Where in the world is environmental justice?

In recent years, scholars have noted a broadening of environmental justice research, both geographically and conceptually, to include global issues that expand beyond the spatial distributions of environmental ‘goods' and ‘bads' to include other dimensions including recognition, participation, and capabilities. The purpose of this report is to consider how this broadening has influenced research topics and themes, the geographic locations of researchers, and the future course of environmental justice research. We searched for articles identifying environmental justice as a keyword from 2000 to 2009 in Scopus, Web of Science, and GeoBase. While the number of articles published looking at environmental justice has increased over the past decade, our search contradicts the previous claims that environmental justice research has greatly expanded conceptually or geographically beyond its traditional origins. Our findings show that environmental justice research remains firmly rooted in the United States, focusing on the distributional aspects of environmental harms. We introduce alternative research methodologies that can be used to inform a more holistic and just approach to research in this area.