Oldal 218 [218]
216 GYULA NAGY
decisions, and even more so to their change, also depend on the local and central
8
power practices, which may administer pressure or may at times employ deliberate
manipulation.
This can be illustrated with the case of Bátaapáti, where the geology of the area with
an ancient granite rock made it possible to create subsurface waste storage for low- and
medium-activity radioactive waste from the Paks Nuclear Power Plant in the area of
the settlement. When the project was announced, only 80 settlements suitable for such
a nuclear waste storage were found in Hungary and only a single one, Bátaapáti,
volunteered to give room for the installation. As a small village, the municipality’s
financial means were limited and unemployment was relatively high. Both the aldermen
and the inhabitants regarded the hazardous waste repository as a means of developing
the settlement on the compensation they would get. Before the realization of the storing
facility, TETT (the Association for Social Control and Information) was founded in
1997 to provide information and carry on supervision about the National Radio-active
waste repository (NRHT). The eight members of TETT received 64 — 197 million
HUF / village (the amount depended on their distance from the repository) for
supervision and informative work. On 10 July 2005, a referendum was held about the
investment; 75% of the population took part, 90% voted for it. The villagers themselves
opted for the project, but the context, the socioeconomically helpless position of the
settlement and its inhabitants, must not be overlooked.
To achieve environmental justice, it is necessary that the community living in the
affected area should perceive and recognize the unjust, inequitable processes.
Without the perception and recognition of the problems it is actually impossible
to manage them, but both the perception and its recognition might be mistaken
or misinterpreted. In Bourdieu’s view, the terms misinterpretation and
misrecognition allude to the acts, value judgments, discourses, and practices that
we adopt in theory, in compliance with the system of norms held by the majority
of society, but in actual fact we act — pass judgment — in another discourse (James
2014). It follows that injustice is not only the outcome. It may engender the process
anew, unintentionally or intentionally. In the latter case, injustice receives a
discriminative hue. The lack of recognition, participation and subsidiarity may
often reinforce the conflicts between decision-makers and real stakeholders. The
rise of the environmental justice movement in recent decades has brought to light
numerous cases across the globe where polluting investments were approved by
organizations and political decision-makers who showed little interest in considering
the perspectives of the local population. In many instances, these decision-makers
came from (upper) middle-class backgrounds and non-minority origins, setting
them apart from the affected local communities. This lack of meaningful
engagement with the impacted residents has led to situations where environmental
injustices disproportionately burden marginalized and vulnerable communities.
As a result, the local people often suffer disadvantages due to the degradation of
the environment caused by diverse investments.
An exclusive or one-sided approach to environmental injustices oversimplifies
the complexities involved. It becomes challenging to categorically declare whether
environmental disadvantages are just or unjust solely based on their geographical
distribution. Instead, it is crucial to first clarify the underlying concept of justice