Environmental justice is a central component of sustainability politics during the Anthropocene – the current geological age when human activity is the dominant influence on climate and environment. Every aspect of sustainability politics requires a close analysis of its equity implications, and environmental justice provides us with the tools to explore the ways in which we define and investigate the Anthropocene and its multifaceted impacts. From its origins as a US movement against environmental racism and other inequities in the early 1980s the scope of environmental justice, as a field of research and as a movement, has broadened enormously and evidenced by many other initiatives around the world.

Environmental Justice CSU1, the organizer of this symposium, is a global challenges research team sponsored by the School of Global Environmental Sustainability.

This symposium aims to bring together academics, independent researchers, community and movement activists, and regulatory and policy practitioners from across disciplines, research areas, perspectives, and different countries.