Testimonies of Justice
An interview with Larry Lohmann of The Corner House
first published 1 March 2015
The Global Environmental Justice research group is an interdisciplinary group of scholars interested in the linkages between social justice and environmental change, with a particular focus on the global dimensions of (in)justice, based at the University of East Anglia in the UK. Biodiversity conservation, climate change, disaster management, forestry, mining, public health, renewables and water management are just some of the (in)justices they have focused on.
Testimonies of Justice is a series of video interviews with various activists and academics that the group has produced.
In this 8-minute video, Larry Lohmann outlines The Corner House’s solidarity work and related research, much of which involves oppressions, racisms and neo-colonialisms of various kinds on wide-ranging topics including ecosystem services.
He summarises how The Corner House works on an issue and the difficulties it encounters with “allies” and “enemies”.
“When the cry of injustice goes up from a crowd”, says Lohmann, “it’s usually an expression of a consciousness in the making: ‘What’s happening to us? How can this happen? How does it work? Who is doing this to us? How are they making alliances against us? What alliances should we make?’”
This is very different from the technical concept of justice as a ready-made objective that can (supposedly) be poured into an existing project, no matter how oppressive that project might be; for instance, “let’s make slavery sustainable”.
For The Corner House and those with whom it works, justice is more a process of discovering strategies for dealing with oppression.