The Analysis On Environmental Justice From A Critical-Spatial Perspective

This study aims at developing a critical-spatial form of analysis to assess whether the outcomes of a major environmental rehabilitation project in Shanghai and others like it are consistent with concerns related to environmental justice. Unlike critical assessments of environmental justice that emerge from neo/liberal, utilitarian or Rawlsian theories of justice, as well as others, including, for example, ecological Marxism and ecological feminism, the critical-spatial method discussed in this thesis looks more directly at different meanings of space and their impacts on assessing environmental justice. In other words, this paper avoids debating the relative merits of competing ideologies (e.g., Marxism vs. liberalism) and instead employs a critical geographical approach that can help map more fully the underlying concerns and conditions at hand.A critical-spatial approach emphasizes the importance of the different meanings of "space." What is sometimes referred as the "spatial turn"-which evokes other turns in critical theory, e.g., the linguist turn, the postmodern turn, etc.-appeared initially in the 1960s as theorists became more critically aware of spatial dynamics. However, this new critical perspective did not begin to affect environmental justice studies until the early 2000s, when it first appears in Western literature; and, aside from this thesis, it has not yet been discussed in China.One of the main outcomes of the spatial turn was to move away from understandings of space as a "dead, fixed, non-dialectical and immobile container," and instead embrace the idea that it is "dynamic, open, dialectical and socially constructed." This new approach focuses more on the dialectical relationship between time and space, and further, examines more carefully how space is produced purposefully in ways that reflect and/or embed social relations, particularly relations related to power. The obvious relevance and value of the critical-spatial approach for environmental justice analysis belies the fact that it took nearly forty years before strong links emerged, but this is due perhaps to the extent to which environmental justice concerns have taken on a new urgency given growing awareness of climate change and global warming as well as new flashpoints for environmental injustice given globalization’s shifting patterns of production and consumption.Prior to the spatial turn in environmental justice studies, the general tendency was to emphasize what can be described as a "distributive-spatial" perspective, which highlighted "injustice in space," and tried to demonstrate environmental injustices by seeking evidence of uneven distributions of environmental pollution or benefits. One of the chief weaknesses of this approach is that environmental injustices could be portrayed as having a kind of "random" or unintentional result. However, analyzing environmental justice under the critical spatial perspective requires attention to broader historical, political and economic contexts, including the links between capital and power and their affects on social relations and social well being in and around the production of space. Therefore, compared with the distributive-spatial perspective, the critical-spatial approach pays more attention to observing changes in social and power relations when assessing whether environmental justice has been achieved, and can attribute environmental injustice as well justice as a constructional versus random result.Perhaps the primary value of this thesis is its review and discussion of these theoretical developments that have not yet penetrated Chinese literature related to environmental justice. The problem of environmental justice has drawn increasing attention in China given the broader global discussion of the same as well the fact that many of the world’s worst polluted areas are found in China, and the fact that China’s growing middle and upper classes are now shifting their attention to basic quality of life concerns, including worries over air and water pollution, contaminated food supplies, and so on. With this in mind, this thesis has developed a case study of a major environmental rehabilitation project in it final stages in Shanghai to better illustrate how the critical-spatial perspective can inform Chinese discussions related to policies aimed explicitly at achieving environmental justice.For much of Shanghai’s history as a major metropolis, which dates significantly from international incursions in the mid to late-19th century and has accelerated substantially with the establishment of the PRC in 1949, and again with the reform and opening up beginning in 1978, Suzhou Creek has played a central role. This is due to the fact that the Creek-a small river, in fact-snakes through much of the city, covering a distance of more than 50 kilometers in Shanghai alone. Early industrialization and poor sewage control led to Suzhou Creek becoming one of China’s most polluted waterways, with total degradation arriving with Soviet planning models that placed heavy polluting industries on the Creek throughout Shanghai, where the creek served in part as a water source, in part as a canal, and in part as a sewer. With reform and opening up, Shanghai was slated for major redevelopments with the purpose of repositioning the city as a global financial and transportation hub, one that would provide key linkages with the global economy as China embraced what planners called the "socialist market" approach. With this in mind, polluting industries were dismantled and moved to other areas and various redevelopment schemes reclaimed former industrial zones. It soon became clear that such redevelopment would likewise require a major effort to clear up Suzhou Creek, and thus, the Suzhou Creek Rehabilitation Project began in 1988. Since then, major accomplishments have been recorded, as old factory sites have been redeveloped for modern housing, public green spaces including parks, and the water quality itself has been changed given new controls on dumping, the dredging of heavy metals and contaminated silt, and so on. In all, these achievements have been presented officially as substantial improvements in environmental justice.And yet, despite these achievements, we know that this project has manifested a great number of changes that make it difficult to judge whether environmental justice has been so clearly advanced, particularly when recalling that environmental justice overlaps with social justice. During the Mao years, of course, one could point to incredible forms of pollution in Shanghai and recognize injustice, but one could also point to higher forms of social equality, including between men and women, many of which have eroded substantially under the highly marketized conditions of contemporary Shanghai. Further, although Shanghai has done much to clean up Suzhou Creek, this was accomplished in large part by central planners who merely relocated polluting industries to elsewhere in China. Additionally, many of the new developments lining Suzhou Creek are gated communities that favor wealthy residents, and so on.With this case study in hand, the value of critical-spatial analysis becomes readily clear and localized. It helps illustrate how productive space is substantially recreated as consumptive space, how gender relations are reconfigured, and how new forms of distribution occur.In all, this work reinforces the underlying thesis that a critical-spatial perspective is superior to a purely distributive one. It supports the conclusion that assessments of environmental justice should address the fact that injustice happens "in" the space and always includes social and power relations. It underscores the fact that changes in social and power relations actually result from continuous operations of capital and power in the production of space within certain historical, political and economic backgrounds. Therefore, this kind of analysis helps us understand that environmental injustice or justice is not a random arrangement, but always constructional.