Constitutional environmental rights and state violence : implications for environmental justice in protected forests

Abstract

In this article, I examine environmental justice in a context where environmental rights legalize the subjection of people to harm resulting from conservation, first because the environment is privileged with constitutional rights to be protected, and second because this right is imposed on citizens. To unpack this complexity, I engage with literature on environmental rights and environmental justice from a legal and political ecology perspective. I then use the case of protected forests in Zimbabwe to show how the constitutional right to promote conservation for the benefit of present and future generations, on the contrary, exposes citizens residing in and adjacent to protected forests to diverse forms of state violence. Such violence subsequently takes away the right to equal access to natural resources and often comes with injustices around human dignity, culture, recognition, and the overall right to life. I broadly argue that state ideas on environmental rights, and their embeddedness in violent practices, have implications on environmental justice in the way they privilege ecological justice without recognizing justice for humans in relation to their environments.