmental index and promoting quality of life and well-being.In 2010, in the aftermath of the financial crisis and the great recession, the Europe 2020 strategy aimed at 'smart, sustainable and inclusive growth'. However, the pieces of legislation concerned missed the opportunity to address social and environmental injustices, as well as to truly challenge the concept of 'growth'.After the 2014 European elections, as the issue of sustainable development was gaining momentum, the Commission, then presided by Jean-Claude Juncker, was to commit to the SDGs. Indeed, in 2015 the world leaders had adopted the '2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development', 17 SDGs and 169 related targets in order to integrate the three dimensions of sustainable development. The set of goals range from the eradication of poverty and inequality to the protection of the environment and climate and the sustainable use of resources.

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Section: Promoting Environmental Rights and Justice Within The Eumentioning

confidence: 97%

Integrating Environmental Justice into EU Policymaking

Toussaint¹

2021

The Well-Being Transition

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“…Environmental factors may influence the location of segregated spaces and/or serve as the accelerators of ghettoisation processes. There is a growing number of studies of the Roma ethnic minority in Central and Eastern Europe that have identified direct or indirect environmental factors in the process [Ladanyi and Szelenyi 1998;Steger et al 2007;Filčák 2012;Vincze and Rat 2013;Filčák and Steger 2014;Velicua and Kaikab 2015;Holifield et al 2017;Picker 2017].…”

Section: The Space We Live In: the Conceptual Framework Of Environmental Justicementioning

confidence: 99%

Making the Ghetto at Luník IX in Slovakia: People, Landfill, and the Myth of the Urban Green Space

Filčák¹,

Ficeri²

2021

Czech Sociological Review

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The prevailing public perception of Luník IX, a Roma district in the Slovak city of Košice, is that it represents the story of an originally green urban space, one of the best for healthy living given its fresh air and proximity to the forest, that was destroyed by naïve decision-makers and irresponsible Roma. This article, based on a combination of qualitative sociological and historical research, questions this narrative and deems it a myth. The district's proximity to a landfill and the consequent environmental effects of this played a decisive role in its ghettoisation, yet these factors have never been systematically analysed and discussed. Although Luník IX was not officially and originally designed as a ghetto, it became one as a result of structural, social, and environmental factors. Utilising the conceptual and theoretical framework of environmental justice, the article focuses on the spatial distribution of the adverse environmental effects in relation to social and ethnic factors. The case of Luník IX, with its roots in the period of a centrally planned economy, provides a unique opportunity to make a comparative study of the social processes from a historical perspective. It allows us to analyse the mechanism of decision-making in an avowedly non-capitalist society, where in reality we see many similarities in how income inequality between richer and poorer neighbourhoods, together with ethnic/racial factors, has shaped the city.

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“…In recent years, a number of countries have begun to address a phenomenon known as 'environmental injustice', which represents the observation that members of ethnic minorities, communities of lower socio-economic status, the least educated and otherwise marginalized segments society disproportionately: (1) suffer from exposure to environmental hazards due to their proximity to hazards waste sites, incinerator, and other sources of pollution, and/or (2) are denied environmental benefits such as water, sewage treatment facilities, sanitation and access to natural resources [48]. Whereby, in addition to already famous definition of sustainable development, the World Commission on Environment and Development issued in 1987 (known also as the Brundtland Commission) have also stressed that 'inequality is the planet's main environmental problem [49].…”

Section: From Governance To Adaptive Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

Addressing Uncertainty of Environmental Governance in Environmentally Sensitive Areas in Developing Countries: A Precise-Strike and Spatial-Targeting Adaptive Governance Framework

et al. 2019

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Endowed with distinctive natural ecosystems and abundant biodiversity, regional environmental governance in developing countries, especially the environmentally sensitive areas (ESAs), is facing the daunting task to ultimately divert their regional development mode towards sustainable fashion through governance transition. However, given their less-developed status in particular expressed by under-developed economies, unsound political regimes, low governance capacity, such task seemingly insurmountable. In order to approach the incompatibility between economic development and maintenance of the ecosystem services value, and understand the complex and interlocked nature of the regional institution system of ESAs in developing countries, an ecosystem services value-based adaptive governance model was introduced to identify the deficiencies and failures of existing regional environmental governance and establish innovative arenas and transition agendas for innovating and reframing regional institutions and modifying role of regional actor groups and governance mode in the process of decision making on environmental issues. Such approaches were conducted in a circular diverting process in order to facilitate the mode of regional development transforming towards sustainable development. For demonstration the process of application and effectiveness of this methodology, a case study was conducted in a typical ESAs-the Water Source Area of the Middle Route Project of the South-North Water Diversion Project in China. Through integrating the ecosystem services value (ESV) assessment into a wider framework of institutional change, the regional institution system innovation and reformation was directed by taking the ESV changes and pattern of its geo-distribution in the research area as indicators or clues. Compared with traditional proposals for administrative change, the methodology proposed in this study was not prescriptive or directive: Rather, an approach for influencing the direction and speed of transition through a series of steering and coordination mechanism. Therefore, this model is with the potential to be implemented by local communities in regions, especially ESAs in developing countries, to encounter with similar regional development challenges and complex, interlocking, and over-dated regional institutional system associated with environmental issues.

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Environmental justice in Central and Eastern Europe

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

Integrating Environmental Justice into EU Policymaking

Integrating Environmental Justice into EU Policymaking

Making the Ghetto at Luník IX in Slovakia: People, Landfill, and the Myth of the Urban Green Space

Addressing Uncertainty of Environmental Governance in Environmentally Sensitive Areas in Developing Countries: A Precise-Strike and Spatial-Targeting Adaptive Governance Framework

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