Environmental Injustice and Human Rights Abuse: The States, MNCs, and Repression of Minority Groups in the World System

The issues of global environmental injustice and human rights violations are the central focus of this article. Existing cross-national empirical data and case studies are utilized to assess and establish the patterns of transnational toxic wastes dumping, natural resource exploitation, and human rights transgression. The bases of global environmental injustice are explored. Theoretically, dependency/world system, internal colonialism perspectives, economic contingency, and transnational environmental justice frameworks are used to analyze transnational toxic waste dumping, land appropriation and natural resource exploitation adversely affecting indigenous minorities in underdeveloped societies. With a particular focus on selected cases, available evidence suggests that the poor, powerless indigenous minorities and many environmental and civil rights activists face the danger of environmental injustice and human rights abuse, especially in less developed nations. Significant correlations were found between social inequality, poverty, total external debts, demographic measures, health and solid wastes in the analysis of a cross-national data-set for developing nations. To foster global environmental justice, this study suggests that stronger international norms to protect human rights to a safe and sound environment are imperative; and it is argued that environmental injustice needs to be included as a component of human rights instruments. Other policy implications of the analyses are also discussed.