An Environmental Justice Indicator for Managing Environmental Risk in the Italian Provinces

Environmental Justice (EJ) represents a suitable conceptual tool to examine the racism-environment-health relationship. Extensively pursued in the U.S. under the banner of environmental racism (Bullard, 1990; Mohai and Bryant, 1992), this concept has been rarely employed in the Italian context. Environmental injustice is the disproportional exposure of certain groups of people, to pollution, environmental risks, or environmental policies. burdens. The main objective of this study is to build a composite index environmental justice, including air quality and socio-economic and demographic variables, to better assess the socio-environmental quality of the Italian provinces. In particular, this research calls into question whether race and ethnicity are still of little use in determining environmental health inequalities to date, and, if so, what socio-economic and demographic variables are the most relevant.