Exploring environmental justice in France: Evidence, movements, and ideas

Coolsaet, Brendan [UCL] Deldreve, Valérie [INRAE]

This article explores the distinctiveness of French and francophone approaches to environmental justice. While off to a slow start, environmental justice research has received increased attention in France in the last 15 years. 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 article attends to this gap by first taking stock of the empirical evidence of environmental injustices and inequalities in France. We then set out some of the intellectual and political origins, central features and essential themes of French environmental justice work, and discuss French insights in light of contemporary environmental justice scholarship. In so doing, this paper’s aim is to contribute to current efforts on diversifying the meanings and understandings of environmental justice in different contexts.