Abstract:
This article explores the role of environmental justice as a transformative tool in litigation
to enforce socio-economic rights in South Africa. Because environmental justice recognises
the intrinsic links between the distribution of basic resources, and the environments in
which poor people continue to find themselves in post-1994 South Africa, it has the
ability to enhance and strengthen the enforcement of socio-economic rights. To demonstrate
the transformative potential of environmental justice, I discuss its origins and its
incorporation into South African law. I then demonstrate that, despite having been
incorporated into our law, environmental justice has failed to capture the imagination of
lawyers engaged in socio-economic rights litigation. Sustainable development and human
rights discourses have been the dominant voices, at the expense of environmental justice,
and its transformative potential. Through an analysis of Mazibuko v City of
Johannesburg I point to how linking environmental justice to the right to access to basic
water could have encouraged the court to adopt a more redistributive and transformative
approach. To conclude, I consider the potential of environmental justice in socio-economic
rights litigation to challenge poverty and effect transformation in the lives of poor people in
South Africa.
