Environmental Justice: What it is and how we can help.
Our Mission
The Centre for Environmental Justice’s mission is to:
- engage, inform and mobilise individuals, community groups and organisations on environmental injustice;
- empower and equip individuals, community groups and organisations to challenge environmental injustice using the law;
- ensure environmental policy addresses inequality and is informed by the needs of underserved communities.
What is Environmental Justice?
Environmental justice is about fair processes and fair outcomes in environmental matters. It is about all people living and thriving in a safe, healthy and sustainable environment. It means full protection from climate change and other environmental hazards and nobody being left behind in environmental action. It requires the just treatment and meaningful involvement of people in decision-making that affects where and how they live.
The inequality embedded in our systems, laws, policies and practices means certain groups and communities face greater exposure to harms like storms, flooding, pollution, energy poverty, biodiversity loss and dumping. It leads to some groups and communities having less access to benefits like green space, renewable energy, retrofitting schemes and public travel infrastructure. It also means that many people are excluded from decision-making processes that have an impact on where they call home. However, we all have the right to protection from climate harms, equitable access to environmental benefits and meaningful participation in environmental decision-making.
The groups and communities most at risk of environmental injustices are determined by interacting factors of place, age and group identity. In Ireland, low-income communities, women, older people, young children, minority ethnic communities, migrants, people with a disability and members of the Traveller community face discrimination that increases their exposure to environmental harms and the inequitable distribution of benefits. This is unjust and it must change.
Environmental justice seeks to address this inequality and ensure that environmental action supports peoples’ livelihoods, health, food security and overall quality of life.
To keep up to date with the Centre for Environmental Justice’s work, sign up to our monthly newsletter.
How can the Centre for Environmental Justice help you?
The Centre for Environmental Justice provides a range of services.
These include:
- Free legal information and advice clinics.
- Community talks, training and information resources.
- Policy and law reform advocacy.
Learn more below.
Access to justice is essential for the realisation of environmental justice. It ensures people who are impacted by environmental harms can challenge unlawful decisions that violate their rights or that fail implement established law.
We work to increase access to justice by providing free legal information and advice clinics.
If you, your community group or organisation are experiencing an environmental concern, you can speak to a lawyer at our no-charge clinic. At the clinic, the lawyer will provide you with free information or advice on the relevant law and the options available to you to address the issue.
The clinics can assist with concerns about:
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– Air, water, noise or ground pollution.
– Illegal dumping.
– The burning of private waste.
– Poor home conditions (cold, damp).
– Inadequate access to safe drinking water.
– Energy costs.
– Access to retrofitting schemes or fuel allowance.
– Flooding or lack of flood protection in high-risk areas.
– Lack of access to green space or parks.
– Loss of biodiversity in your local area.
– Inadequate cycling infrastructure.
– Dereliction.
– Industrial mining, coal extraction and fracking gas.
– Access to information on environmental issues.
Clinics take place over the phone.
To book a clinic appointment, fill out this online booking form and we will ring you about your query. You can also book by calling 01 847 7804 or emailing info@communitylawandmediation.ie.
To build capacity amongst activists, community groups, and organisations we deliver free talks, trainings and webinars on environmental justice.
Topics these can cover include:
– Knowing your environmental rights.
– Your environment and your health.
– Environmental and housing justice.
– Environmental justice and children’s rights.
– Energy justice.
– How to address air, water, noise or ground pollution
– Accessing environmental information
– Participating in environmental decision-making
If you would like us to deliver a talk or training to your group, please contact caseworker@communitylawandmediation.ie.
We regularly run public webinars on topics related to environmental justice. Sign up to our newsletter to hear about upcoming topics.
We also create information guides and reports on the environmental issues that frequently arise in our legal clinics.
Our vision at the Centre for Environmental Justice rests on the full realisation of fundamental rights for all, ensuring people’s needs are met within a socially just and ecologically sustainable economy and society.
In working to see this vision become reality, we advance legislative and policy change through strategic casework and advocacy.
Learn more about our strategic casework here and read our policy submissions.
To further explore our work, you can check out the compelling 5-year snapshot of the Centre for Environmental Justice below.