Equity and the Environment:
Guidelines for Green and Socially Just Government

By Dr Brenda Boardman MBE, Simon Bullock and Duncan McLaren.
With a foreword by Rt Hon Michael Meacher MP.

Published jointly with Friends of the Earth

Catalyst pamphlet 5.
Published: September 1999
ISBN: 0 9533224 4 0
Paperback: 48 pages

Damage to our environment hits the poor hardest. Traffic fumes, factory pollution, and poorly insulated housing all affect the most vulnerable in our society more than the affluent. That is what is meant by environmental injustice. No programme for greening Britain can hope to succeed if it does not tackle issues of inequality and social exclusion.

Boardman, Bullock and McLaren argue that isolated environmental policies cannot hope to succeed. Indeed, they could make the position of the already disadvantaged even worse. Fuel price rises may be necessary to discourage excessive car use, but by themselves they may simply make the rural poor yet poorer. But well-designed policy packages can deliver both environmental and social benefits. The authors argue for a environmental social justice approach to policy making. They progress to a sophisticated analysis of the policy strategies for tackling environmental problems and inequality. The authors focus on two areas in which they have considerable expertise: Transport and domestic energy and fuel poverty. They show how investment, pricing policy, Government regulation and market intervention can come together to make change happen. They demonstrate that:

• transport policy can be changed to reduce the environmental damage caused by road traffic, while ensuring that everyone has access to the safe, cheap and efficient transport services they need.
  
• Britain needs a radical programme to fight fuel poverty, so that the elderly and vulnerable can afford to keep their homes warm, while dangerous climate warming emissions are cut at the same time.
  

The conclusion is that environmental campaigners cannot win if they do not understand how their demands relate to problems of social justice, and that campaigners for redistribution and equality need to consider how their policies contribute to a sustainable future for the planet. This could be the future of radical politics in Britain.

Dr Brenda Boardman MBE heads the Energy Efficiency Unit at the Environmental Change Unit, University of Oxford. She sits on the DTI’s Energy Advisory Panel and advises the DETR and EU on energy efficiency policy. Simon Bullock and Duncan McLaren work in the Sustainable Development Research Unit at Friends of the Earth.

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