Environmental Justice and the State: Expert Knowledge and Local Discourses in an Environmental Justice Movement

One of the important functions of the modern state is to create effective environmental policies designed to promote justice and equity in distribution of environmental resources. While some researchers argue that the economic imperatives of the neoliberal state have led to incremental changes through weak environmental policies, others offer a more positive narrative about the internal transformations of the state in the light of growing citizen activism. This article argues that the role of the state vis-a-vis the environment is not limited to legislation. Instead, the neoliberal state has emerged as an arbiter of environmental knowledge and has been actively legitimizing scientific knowledge systems over local cultural knowledge in environmental conflicts. These forms of knowledge regulation has occurred over disaster management and rebuilding initiatives, construction of dams and other large technological systems, and alternative energy projects. The cultural and environmental injustices that occur due to the non-recognition of local knowledge have important implications for environmental justice studies. I illustrate these injustices with examples from an environmental justice movement in Land Between the Rivers, KY.