In finding an answer to the main question the first sub question proposed to describe the historic and current situation of the injustice in Groningen and the Niger delta. The data from the interviews did indeed show that participants experienced a certain connection
71 between the history of the province and their current situation. However, no direct link
between the history and the current situation could be established, which provided an important contrast to what is common in the literature of environmental justice.
Answering the second and third sub question through the comparisons did however illustrate significant overlap in the experiences of both populations across all dimensions and both approaches of the framework. The strongest resemblances were found in peoples’
experiences of being betrayed by their government, the insufficient or absent indemnification, the highly unfair economic balance, and the underlying theme of being treated as a human of lesser value than others. The triad provided a more abstract and theoretical approach to the subject matter, which interestingly made both cases more comparable, as it proved less capable of describing the scale and magnitude of the impact of the injustices. Subsequently, the more human focussed lens of capabilities made it easier to capture this impact and magnitude of the injustices. Consequently, this made the differences between the cases more visible in the capabilities approach. Nonetheless, the similarities seen in the triads approach resurfaced in the capabilities approach as well amongst novel similarities due to the different approach. As such, the comparison of Groningen and the Niger delta serves to solidify the former as a case of environmental justice as well.
This provides one of the most important conclusions of this thesis, namely that it was shown here that historic marginalisation is not a prerequisite for actual environmental
injustice to occur. This thus argues against the definition provided of environmental justice in the introduction of this thesis as defined by Temper (2018) and other contemporaries of the discourse (Lord & Shutkin, 1994; Schlosberg, 2007). This contrast may be explained by the history of the discourse, in which the most visible cases were often those with a long history of marginalisation that increased the gravity of the situation and thereby the visibility (Coolsaet, 2020). Novel insights such as those described here then adjust the definition over time to reflect the state-of-the-art of the discourse.
In answering the main question, the research showed that both frameworks were indeed capable of describing the lived experiences in Groningen in a comparable manner to the Niger delta. The extent to which it proved applicable through the comparison was most significantly limited in the capacity to describe the difference in scale and magnitude of impact. In this case meaning that the Niger delta case involved significantly further reaching impacts for far more people which is not reflected when only analysing respondents lived experiences, as was done here. It was thus shown that the limits of these frameworks in this case emerged in describing the more quantitative aspects, which are necessary to give a more
72 complete image of the comparability between cases. This underlines the importance of future research in environmental justice utilising a mixed methods approach, which was argued for by Althor and Witt (2020) as well in their review of distributive environmental justice literature. Nonetheless, it was shown that the framework of environmental justice can be applied to describe a case such as Groningen.
Returning to the relevance stated at the start of this thesis the research provided novel insight into the gas quake debacle in Groningen from the scientific perspective of
environmental justice. This showed it to be a case of environmental injustice and provided an in-depth study of the experiences of the inhabitants of the area from a modern perspective of justice. The results and analysis have shown that the problems in Groningen are interpreted well through the frameworks and are even comparable to a well-established case of injustice like the Niger delta. This conclusion may serve as a call to further research in the region, which appeared necessary to stress the importance of the case. The comparison further showed that the capitalist centre-periphery split from the literature of environmental justice (Bassey, 2012; Coolsaet, 2020; Smith, 2016) emerged prominently in the case of Groningen as well, even proving comparable in a distributional sense to the case of the Niger delta.
Concomitantly, the research has contributed to the discourse of environmental justice in providing a rare and valuable qualitative perspective on injustice, tying it in with the suggestions of Althor and Witt (2020) for qualitative research in environmental justice.
Beyond the scientific scope, this thesis had the primary societal aim of further legitimising the case of Groningen as injustice through a comparison. Through the work presented in this thesis I hope to have contributed to a sense of legitimacy and urgency concerning the troubles in Groningen. Here, it was shown to be comparable in several senses to the case of the Niger delta, which is generally viewed as abhorrent exploitation and
neglect, whereas Groningen is right under our noses. Embedding the case of Groningen in the discourse of environmental justice should not only reflect its academic relevance but also its political urgency. The impact of this is further enhanced by the research of this thesis being an integral part of the upcoming theatre play by New Dutch Connections, which will incorporate these themes in hopes of inspiring the viewers. Furthermore, I hope to have shown that the striking similarities between these cases has further implications. Not only involving those who would read this, but also to impress the concept that these cases are connected through a more general, global pattern, in which profit is prioritised above people and ecological wellbeing. This brings back the themes from the introduction of the global connection between cases, mentioned by authors such as Miller and Spoolman (2016) and
73 Schlosberg (2007), and my own role as not just an academic but also an activist as described by Frickel (2004). I thus hope to have contributed to an understanding of the universality of the problems discussed in this thesis and the conclusion that there is a need for equally holistic solutions to these issues.
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