‘Lead-polluted water changed our lives’

Abstract

At the turn of the millennium, inhabitants of a small Karen village situated in one of Thailand’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites sought access to environmental justice in the Thai courts over industrial pollution that had contaminated their local stream with lead and caused them years of degraded health and social misery. The Karen villagers were only able to gain access to justice with the help of NGOs that served them as a support group during a period when Thailand was experiencing active civil and democratic awakening. The NGOs, which had a common cause with the Karen villagers, helped them enter the ‘environmental justice frame’ and its discourse. Their experience of lead pollution was framed within a moral ‘rhetoric of exposure’, which came to guide their activism against intransigent agencies and policies, as well as their mobilization for access to justice.

Environmental justice and drinking water: A critical review of primary data studies

“…(See Table S5 in the supplementary materials for a summary of how studies explicitly and implicitly engage with different forms of justice.) Deference to certain types of expertise can lead to the disqualification of testimonies in participatory processes (Mascarenhas, 2007; Sitthikriengkrai & Porath, 2017). Distributive injustice can result in psychosocial effects such as the degradation of spirit and the loss of hope (Blakeney & Marshall, 2009), or manifest as occupational injustices through barriers to handwashing, laundry, or cooking (Blakeney & Marshall, 2009; Lockhart et al, 2020).…”

“…Support from external partners may be the only way for these lived experiences to gain credibility in the eyes of the government (Krings et al, 2019). Community activists also strategically use the media (Case, 2017; Sitthikriengkrai & Porath, 2017) or direct action (Domènech et al, 2013) to shame or force the government's or industry's hand into enacting change. Perhaps unsurprisingly, however, protestors and resistors have often been targeted and shut down by the state (Mascarenhas, 2007; Rutt & Bluwstein, 2017).…”

“…(See Table S6 in the supplementary materials for more information on study motivations, drivers of site selection, and community partnerships.) Such collaborations are not inherently good; community partners could perpetuate injustices by prioritizing agendas that serve them more than the community itself (Sitthikriengkrai & Porath, 2017). Collectively, however, PAR‐based studies represent an effort to challenge extractive research dynamics by encouraging the community to harness research as an empowerment opportunity.…”

“…Several studies explore how multiple forms of injustice—distributional, procedural and recognitional—co‐occur (Mascarenhas, 2007; Mehta et al, 2014; Sitthikriengkrai & Porath, 2017; Wutich et al, 2013). The acknowledgement of plural injustices is in line with calls to avoid ahistorical documentation of distributional inequities, and to instead analyze how multiple forms of injustice are mutually co‐constitutive (Malin & Ryder, 2018; Pellow, 2017; Schlosberg, 2013).…”

“…Throughout the reviewed papers, we see that recognitional injustice often undergirds ongoing distributional or procedural injustices (Fraser, 2000; Schlosberg, 2004), but also that distributive and procedural injustice can in turn engender recognitional injustice. Such recognitional injustice often results in psychosocial stressors (Blakeney & Marshall, 2009), which exacerbate environmental health disparities across race and class lines (Gee & Payne‐Sturges, 2004; Morello‐Frosch et al, 2011); as Sitthikriengkrai and Porath (2017) observe, “such indifference and neglect becomes part of the environmental injustice they are suffering.” Our review captures ways in which distributive, procedural, and recognitional injustices are co‐produced. Collectively, these studies show how community struggles to obtain drinking water access are underlain by long histories of disenfranchisement and resistance, rather than singular sources or events of degradation.…”