Agyeman Chapter 6: From Confrontation to Implementation

In this chapter Agyeman presents instances of international, national, and local coalitions between JSP, EJP, and NEP organizations that have had varied levels of success. Agyeman hypothesizes that the most successful coalitions, the ones which achieve “movement fusion” are between just sustainability and environmental justice groups (178). He concludes the chapter with thoughts on emerging organizations and other frameworks that have the potential to advance the just sustainability paradigm.

At the beginning of this chapter, Agyeman sets a lofty agenda for himself, but is unable to succeed in moving through the discourse. Agyeman begins by presenting examples of local and national coalitions between organizations with varying degrees of just sustainability focus, but is limited in his analysis. He seems to struggle with the need to have environmental justice and sustainability completely accounted for by a single organization. The notion that organizations with divergent, but in some ways complementary, goals could successfully work together seems unattainable. While it may be true that having an aligned agenda creates an easier marriage of organizations, ignoring those with different views of the world may not be the best way to encourage any kind of justice, let alone environmental justice.

Agyeman then describes the new tool of environmental space, which “quantifies and helps operationalize sustainability while simultaneously highlighting the role of equity and justice” (181). Environmental space is at first positioned to be the juncture between EJP and NEP organizations, but Agyeman then dissects its agenda, and writes that it focuses a little too heavily on the environmental aspects of sustainability and too lightly on issues beyond “green.” While this may be true, that does not meet the movement can’t be an ally to just sustainability or that environmental space falls short of any benchmark other than the one created by Agyeman himself.

Through Agyeman’s dissection of goals and roles and interconnections between organizations, it seems he may be missing an important factor, the key focus of a social or environmental movement: change. Instead of breaking down other movements and highlighting how they are dissimilar, bridging the known chasms through respect and understanding may provide a more solidified front to move multiple agendas forward simultaneously. Agyeman seems more focused on why EJPs or NEPs are doing what they are doing – the values behind the actions – than on how outcomes can intersect to create synergies that go beyond what each organization could do by itself.