Bridging the Gap Between Environmental Justice and Ecosystem Management: A Comprehensive Framework for Equitable Sustainability

Abstract

Environmental justice (EJ) emphasizes the fair distribution of environmental benefits and burdens, ensuring that all individuals, regardless of race, income, or social status, have access to clean air, water, or other natural resources. This concept is critical for ecosystem management (EM), a framework focused on sustaining ecosystem health while balancing human and ecological needs. Disproportionate environmental impacts often burden marginalized communities, which are more vulnerable to pollution and resource depletion owing to industrial activities, land degradation, and biodiversity loss. Environmental justice in ecosystem management emphasizes equitable access to natural resources and healthy environments for all individuals and communities. This concept integrates the principles of fairness, equity, and sustainability into the distribution of environmental benefits and burdens. The ecosystem approach, which has emerged in international environmental policy, shares synergies with environmental justice principles. It promotes mechanisms such as equitable benefit-sharing, conservation and sustainable use, adaptive management, and participatory practices. This approach addresses various dimensions of justice including distributional fairness, democratic choices, place specificity, and spatial equity. Environmental justice extends beyond human-centric concerns to include ecological justice, which considers the rights of nonhuman species and biospheric egalitarianism. This broader perspective challenges traditional notions of justice and calls for a more inclusive approach to ecosystem management. In practice, implementing environmental justice in ecosystem management is challenging. For instance, in Indonesia and Uzbekistan, despite legal mandates, environmental justice regulations have led to social and environmental conflict. Similarly, global disparities in exposure to environmental risks and benefits persist between developed and developing countries. To address these challenges, a comprehensive framework of environmental justice in ecosystem management is required. Collaborative governance models, adaptive management practices, incorporate distributive justice, procedural justice, justice-as-recognition, intergenerational equity, precautionary principle and recognition of traditional ecological knowledge are key to bridging the gap between EJ and EM, ensuring that all stakeholders have a voice in maintaining healthy ecosystems.