Environmental racism and environmental injustice: Decolonial inflections and new agendas in Latin America and Brazil

Abstract

The idea of environmental racism has been gradually gaining visibility in the Brazilian environmental agenda after its emergence in the United States. It is present in academic narratives and environmental activism, generally associated with the concept of environmental injustice and based on political ecology, which has been occupying a prominent position in Latin America. We propose to discuss this concept without pretending to be exhaustive, considering its origin, trajectory, uses, controversies, and limits. We make a parallel between the U.S. and Latin America, underlining some common elements but also the differences in terms of posture, especially in the face of colonialism and capitalism. Then our attention is drawn to the Brazilian case, analyzing some peculiarities of the justice-injustice-environmental racism interface. Finally, we underscore the alternative horizons opened by this issue, based on local life models, ontologies, and cosmologies that increasingly find a prominent place on the environmental agenda, notably discussing the issue of human rights, the rights of nature and territories. In this article, the central ideas presented are guided by a critical and decolonial-inspired analysis of environmental issues.

Keywords

• Environment
• coloniality
• racism
• injustice
• Latin America
• Brazil