Environmental Justice in Western Europe
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In this chapter we aim to provide an overview of the variety of topics and methods that characterise the evolving set of environmental justice discourses in Western Europe. In the first section of this chapter the range of discourses on environmental justice in Western Europe is introduced through an overview that focuses on the forms of concern and normativity that have been central to environmental justice claim-making. This is followed by an overview of similarities and differences in methodological approaches and results regarding distributional inequalities, based on selected studies. In the second section the role of spatial and environmental planning and the involvement of citizens in planning processes and access to information will be dealt with, focusing therefore on questions of procedural justice. Decision making in this context will be focused on the specific context of implementation of the Aarhus Convention in the European Union. In the final section we take the dimension of future generations into account and discuss the relation between environmental justice and sustainability using the example of the energy sector and ways of dealing with nuclear power.