EnJustice aspires to bring the voices of excluded/marginalized communities (including Indigenous and grassroots local communities) in Greenland, Lithuania, and Sápmi into the Nordic-Baltic green transition strategy debate. It does so by pluralizing knowledge and justice-making processes related to environmental challenges, biodiversity, protection of life and land, and recognizing the value of the lived knowledge of those at the forefront of climate justice struggles.
The project introduces the notion of transformative environmental justice (TEJ) to this debate. TEJ is hereby understood as a holistic concept that recognizes the historical violence inflicted upon marginalized populations and aims to societal transformation that will restore this by empowering under-represented communities in the environmental debate.
EnJUSTICE argues that engaging with issues related to representation and participation in a just green transition means focusing upon the social and institutional relations, inequalities, and power imbalances which produce climate change and biodiversity loss, and profoundly shape responses to it, such as the green transition.
The project aspires to reverse the relationship between powerful stakeholders (such as state administrations and business actors) and excluded/marginalized communities, by pointing to the ways in which experts and agencies tasked with managing the green transition and environmental/climate change have often failed to acknowledge the value of the lived knowledge of those at the forefront of environmental/climate controversies.
The means of securing access for excluded/marginalized communities to configuring the green transition takes different forms across the Nordics depending on the nature of the state, the political culture, the strength of Indigenous people and civil society and the existence or not of political forums for freedom of expression.