Compensation territoriale, justice et inégalités environnementales aux Etats-Unis

• Main Author: Julie Gobert
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille 2008-06-01
• Series: Espace populations sociétés
• Subjects: acceptability; environmental justice; community benefit; impacts reallocation; negotiation
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/eps/2384
• ISSN: 0755-7809; 2104-3752

In the United States, the environmental justice movement and the demands of minorities to live in a safe environment were at the origin of new tools of public/private policy. Indeed the “community benefits” result from social and political compromises that target not only to improve the acceptability of facilities but also to reduce environmental inequities. They differ from indemnities or taxes that the local governments receive when they host polluting or hazardous infrastructures. According to the context, the “compensation package” takes different forms: training and first hiring system so that resident can access to the jobs of the facility, construction of community buildings, and diminution of environmental harm… That’s why they fall within the scope of procedural justice because they require that all involved stakeholders participate to the final decision, of distributive justice as they try to reallocate benefits and to repair nuisances, of substantive justice because they are foremost implemented for deprived territories and people. Through two examples – the Community benefits agreement at the International Los Angeles airport and the Host community benefits plan negotiated for the sitting of a power plant at Long Island - the efficiency of compensatory measures to address environmental inequities is analyzed.