Access to environmental justice : a comparative study / / edited by Andrew Harding.

• Superior document: London-leiden series on law, administration and development ; v. 11
• TeilnehmendeR: Harding, Andrew, 1950-
• Year of Publication: 2007
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: London-Leiden series on law, administration, and development ; v. 11.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (396 p.)
• Notes: Includes index.

Although it is commonly asserted that enhanced citizen participation results in better environmental policy and improved enforcement of environmental standards, this hypothesis has rarely been subject to testing on a comparative basis. The contributors to this book set out to study the extent to which citizens can and do exert influence over their urban environments through the legal (and extra-legal) 'gateways' in eleven countries spanning several continents as well as different climates, levels and type of economic development, and national legal and constitutional systems, as well as exhibiting a different set of environmental problems. One interviewee questioned about access to environmental justice, dryly remarked that in his city there was no environment, no justice and no access to either. Yet this view, as will be seen, requires to be nuanced. While few people will be surprised by the finding that legal gateways to environmental justice are largely ineffective, the reasons for this are revealing; but also the richness of detail and the comparisons between the different countries, and also the positive aspects which surfaced in several instances, were indeed both encouraging and sometimes surprising. This book presents the first comparative survey of access to environmental justice, and will be of considerable use to lawyers, policy-makers, activists and scholars who are concerned with the environmental issues which so profoundly affect and afflict our habitat and conditions of social justice throughout the world.

Table of Contents

Access to environmental justice : some introductory perspectives / Andrew Harding -- Access to environmental justice in Ghana (Accra) / James S. Read -- Access to environmental justice in India's Garden City (Bangalore) / Amanda Perry-Kessaris -- Access to environmental justice in Indonesia / Adriaan Bedner -- Access to environmental justice in Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) / Andrew Harding and Azmi Sharom -- Access to Environmental justice in a politically unstable environment : a case study of Nepal / Surya Subedi -- Access to environmental justice : Karachi's urban poor and the law / Martin Lau --Towards a greener China? : accessing environmental justice in the People's Republic of China / Michael Palmer -- Access to environmental justice in the South West Pacific / Nicola Pain -- Access to environmental justice and public participation in Thailand / Thawilwadee Bureekul -- Access to environmental justice in United Kingdom law / Jean-Jacques Paradissis and Michael Purdue -- Access to environmental justice in the United States : embracing environmental and social concerns to achieve environmental justice / J. Mijin Cha.