TY - JOUR
T1 - Environmental justice for the governance of aquatic environments
AU - Paloniemi, Riikka
AU - Niemelä, Jari
AU - Soininen, Niko
AU - Laatikainen, Tiina
AU - Vierikko, Kati
AU - Rekola, Aino
AU - Viinikka, Arto
AU - Yli-Pelkonen, Vesa
AU - Assmuth, Timo
AU - Kopperoinen, Leena
AU - Peltonen, Lasse
AU - Kuokkanen, Tuomas
AU - Kyttä, Marketta
PY - 2018/3/4
Y1 - 2018/3/4
N2 - Environmental justice sheds light on the distributive and procedural aspects of planning and decision-making. We examined the challenges arising from the perspective of environmental justice on multi-level and participatory environmental governance by exploring the governance of aquatic environments in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. We found three main challenges and potential responses to them. First, even though most of Helsinki’s shoreline is free and/or accessible by road and accordingly used actively by people for recreational purposes, many parts of the shoreline are perceived as inaccessible, reflecting a need to combine factual and perceived accessibility of aquatic environments in detail during the planning processes and to discuss reasons for possible discrepancies between these two. Second, there was a remarkable seasonal variation in the use of aquatic environments, so more attention should be paid to social-demographic factors explaining the distribution of the use of urban nature. Third, it seems to be difficult to capture the variety of perceptions of people and to integrate them into planning and decision-making processes even on a local scale, and this challenge is likely even more pronounced on higher levels of planning and governance. Thus, better integration of regional and local-scale planning procedures should be encouraged. Building on these observations, we conclude that integration of procedural and distributive environmental justice into the practices of the governance of aquatic environments could remarkably decrease unwanted trade-offs and potential conflicts in their use and management.
AB - Environmental justice sheds light on the distributive and procedural aspects of planning and decision-making. We examined the challenges arising from the perspective of environmental justice on multi-level and participatory environmental governance by exploring the governance of aquatic environments in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. We found three main challenges and potential responses to them. First, even though most of Helsinki’s shoreline is free and/or accessible by road and accordingly used actively by people for recreational purposes, many parts of the shoreline are perceived as inaccessible, reflecting a need to combine factual and perceived accessibility of aquatic environments in detail during the planning processes and to discuss reasons for possible discrepancies between these two. Second, there was a remarkable seasonal variation in the use of aquatic environments, so more attention should be paid to social-demographic factors explaining the distribution of the use of urban nature. Third, it seems to be difficult to capture the variety of perceptions of people and to integrate them into planning and decision-making processes even on a local scale, and this challenge is likely even more pronounced on higher levels of planning and governance. Thus, better integration of regional and local-scale planning procedures should be encouraged. Building on these observations, we conclude that integration of procedural and distributive environmental justice into the practices of the governance of aquatic environments could remarkably decrease unwanted trade-offs and potential conflicts in their use and management.
KW - Aquatic environments
KW - distributive justice
KW - environmental governance
KW - procedural justice
KW - recreation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85041479978&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/13549839.2017.1422118
DO - 10.1080/13549839.2017.1422118
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85041479978
VL - 23
SP - 366
EP - 377
JO - Local Environment
JF - Local Environment
SN - 1354-9839
IS - 3
ER -