Exploring environmental justice in France

Coolsaet, Brendan [UCL] Deldrève, Valérie

Environmental and climate justice scholarship is dominated by liberal justice theories and US-inspired critical theory, traditionally focusing on individual/community-based risk exposure and rights-based solutions. Its explanatory power and the lack of readily available theoretical alternatives have allowed these ideas to overshadow environmental justice scholarship over time, following what has been called a “fast conceptual transfer of environmental justice”. European approaches are largely absent from our understanding of the justice challenges posed by numerous environmental problems, particularly in the face of climate change. In France, the concept of “environmental inequality” (inégalités environnementales) emerged in environmental theory and sociology since the early 2000s. But there has been little to no attention to the French debates and movements in the English-language academic literature, with both bodies of knowledge largely evolving in parallel, conceptually and politically. This paper attends to this gap by exploring the distinctiveness of French approaches to environmental justice, focusing particularly on its climate dimensions. It takes stock of some of the theoretical origins, sets out key areas of exploration, and discusses the convergence and divergence between environmental and climate justice in the US and in France