Hidden in Plain Sight: Social Inequalities in the Context of Environmental Change

This chapter demonstrates the need to study social inequalities in relation to environmental stresses and change, using methods that bring our attention to injustices that are hidden in plain sight due to social, economic, and political dynamics. Using recent research by a collaboration of physical and social scientists, engineers and ethicists about the human-environment interactions in southwestern Bangladesh, I show that familiarity, frequency, and fragmentation can obscure injustices related to environmental and social change, even from those interested in broad patterns of injustice related to climate change. The methodological commitments, which need to be part of a global, connected research agenda to address environmentally exacerbated social inequalities, are interdisciplinarity, integrated local and global scales, and intersectionality.