Elizabeth Dumont

A New Theory of Environmental Injustice: Studies in an Australian Regional City Elizabeth Dumont

Environmental injustice is a current concern in the Westernised world, and is considered to exist when low/er income, higher/minority populations live in close proximity to Locally Unpopular Land Uses, or LULU's. However, minimal research has been conducted in a first world country outside of the USA, until now. This research is a comprehensive exploration of the topic of environmental injustice within an Australian context. It was determined that environmental injustice did exist in Australia,with similar causative factors to the US. However, this research expanded the scope of the literature, and discovered that causation of environmental injustice was not as simplistic as suggested. Causation was actually due to a combination of both existing hypotheses acting in combination with both each other and additional social and political factors. Such factors consisted of an association between education and income levels, a propensity to live amongst and mix with people we are most alike and a least cost approach to facility (or home) siting, and that environmental injustice was linked with the existence of social injustice, and requires a conscious effort by all to overcome.