Freedom, Equality, and Community in the Eco-Justice Literature Peter W. Bakken The Emergence of the Eco-Justice Paradigm The past few decades have been marked by a persistent sense that ours is a deeply troubled planet. That sense is driven by awareness of social realities: widespread poverty and human suffering, entrenched inequalities of status and power, and violent conflicts within and between nations that threaten genocide or nuclear annihilation. It is also driven by ecological factors: projected limits to material resources, environmental degradation, and the abuse and extirpation of countless nonhuman creatures and species. Responses to such a multifaceted complex of local and global concerns are characterized by fragmentation--differing, diverging and even conflicting focuses on issues, disciplinary approaches, political causes and social movements--and by quests for reconciliation and integration. A case in point is the tension and occasional open conflict that surfaced in the late 1960's between social justice advocates concerned with the alleviation of poverty and the overcoming of racism and environmentalists concerned with stopping air and water pollution and protecting wilderness and wildlife. Even those committed to both causes have been troubled by the frequent incompatibility between strategies to achieve justice for the poor and oppressed and efforts to protect environmental quality and ecological integrity. It is increasingly recognized, however, that there are also many ways in which social justice and ecological integrity support, and indeed require, each other, and that environmental and social problems cannot be resolved in isolation from each other. Understanding the connections between ecology and social justice requires a more comprehensive perspective than simply focusing on particular issues. Justice criteria need to be included in environmental policy making and environmental factors and impacts must be considered in formulating social policy. Negatively, such a perspective requires identifying the economic, political and cultural factors which are at the root of both environmental degradation and social injustice. Positively, it means developing visions of the "good society" which embrace both environmental integrity and social justice.
In the quest for such an integral perspective, the Christian churches have played an important leadership role through efforts to develop an ethic and theology of "eco-justice." Norman Faramelli, who coined the term, defined eco-justice in 1973 as "the simultaneous concern for social justice and environmental quality plus their interrelationships."1 William Gibson included concern for the welfare of "otherkind" as well as humankind in his definition of eco-justice as "respect and