Urban-rural exploitation: An underappreciated dimension of environmental injustice

Introductory Chapter: Rural Waste Management Issues at Global Level

“…On the other hand, urban residents perceive rural areas as sources of raw materials or as places where the most polluting productive activities belong [27]. Environmental injustice operates toward rural areas where urban waste is disposed through large dumpsites, landills, incinerators, or land application of sludge from urban wastewater [28].…”

Who Could Not Avoid Exposure to High Levels of Residence-Based Pollution by Daily Mobility? Evidence of Air Pollution Exposure from the Perspective of the Neighborhood Effect Averaging Problem (NEAP)

“…In reality, the burdens of pollution exposures tend not to be borne equally among different social groups, which often leads to environmental injustice concerns. As observed in past studies, disadvantaged social groups such as low-income people, rural laborers, or racial minorities are more vulnerable to environmental pollution when compared to privileged people [31][32][33]. As a result, low-income people tend to bear the brunt of disproportionate environmental harms because they experience higher exposures to air pollutants and other environmental risks [34][35][36].…”

Conceptualizing waste as a resource: Urban biosolids processing in the rural landscape

“…Better understanding of what is conceptualized as belonging/intruding or natural/unnatural in a locale, particularly in evolving rural communities, can aid a better understanding of some residents’ felt distributive injustices between rural and urban regions, while other residents fight for access to resources thought to benefit local circular economies. Contestations around transformed wastes further complicates notions of rural environmental injustice which delineates parasitic relationships between urban and rural regions (Kelly‐Reif and Wing ). This is the only case we are aware of where emerging green technologies are seen as a source of rural‐urban environmental injustice by some, while other rural residents passionately advocate for access to this nutrient resource.…”

“…Pellow (, 382) regards this area of emerging scholarship as vital, because “the integrity and future of rural spaces has never been at greater risk.” Rather than the traditional focus of environmental justice literature centred around impoverished and racially marginalized populations, a distributive lens considering the material relationality and contested disproportionate burdens of urban wastes is important and timely (Ashwood and MacTavish ). The relationality and connectivity between urban and rural regions contributes to instances of rural environmental injustices as urban populations increasingly exploit rural areas (Kelly‐Reif and Wing ). While we are often aware of the ways the flows of goods and commodities connect people and places, wastes and by‐products arguably link these as well, yet the latter is often overlooked or forgotten (Moore ).…”