Environmental justice (EJ) is an important field of research in the US (Bullard,2000; Agyeman,2003; Kurtz,2003) and a major framework for grassroots movements and individuals who seek to defend their rights to a healthy environment. Environmental inequalities, as they are commonly called in Europe (Cornut et al.,2007; Emelianoff, 2008; Faburel,2008), are a growing field of research but they are not seen as a specific frame for action and collective mobilization in Belgium.
Legal mobilization can be used as a strategy to fight environmental inequalities in Wallonia. I propose to examine access to justice in the field of environmental protection in Wallonia, especially in cases in which groups see themselves as victims of disproportionate burden of environmental bads (such as exposure to pollution, vicinity to industrial plants, or waste dumps).
This paper explores (1) how grassroots movements or individuals use legal mobilization to denounce environmental inequalities and (2) how those legal mobilizations potentially impact on environmental and urban policies in Wallonia.
Empirical evidence will be based, on the one hand, on legal texts and litigations in Belgium and, on the other hand, on open-ended interviews with stakeholders in Wallonia – main political parties, environmental non-profit organizations/NGO’s, specialized law firms and scientific public institutions.
I propose to answer the following questions:
• How do these movements or individuals mobilise the law – from the international, European and/or regional levels – and litigation to defend their “cause”? A comparative perspective with the US Environmental Justice will be proposed;
• How do different actors in the Walloon context – political parties, law firms, non-profit organizations – apprehend access to justice in environmental issues?
• More specifically, how do inequalities and discriminations – as they are conceived in EJ movements – matter in environmental protection litigation?
