Food Justice: An Environmental Justice Critique of the Global Food System

Environmental justice is an important framework for understanding the North–South divide in many areas of international law and policy, including energy, climate, hazardous wastes, and food. An environmental justice analysis makes visible the ways in which the global North benefits from unsustainable economic activity while imposing the environmental consequences on the global South and on the planet's most vulnerable human beings, including women, racial and ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, and the poor. This chapter applies an environmental justice analysis to the global food system, analyzes the underlying causes of the inequities in food production and consumption, and outlines several strategies to create a more equitable and sustainable approach to global food governance.