Pathways to environmental and social justice are inhibited by a wide range of structural, political and legal deficiencies. Dr Ciara Brennan has been researching environmental justice on the island of Ireland since 2008.

Environmental governance on the island of Ireland

There are well-documented issues with environmental governance in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The presence of significant barriers to environmental justice compound these issues. Barriers include problematic systems of public participation. The avenues through which citizens can challenge poor environmental decision-making or weak enforcement are often prohibitively expensive or inadequate.

The Good Friday/Belfast Agreement provides for cross-border responses to environmental challenges. But cooperative working between NI and the ROI remains fundamentally underdeveloped. There is an absence of effective inter-jurisdiction collaboration. Response to societal and environmental emergencies must often be on an all-island basis. This has recently been brought into sharp focus by:

• differing pandemic responses
• the escalating climate crisis
• declining health of the natural environment on the island of Ireland

Ongoing debates about the future relationship between the UK and Ireland post-Brexit have centred around the border in Ireland. Significant questions remain about the future management of shared environmental problems.

Removing barriers to environmental and social justice requires collaboration between diverse groups of stakeholders.

A network for environmental justice

There are mounting concerns about these issues. Groups across the island of Ireland have become increasingly active in advocating and agitating for systemic change. They include academic researchers, NGOs, environmental lawyers and grass-root community activists.

In partnership with academics, representatives of civil society and environmental NGOs, Dr Brennan launched the Environmental Justice Network Ireland (EJNI) in July 2019.

The central goal of EJNI is to create a transdisciplinary ‘community of practice’. Strategic cooperation will enable the network to identify environmental justice challenges, opportunities and directions for reform across the island of Ireland. One of EJNI’s most recent projects is a collection of films. They represent views from a range of stakeholders on environmental justice in post-pandemic Ireland.

“By building transdisciplinary, problem-centred collaborations between researchers and diverse non-academic stakeholders, the Environmental Justice Network Ireland will build capacity in research communities to undertake agile, evidence-based research in rapid response to urgent environmental, political and social needs”

Dr Ciara Brennan

• Dr Ciara Brennan is a lecturer in Environmental Law at Newcastle Law School. She is a member of the Environmental Regulation Research Group and the Francis Taylor Buildings Academic Panel.

We all face far-reaching challenges by climate change impacts and the digital revolution.

The climate crisis is worsening every year. The UK has had to deal with heavy rain causing floods. The country has suffered from droughts and heatwaves. It has faced the unprecedented arrival of remnants of hurricanes travelling across the Atlantic.

Low carbon economies and digital technologies

The rise of digital technologies and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is happening in all areas of our lives. Smartphones, algorithmic decisions in the finance and insurance sectors, facial recognition, and smart homes are just a few examples. These technologies bring increased convenience. They can speed up transitions to low carbon economies. They do this in a variety of ways, including:

• electric cars
• phasing out fossil fuels through cheaper renewable energies facilitated by smart grids
• reducing the need to commute to work through remote working

Losers in the transition to a low carbon economy

But low carbon transitions, digital technologies and AI carry risks. They have the potential to increase social inequality and harm social justice.

Historic large-scale transitions throughout previous industrial revolutions have shown that not everyone benefits equally. It is important to recognise that there will be losers in the transition. These include people working in:

• fossil-fuel relevant sectors such as the oil/gas/coal extraction industries and fossil fuel power plants
• the aviation, shipping and automotive industries
• large-scale industrial agriculture

Both low-skilled and high-skilled jobs in such sectors face threats from automation and AI.

Investors will find that they own ‘stranded’ fossil fuel assets, losing value if they do not divest fast enough. This will also hit employees with pensions invested in these sectors.

Investing in a future fit for everyone

There is a need to maintain overall public support for transition to a low carbon economy. We must avoid the resentment that populist movements and parties may capitalise upon. This may lead to anti-climate action movements and votes.

Thus, it is crucial to compensate the losers of low and zero carbon transitions by investing in:

• education
• public infrastructure
• low/zero carbon industries in cities and rural areas negatively affected by the transition

Over the past 10 years, Dr Katharine Rietig’s research has focused on how public policies and responsible regulation can address these challenges. She has explored in depth how effective policies emerge. She said:

“Policies need to be socially inclusive. They must focus on economic co-benefits. These benefits include green jobs and investment in zero-carbon infrastructure ahd technologies.

“We need to better understand how the interactions between policymaking on the local, national and global level and the influence of civil society actors helps us arrive at effective policies to address social and environmental injustices. Learning from other countries’ policy successes and failures is key.”

• Katharine Rietig is a Senior Lecturer in Politics

Marginalisation of women in farming is still a serious issue.

Professor Sally Shortall has been researching women in agriculture since 1987.

Women play a major role in Scottish agriculture and take part in the full range of farming activities. But they are significantly disadvantaged and underrepresented in the sector. This is also an issue throughout much of Western Europe.

The problem, Professor Shortall argues, is deeply cultural. It often emerges through the process of land transfer in families. But there are no legal reasons why women cannot inherit land.

Clearly, there are historical reasons for this pattern. But its persistence is remarkable.

Explaining the injustice

“I have been saying this for 30 years, and little has changed,” Professor Shortall stated.

In the research conducted in Scotland, men as well as women recognised the problem. They offered various justifications to explain away this injustice:

• it is a difficult life
• women wouldn’t want to do it
• what if your daughter married unwisely and the farm had to be sold (although it would be exactly the same situation if your son married unwisely)

Professor Shortall interviewed women who had wanted to farm, but went into farm-related employment as their means of staying close to agriculture.

Challenging the status quo

Some of these women were now ‘new entrant’ farmers. In other words, they were renting land and farming. These farmers were dynamic and cutting edge. This was often because they were able to bring their farm-related employment knowledge to the farm.

As a result of these issues, farming organisations are very male dominated. Women feel conspicuous and unwelcome. Male-only dinners and events have recently come to media attention. The women interviewed by Professor Shortall over the years talked about this exclusion.

“At a point in meetings, women are simply asked to leave. Even the young, dynamic women farmers I interviewed said that they would be reluctant to attend farming organisation events,” she told us.

“We tend to think that there is no longer occupational closure to women. The time of guilds and men-only professions has passed. Yet farming exercises occupational closure to women. It is a question of social justice.” – Professor Sally Shortall

• Professor Sally Shortall is the Duke of Northumberland Chair of Rural Economy in the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, Newcastle University

Migrants face challenges to integration in rural areas.

A significant number of migrants have arrived in rural areas across much of Europe, including the UK. Their reception is not always straightforward. It relies on a range of sources, including civil society and employers, according to Dr Ruth McAreavey.

The challenges facing migrants in rural areas

For the past 25 years, migrants have been arriving in rural areas with little previous experience of immigration. Their arrival at non-metropolitan migrant gateways represents a distinct feature of contemporary migration.

Our research has shown how incorporating migrants into rural areas is particularly challenging. Social institutions in non-metropolitan and newly receiving migration areas are generally not familiar with providing support for a diverse population. Other difficulties include:

• the lack of critical mass, which reduces migrant networks
• the diversity of migrants, who have many different needs

In a non-urban setting, migrants can also be relatively invisible, so it can be difficult to identify all their needs. Residents of some rural areas may also have socially conservative attitudes about the migrants’ entitlement to the same treatment as the local population.

We have shown how the process of achieving social justice for migrants is evident in their everyday lives. It encompasses a range of issues including:

• their access to education
• the legitimacy of their rights to live in social housing
• their right to assert employment rights

Our research has also shown how support from social services, churches, charity groups and friends and family is a critical part of this complex process.

These different networks have been a lifeline for many migrants. A Polish woman explained to Dr McAreavey: “I have a neighbour who welcomed us as soon as we moved in. She came over with cookies; she kept coming over to make sure that we were fine and offer help if needed.”

• Dr Ruth McAreavey is Reader in Sociology in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology at Newcastle University

Securing affordable and sustainable energy requires long-term, collaborative relationships spanning research and governance.

Health, well-being and quality of life depend on reliable and affordable access to energy services. Energy injustice takes many forms.

Without heating at home, vulnerable members of the community face the deterioration of many serious health conditions. Others are reluctant to go home at all. In some cases, they must make daily trade-offs between food and heating. They may risk falling further into debt to maintain a basic level of warmth in the home.

Tackling climate change, energy justice and infrastructure transitions

Combating this long-standing problem is more difficult, and the injustices are yet more pronounced, when low-carbon energy costs more than fossil fuel-based energy services. Thus, at times, direct tensions emerge between climate change and social justice issues in energy governance.

Dr Gareth Powells works at this intersection between climate change, energy justice and infrastructure transitions. He has done so since the United Kingdom’s fuel poverty charity National Energy Action (NEA) cofunded his PhD.

A portfolio of collaborations have sustained conversations between academic research and policy challenges.

This has included working together on the agenda-setting Customer-Led Network Revolution. This is a collaboration between academia and the energy industry. Professor Phil Taylor leads the academic side.

Dr Powells also analysed community sustainability in three high-rise, low-income communities in Newcastle upon Tyne. This was in partnership with:

• Newcastle City Council
• Your Homes Newcastle
• Northern Gas Networks
• Northern Powergrid

The project explored opportunities resulting from lower-carbon smart grids.

In another example of the enduring relationship between the University and NEA, Dr Powells joined the Health and Innovation Programme. In this programme, energy companies’ unpaid climate change levies were collected and distributed to innovative low-carbon energy measures in fuel-poor communities.

The particular challenges of each project are always unique.

“The trust, experience of collaboration, and the distinct skills, resources and networks brought together in collaborative projects are among the most valuable assets in the ongoing fight against energy injustice.” – Dr Gareth Powells

• Dr Gareth Powells is Lecturer in Human Geography in the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, and Professor Phil Taylor is Siemens Professor of Energy Systems and Head of the School of Engineering at Newcastle University