Prof. Anand Authors Chapter in Routledge's Handbook of Environmental Justice

Professor Ruchi Anand was invited to author a chapter on the international dimensions of environmental justice in the Handbook of Environmental Justice to be published by Routledge in 2017.

The aim of the Handbook of Environmental Justice, in the words of the publisher, is to "make a contribution that no other volume has ever attempted: to provide a comprehensive, critical overview of environmental justice scholarship, covering its history, theory, and methods, along with discussions of current debates, controversies, and questions." Rather than adopting a regional approach, it will address substantive issues and present perspectives from across the world, with an interdisciplinary scope.

Professor Anand's chapter will focus international institutions and policy, as part of the section “Global, regional, and international perspectives.” In her abstract, she writes: "This Chapter aims at providing the theoretical and practical underpinnings of the international dimensions of environmental justice, highlighting distinctive ways in which it has become a rhetorically inherent part of law and policy. The complex intersectionality between at least five perspectives – political, economic, scientific, legal and eco-philosophical - surrounding the issue of environmental justice makes it a challenging definitional task and an impossible mission to find practical and workable solutions to redress the problem. The backdrop of this discussion is the globalization of world politics with the neoliberal agenda dominating trade and economic relations between states." Discussing the key debates and issues, new and old, surrounding the subject, the author will "reignite and fuel the debate to novel ideas", exploring the diversity of actors and issues involved, demonstrating the increasing distance between procedural justice and the most afflicted populations, and "grappling with the question of responsibility (i.e. states, multinational corporations, people) and vulnerability in an attempt to define justice".

The Handbook of Environmental Justice should become an essential resource both for scholars and practitioners of environmental justice. As with other Routledge handbooks, its goal will be "not simply to review the state of the art, but to propose new conceptual frameworks and directions for research, policy, and practice".

Link to Routledge website