No Opportunity to Say No: A Case Study of Procedural Environmental Injustice in Canada

While a number of studies have shown that blacks, Hispanics and the poor aredisproportionately exposed to pollution hazards, particularly in the UnitedStates, there are much fewer that focus on the processes contributing toenvironmental injustices. This paper contributes to the environmental justiceliterature by exploring local environmental conflict over a pollution hazard(municipal solid waste) to further decipher the process(es) that may perpetuateenvironmental injustices. Through a Canadian qualitative case study involving indepth interviews with residents, we emphasize important deficits in, andexperiences of, public participation throughout the environmental assessmentprocess. We do this by recounting the experiences of black residents from a small rural community near two landfills in Eastern Canada. We find that there are subtle processes – linked primarily to public participation – that create andsustain environmental injustices by ultimately denying residents the opportunityto say ‘‘no’’ to unwanted developments. This case highlights both the process ofinjustice as well as the experience of injustice. The procedural culprits contributeto the production and reproduction of environmental injustice, demonstratingthat environmental injustice is not simply a result of exposure to pollution;environmental injustice is a result of a number of long established practices, which in order to be remedied, techniques must be tailored to be inclusive of an affected population