Restorative Justice and Environmental Heritage

Date and Time: 
Friday, 6 May, 2011 - 16:00 to 16:20
Author(s): 
FIGUEROA, Robert - University of North Texas

It has been several decades into the Environmnetal Justice Movement now, domestic and global forms of the movement pervade more and more discussions and have certainly intimated, implied, and included dimensions of ethnobiology.  This presentation initially outlines some of the critical ways that environmental justice studies is both explicitly and implicitly integrated with ethnobiology.  From this first discussion, a consideration of emerging concepts and arenas of environmental justice-- especially regarding considerations of environmental heritage and environmental identity-- will be discussed to elaborate on the ways that restorative justice, or reconciliation processes, have surfaced in the ever-expanding environmental justice frame.  Two cases will be discussed: Minamata City, Japan and Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Australia; in order to provide diverse accounts of environmental justice struggles that represent interdependence between reconciliation efforts and enthobiological relations.