Sustainable Development and Environmental Justice

Sustainable development has become a major paradigm in solving the global environmental issues as well as enhancing economic growth and social well-being. Sustainability initiatives have however not properly dealt with the issues of equity and justice and distributed the environmental risks and benefits unequally. Environmental justice offers an important perspective through which these disparities can be viewed with a critical eye based on fairness, inclusion, and acknowledgement to the decision-making processes on the environment. The chapter discusses the nexus between sustainable development and environmental justice with a specific focus on recent innovative technologies and their ongoing use. It analyses how the emerging technologies, including renewable energy systems, digital environmental monitoring tools, smart urban infrastructure and circular economy solutions, can contribute to sustainability agenda and also to the reduction of long-standing social inequalities. Simultaneously, ethical issues of access, governance, and power disparities are mentioned in the chapter. The chapter, by encompassing the idea of environmental justice into the framework of sustainable development, maintains that a more trans-inclusive and transformative approach that can help to address the current environmental and social issues should be provided.