Collaborative Projects
Environmental Justice Organisations, Liabilities & Trade
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REEDS International Research Centre, based at the Rambouillet satellite of the Université de Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, France is participating in a major new European project to empower environmental justice organisations and improve collaborative research on environmental conflicts.
This project is funded by the European Commission FP7 Science in Society programme at a total cost of nearly four million euros and involves 23 members representing 20 countries throughout Europe, the African continent, Asia and South America. The project runs over four years from 2011-2014 inclusive.
Environmental Justice Organisations (EJOs) are civil society organisations locally or globally involved in conflicts over resource extraction or waste disposal. Such conflicts are increasing in number as the world economy uses more materials and energy.
(A primary objective of the EJOLT project is to empower EJOs and the communities they support, that receive an unfair share of environmental burdens, to defend or reclaim their rights).
REEDS in EJOLT, the next 4 years
REEDS has considerable expertise in economic and environmental valuation and sustainability indicators, eco-innovation strategies and corporate social responsibility, deliberation support in the public and private sectors as well as monitoring and information systems for socio-economic and environmental values.
The Research Centre is also contributing expertise on uranium mining in Africa and Europe as well as assisting with knowledge concerning nuclear waste issues, identifying potential sites to leave fuel in-ground, organising a workshop on environmental health and risk assessment in Brazil, providing materials on participatory multicriteria assessment.
A key contribution is the understanding and dissemination of knowledge of multicriteria evaluation techniques in order for EJOs to collect quality scientific data and prepare effective legal cases and policy recommendations to mitigate and minimise environmental damage as well as damage to human health.
REEDS will prepare training materials and conduct training workshops on environmental health monitoring; in particular health impacts of radiation, oil and gas extraction and gas flaring, agrofuel and food security. It will also provide opportunities for e-Learning.
In summary, REEDS is providing training materials, workshops, and advice relating to case studies of environmental injustice in an academically robust yet very practical way to other members of the project, in particular the Environmental Justice Organisations.
Fields of work involved
REEDS will focus on the areas of:
- Liabilities and valuation
- Training in best practices & policy recommendations
Particularly in the fields of:
- Nuclear energy,
- Oil & gas extraction/Climate Justice,
- Environmental health & risk assessment,
Other areas of concern for the project include:
- Biomass and land conflicts
- Mining and shipbreaking
- Law and institutions
- Consumption, ecologically unequal trade and ecological debt.
This international consortium is united in promoting learning and collaboration across environmental law, environmental health, political ecology and ecological economics.
Types of issues at stake
- Water, air and soil levels of radioactivitiy resulting from uranium mining and radioactive waste
- Damages to rivers, fisheries, land caused by oil and gas extraction
- Socio-environmental and human health impacts of gas flaring, mining, agrofuel and food security
- Loss of biomass from land extraction
- Disposal of E-waste and shipbreaking waste
What EJOLT expects to acheive
- Compilation of a Map of Environmental Injustice around the world
- Make available latestest knowledge on indicators for the analysis of environmental impacts
- Unveil socio-environmental and public health impacts which are normally invisible to consumers and empower stakeholders to monitor and understand risks to environmental health
- Improve the basis for EJOs to undertake legal action regarding environmental liabilities or campaign for increased corporate accountability
- Hold workshops to share knowledge between scientists and activists to develop case studies and apply scientific methodolgies to problem-solving
- Raise public awareness of the impacts of particular human activities on the health of communities and their environments
- Provide an online resource library for EJOs on political ecology and public policies, environmental health (including popular epidemiology), ecologically unequal trade and the ecological debt, and legal redress
- Translate project findings into concrete policy proposals to be communicated to decision-makers in European institutions and corporate bodies
Project launched in march 2011, flyer published in october 2011
Project launched in march 2011, flyer published in october 2011