This paper examines the multiple ways that environmental justice scholars and activists understand the task of creating real change. It asks what forms of social movement organising, strategy, and tactics create the enabling conditions for environmental justice. Reporting on a large international study using Q methodology to empirically examine the discourses emerging and circulating about EJ globally, we outline the patterns of thinking and practice that EJ activists and academics identify as enabling their work. Not surprisingly, our findings highlight broad agreement on a strategic focus on racial and socioeconomic injustices for successful EJ movement strategy. Yet within that broad agreement, three distinct approaches were identifiable: (1) An ontological focus, addressing decolonial and redistributive visions of racial and socio-economic justice in solidarity with Indigenous peoples and other marginal social groups; (2) a strategic systems focus on political disruption, based on networked power from below and transformative practical strategies; and (3) a methods focus, using tools, tactics, and techniques for prioritising local knowledges, participation, recognition, and inclusion in public, political, and legal forums. In addition, we found most disagreement with, and disillusion about, the value of more mainstream strategies that target policy frameworks and legal institutions. The paper concludes with reflections on the implications for EJ movement praxis in this moment when EJ faces political and corporate attacks.
Schlosberg et al. (Sat,) studied this question.