Procedural Environmental Injustice in ‘Europe’s Greenest City’: A Case Study into the Felling of Sheffield’s Street Trees

With around two million trees within its boundaries, the city of Sheffield, England, is known as the ‘greenest city in Europe’. Of these, 36,000 are street trees, defined as those planted on pavements and other public rights of way. However, as of 2012, a private contractor was awarded a £2.2 billion contract by Sheffield City Council to upgrade the city’s roads over 25 years. This required the felling of over 6,000 street trees by the end of August 2017. By 2015, this had sparked such widespread public opposition that the felling programme missed its 2017 deadline. For protestors, the central point of contention is the indiscriminate felling of healthy trees. While an ongoing site of conflict, this article examines the specific forms of harm precipitating local public involvement in such opposition. In doing so, it briefly explains the substantive injustices associated with the felling of street trees before focusing on the underpinning forms of procedural environmental injustice that have allowed for their ongoing production. This contributes to wider green criminological literature by demonstrating how public participation in decision-making is crucial for the attainment of environmental justice