Sustainability Language

Social & human rights

Epistemic justice

Fairness in how people are treated as knowers — whose testimony is believed and whose experiences are intelligible.

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Definition

Epistemic justice concerns fairness toward people in their capacity as knowers. Miranda Fricker (2007) defined its violation, epistemic injustice, in two forms: testimonial injustice, where prejudice causes a speaker to be given less credibility than deserved, and hermeneutical injustice, where gaps in collective interpretive resources leave someone's social experience unintelligible.

References

Miranda Fricker

identity-prejudicial credibility deficit, structural character

Overview

What it means

In sustainability, the concept is applied to whose knowledge counts: Indigenous and local knowledge in conservation and climate assessment, frontline-community testimony in pollution disputes, and the marginalisation of Global South scholarship in climate science. It underpins calls for knowledge pluralism in bodies such as IPBES.

How it is used

Used in environmental-justice scholarship, participatory research design, climate-services co-production and critiques of expert-dominated decision-making.

Why it matters

Decisions made on partial knowledge misfire; epistemic justice links knowledge practices to material justice outcomes.

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