World Social Justice Day and our Environment – News from Manipur

By – Dr. N. Munal Meitei
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
World Social Justice Day of is observed on February 20 by the United Nations to serves as a global call to action for addressing poverty, exclusion and unemployment while promoting solidarity, harmony, and equality of opportunity within and between societies and environment. Theme for 2026 is “Empowering Inclusion: Bridging Gaps for Social Justice,” emphasizes the need to reduce social and economic inequality through targeted bridging with inclusive policies.
Unfortunately, basic human and environmental rights -including the right to work, food, adequate living standards, education, and a safe, healthy and sustainable environment -have not been extended to a major portion of humanity. Environmental degradation exacerbates social, economic, and health inequalities, making environmental protection a core component of achieving social justice.
Justice for our planet and justice for all are two profound conversations that are happening simultaneously, but often in different rooms. The interconnectedness of daily human life and the state of the Earth often go unexamined, but at this point in human history, we cannot afford to separate these conversations.
Issues that change the environment have impacts on the people who live there as well. And when some people have access to resources that helped them to improve while others don’t, that become a social injustice. From a community scale to a global scale, there is an intense connection between people and the environment, and harm to one cannot be escaped by the other.
Human as a species, demands with intense changes in how the planet is functioning. These changes in climate aren’t arbitrary; they are having tangible effects across the globe. But the capacity for all populations to mitigate these changes isn’t equal, threatening the human rights.
While emphasizing the social justice, we need environmental justice. Climate change and degradation disproportionately affect the poor, making environmental rights a core part of social justice. Policies must integrate social protection with environmental sustainability to ensure fair, long-term development. The key goals include reducing income inequality, promoting decent work, ensuring equal access to resources and fostering a healthy environment for all. Social justice aims to give individuals and groups a fair treatment and an impartial share of social, environmental and economic benefits regardless of caste, creed, religions and background.
Environmental justice deals explicitly with the distribution of environmental benefits and the burdens that people experience, at home, at work, or where they learn, play and spend leisure time. Environmental justice is to ensure that the global shift toward low-carbon, green economies does not leave vulnerable communities behind.
India has observed this day since 2009 under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MoSJE). Key initiatives include: PM-AJAY for Skill development and infrastructure for Scheduled Caste communities, the NAMASTE Scheme, ensures for the safety and dignity of sanitation workers and the PURPLE Fests, promotes the accessibility and inclusion for persons with disabilities
Nowadays environmental justice, is more widely accepted as a fundamental concept and goal of many environmental policies, including improving public access to environmental data and information, improving quality of life through access to environmental goods and preserving resources for future generations.
Environmental justice is an accepted and useful perspective how they affect people’s lives. Adopting an environmental justice framework suggests looking beyond the health effects of environmental problems to consider the wide range of impacts environmental burdens exert on the daily lives of those exposed to them.
Unfortunately, the basic human and environmental rights -including the right to work, food, adequate living standards, education, and a safe, healthy and sustainable environment -have not been extended to a major portion of the global community. Within current globalization trends, some 2 billion people in over 126 countries will remain on the margins of economic prosperity, social development and environmental sustainability. But there is no clear-cut solution to environmental injustice problems.
Strengthening a transition for a sustainable future means making sure to move toward low-carbon economies, especially the most vulnerable which requires a holistic approach that weaves environmental sustainability with social justice, ensuring that workers, indigenous peoples and marginalized communities are not left out. In other words, decarbonization and economic transformation should go hand in hand with policies of social justice for all.
In the world today, many enjoy unprecedented material wealth. Economic reforms and trade liberalization have opened borders to the freer flow of capital and goods, allowing economies to diversify and international commerce to flourish. Yet this wealth creation comes at high human and environmental costs affecting the social justice.
Social and environmental justice are deep rooted, which asserts that all people -deserve for an equal right to protect from all environmental hazards and access to equal social benefits. On this World Day of Social Justice, the international community should affirm that peoples have the rights of the Social and Environmental justice for all.
(The author is Environmentalist, presently working as DFO/Chandel. email- [email protected])