Advancing Sustainability and Social Justice in the Global South

Abstract

Harmful anthropogenic activities adversely affect Indigenous populations, such as the Inuit people and Nigeria’s Ogoni people. Environmental degradation disparately burdens such communities, thus making them to seek for environmental justice. Tribunals at all levels have affirmed that failing to safeguard the environment violates human rights, especially for Indigenous people who need a healthy environment, food, and access to resources to survive. The Global South continues to grapple with a plethora of issues, including ecological unsustainability, poverty, and inequality, but issues of justice are often disregarded in sustainability-oriented projects. Therefore, there is a need for countries in this region to integrate social justice into environmental sustainability. The concept of environmental justice traces its origins to the US during the 1980s when scholars used it to describe the unequal effect of industrial pollution on the country’s racial minorities. The idea has significantly blossomed during the last five decades, expanding historically and geographically to cover various global environmental struggles. This article explores why the concept of social justice has resonance and usefulness for advancing sustainability and why it is timely for the concept to be considered for the Global South. It delves into these issues with a specific focus on the Global South, examining case studies from various countries in the region and exploring key insights from the Global North.