What is environmental justice? The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines environmental justice as follows: “Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this Nation. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.” ("Environmental Justice". U.S. EPA. http://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice/. Retrieved 2012-09-23) This definition provides a clear summary of Barbara Johnston’s perspective on social justice environmentalism. According to Johnston, “environmental justice” addresses environmental problems that mainly affect low-income and minority communities. The basic premise of the environmental justice movement is that minority and economically disadvantaged populations assume greater risks from exposure to environmental hazards than do others. These compromised populations are known to have poorer health status than the overall population and have higher rates of a variety of diseases. Many complex factors interact to produce health disparities among minority and low-income populations. Behavioral choices, nutrition, access to medical care, genetic predisposition, and environmental and occupational exposures, over which individuals have little control, all contribute and are related. Where one lives and works is often less a matter of choice than the result of socioeconomic status. It is usually the case that people in the lower socioeconomic strata are more likely to live in the most hazardous environments and to work in the most hazardous occupations. Thus, the environmental justice framework incorporates other social movements (environmental equity, environmental racism) that seek to eliminate harmful practices and discrimination in housing, land use, industrial planning, health care, and sanitation services. The environmental justice movement aims not only to repair existing problems, but also to prevent environmental threats before they occur (Johnston 2011: 11-12). Johnston writes that human environmental rights are the rights that insure basic human survival, and human survival today is increasingly restricted by the biodegenerative products of humanity; she also notes that environmental degradation is not a new challenge to human survival, but the characteristics of degradation have changed. Environmental degradation is one way in which minority populations are victims of cultural discrimination. The link between human rights abuses and environmental degradation is a consequence of selective victimization resulting from dysfunctional governance and inadequate responses to environmental crises that contribute to the formation of social movements. This victimization is a preexisting social condition that results in the loss of critical resources and a healthy environment; and environmental justice is the movement that has the goals of “empowerment” of the affected and “accountability” of the affectors involved in these crises (Johnston 2011: 10-14). An important example of a basic human environmental rights violation is the case of the Marshall Islands. The U.S. government tested 67 atomic and thermonuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands from 1946 to 1958. The anthropologist Holly Barker describes the injustices, injury and death that the Marshallese’ have suffered as a result of the nuclear testing. She describes the case as a “grave example of the way in which U.S. colonialist policy and national security interests culminated in basic human environmental rights violation.” (Johnston 2011: 358-359). The U.S. government research interests have outweighed the concerns for the safety, health and well-being of the Marshallese people and their island. The U.S. government has used their power to control or suppress information about the testing program so that local people were unable to seek compensation or support for their radiation-related injuries and damages. An adequate response to the radiation problems in the Marshall Islands requires that the main goals of the environmental justice movement be incorporated into a collective effort to act—empowerment to allow people affected by the problem to gain greater control in defining the nature of the crisis, and responsibility whereby those causing the problem acknowledge their culpability (Johnston 2011: 367-369). The environmental rights violation and the struggle for environmental justice on the Marshall Islands elucidate the main principles of an environmental justice movement—principles arising as a natural consequence of the necessity to repair the damages and avoid future crises.