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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
1.1 The term 'environmental justice' was first used in the USA in the late 1970s. It described the aspiration of those wishing to develop more meaningful community involvement in environmental decision-making together with a reduction in, and a more equitable distribution of, environmental burdens. Thus environmental justice represented a common cause for two pre-existing social movements, one whose concern was the toxic impact of specific environmental hazards on community health and the other, the 'civil rights movement', with its overt focus on social justice (Bullard, 1999; Brown, 1995; Brown and Ferguson, 1995; Northridge et al, 2003; Williams, 1999).
1.2 This dual concern with both the distribution of environmental burdens and the need for those affected by decisions about the environment to have a say in those decisions continues to be reflected in a number of definitions of environmental justice. For example, the US Environment Protection Agency (nd) defines environmental justice as:
'…the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.'
1.3 These two aspects are also reflected in the Scottish Executive's own approach (Scottish Executive, nd), which argues that environmental justice has two central concerns, albeit that the first of these emphasises the position of 'deprived communities' rather than 'all people':
"The first is that deprived communities, which may be more vulnerable to the pressures of poor environmental conditions, should not bear a disproportionate burden of negative environmental impacts.
The second is that all communities should have access to the information and to the means to participate in decisions which affect the quality of their local environment."
1.4 In Scotland, the initial public reference to environmental justice was in a February 2002 speech by the First Minister, Jack McConnell (2002).
" Too often the environment is dismissed as the concern of those who are not confronted with bread and butter issues. But the reality is that the people who have the most urgent environmental concerns in Scotland are those who daily cope with the consequences of a poor quality of life, and live in a rotten environment - close to industrial pollution, plagued by vehicle emissions, streets filled with litter and walls covered in graffiti. This is true for Scotland and also true for elsewhere in the world. These are circumstances which would not be acceptable to better off communities in our society, and those who have to endure such environments in which to bring up a family, or grow old themselves are being denied environmental justice."
1.5 Mr. McConnell thus suggested that the first concern of environmental justice, which we might term 'environmental equity', meant more than simply avoiding the juxtaposition of communities of lower-socio-economic status with large-scale toxic or infectious environmental health risks, but rather that it also placed an emphasis on the potential psychosocial effects of environmental 'incivilities' on human health and well-being. An 'environmental incivility' is any aspect of the environment that people are capable of discerning through hearing, sight, touch or smell and about which they may be inclined to feel negatively. Examples include both 'street level' incivilities such litter, graffiti or dog fouling and larger scale infrastructural factors such as the presence of an open cast mine, or a busy road. In addition an incivility might arise from an absence of 'goods' such as adequate play spaces for children or green space for recreational walking. These perceptions are thought to matter because of their potentially adverse psychological impact on the individual. In other words, it is not solely the 'objective' physical environment that matters but also people's subjective impressions of and then reactions to that environment.
1.6 Progress towards achieving environmental equity defined in this way requires us to establish two things. First, what is the social distribution of environmental incivilities in Scotland? How far do they affect some groups more than others? Second, what impact do environmental incivilities appear to have on people's health and well-being? A number of studies have shown that people in poorer areas, most notably areas occupied by ethnic and racial minorities, are disproportionately exposed to environmental health risks (Brown, 1995; Williams, 1999; Cutter, 1995; Szasz and Meuser, 1997; Bowen et al, 1995. As the First Minister noted in his February 2002 speech, little research has been conducted into the social effects of environmental degradation. It was in order to help fill this gap that a research team from three organisations, the Scottish Centre for Social Research (ScotCen), Health Protection Scotland and the Social and Public Health Sciences Unit at the University of Glasgow came together to address these two questions. Since the focus of this approach to environmental justice focuses on people's subjective perceptions, the project required survey work to tap into what those perceptions were, an approach in which ScotCen are expert. Health Protection Scotland gathers information across Scotland on behalf of partner agencies about levels of exposure to aspects of the physical environment that are relevant to health and wanted a better understanding of the potential psychosocial impact of the environment in order to inform its future work. Meanwhile, the Social and Public Health Sciences Unit has an enduring interest in the how the social and physical environment affects health and how social inequalities in health might be reduced. 1
1.7 This report addresses four main questions in turn:
1. What incivilities or environmental pressures are regarded by people in Scotland as being most undesirable, and what incivilities do they regard as a problem in the area where they live?
2. How far and in what ways do people's perceptions of incivilities vary according to their individual characteristics ( e.g. age, gender, socio-economic status) and the characteristics of the area in which they live?
3. Is there a relationship between reported experience of incivilities and key indicators of perceived health status?
4. Is there a relationship between reported experience of incivilities and measures of community cohesion such as social trust and fear of crime?
1.8 In addressing these questions our aim is to inform policy and action in pursuit of environmental justice in Scotland. In particular, we anticipate that enhanced knowledge of public attitudes to particular environmental incivilities can be used to identify gaps in the environmental information of relevance to environmental justice that is currently being gathered by agencies in Scotland.
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