Abstract
The “ecology movement", one of several “new social movements" to emerge at the end of the 1960s, radically criticized the petro-nuclear dependence of industrial societies for being intrinsically contradictory to the well being of eco-systems. However, in the process of putting the ecology movement into practice through institutionalization and policy-making, the ecology movement has shifted from espousing utopia-oriented principles to adopting a compromise-making stance disposed towards the exertion of substantial political influence. Furthermore, due to the advancement of environmental management systematization in the 1990s and the globalization of the world economy in the 2000s and thereafter, even the raison d'etre of environmental movements has come into question. In this context, the expansion of environmental justice movements on a global scale could trigger the de-institutionalization of the environmental movement. While the original environmental justice movement was launched in the United States as an anti-environmental racism movement, the recent rise of a “new environmental justice movement" addresses the issue of globally expanded disproportionate distribution of environmental burdens among the disadvantaged within the context of neo-liberalist economies.
