Environmental Justice and Sustainable Development: a comparative Q analysis in Brazil's Amazon

Abstract

The presented work shows the results of a field research on two concepts in Brazil's Amazon: Environmental Justice (EJ) and Sustainable Development (SD). These contain different problem sets within the field of environmental sociology. Closely bound to the distinction problem of the two concepts, the research assumes less degree of discourse differences for the SD concept than for the EJ concept as first hypothesis. The research also based on a second hypothesis. Researching the concepts' discourses will reveal evidence for the environmental legislation failure: The difference in perception of the local environmental problem set due to the 'distance problem'. This problem consists in terms of geographic location and cultural background. Non-consideration of these, distance based, discourse differences in the process of law implementation increases chance to fail. Conducted on an island sibling called Algodoal-Maiandeua, declared environmental protection unit since 20 years, two Q methodology studies have been realized at the same time and compared in order to prove the hypotheses.