Oldal 221 [221]
OCR
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE 219 incapable of adequately using the resources and distributing the advantages and disadvantages appropriately. Justice is a normative and subjective concept which adapts to the given relations and is defined by the community within the frame of a social contract. Justice has geographical frequency and distribution, which depend on processes. The perception of injustice is influenced by the sociocultural and income factors of the individual and the community. The processes leading to injustice can be examined in terms of decisions and temporality. Top-down processes often ignore the everyday practices, customs and local techniques of adaptation. This can be expressly detrimental, if the acting institutions regard certain formed systems (whether or not they are power relations, e.g. sub- and super-ordinations) as unalterable. Those affected by environmental injustices apply a peculiar decision-making mechanism, for each actor has a statusbased value system, knowledge and written and unwritten rules, based on which they act. Conflict situations arise when the acting mechanisms of the actors result in different decisions. This explains why sometimes the reaction of the (presumably) altruistic decision-makers in their intent to help does not satisfy the population’s expectations. Individuals and groups have various attitudes to environmental injustices which may change in time upon the influence of certain factors (e.g. an educational campaign). The changing of the subjective evaluation of a given process can also correlate with the injustice of perception and recognition. Environmental injustices occur in multiscale geographical space in which the scales and diverse spatial units are in incessant interaction, continuously influencing one another. Fair distribution of nature-borne risks G) Environmental Justice (4) (5) (6) Healthy Involvement in liveable the decisionenvironment making (1) process (2) Figure 6. Three pillars of environmental justice based on the EPA definition. Source: author. To conclude: the study of environmental justice is concerned with the exploration of the impairment of the rights to a healthy environment (1) caused by certain decisions (2), and by processes (3). In the course of research, one must take into account that the applied concepts are subjective and hence the study must be based
