Natural Resources and Environmental Justice

Environmental management involves making decisions about the governance of natural resources such as water, minerals or land; these are inherently decisions about what is just or fair. Yet there is little emphasis on justice in environmental management research or practical guidance on how to achieve fairness and equity in environmental governance and public policy. This neglect of justice may result in social dilemmas that are significant issues for government, business and community agendas, causing conflict between different community interests.

Natural Resources and Environmental Justice provides the first comprehensive, interdisciplinary examination of justice research in Australian environmental management, identifying best practice and current knowledge gaps.

With chapters written by experts in environmental and social sciences, law, and economics, this book covers topical issues including coal seam gas, desalination plants, community relations in mining, forestry negotiations, sea-level rise and animal rights. It also proposes a social justice framework and an agenda for future justice research in environmental management.

About the Author

Anna Lukasiewicz is associated with the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University. With an interdisciplinary background focusing on sustainability, Anna has been developing the Social Justice Framework, an empirically-grounded guide incorporating justice and fairness into environmental and natural resource management.

Stephen Dovers is a Professor and the Director of the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University. He focuses on generic policy and institutional dimensions in environment and sustainability, combining contemporary and historical perspectives across a diverse range of sectors, most of which represent environmental dilemmas with strong justice conflicts.

Libby Robin is a Professor in the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University, and affiliated professor of KTH Stockholm and the National Museum of Australia. She is a historian of environmental ideas who has worked in interdisciplinary environmental studies since 1999. Libby's current project works with museums to give voice to communities facing the effects of global warming.

Jennifer McKay is a Professor of Business Law, University of South Australia, and an Adjunct Professor of environmental and water resources law at the University of Lincoln, UK. She has researched and taught on water law and justice issues in Australia relating to drought and floods and in India and in the US (Fulbright senior scholar UC Berkeley) and holds several Ministerial appointments.

Steven Schilizzi is an Associate Professor at the School of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Western Australia. His expertise is mainly in environmental and resource economics, but his background also includes social psychology, anthropology and (ancient and modern) philosophy. One of his research topics is equity (distributive justice) in resource allocation. Sonia Graham is a Lecturer in social research and policy in the School of Social Sciences at University of New South Wales. Her research seeks to understand the ways in which environmental policies affect people, focusing on concepts such as collective action, trust, power, fairness, legitimacy and values.