Year: 2026 | Month: November | Volume: 13 | Issue: 11 | Pages: 22-37
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52403/ijrr.20261103
From Environmental Justice to Multispecies Equity: Rethinking Sustainable Urban Infrastructure Planning Through Well-Being, Climate Resilience, and Ethical Governance
Nurhayati Doda1, Haris Panai2, Sukirman Rahim3, Marini Susanti Hamidun4
1Doctoral Program in Environmental Science, Universitas Negeri Gorontalo, Gorontalo, Indonesia
2,3,4Postgraduate Program, Universitas Negeri Gorontalo, Gorontalo, Indonesia
Corresponding Author: Bambang Trihandoko
ABSTRACT
Urban green and blue infrastructure are routinely promoted as a pathway toward climate resilience, public health, and sustainable development. Yet increasing environmental amenities does not necessarily reduce inequality, and projects that improve aggregate ecological indicators may reproduce exclusion, displacement, or biodiversity loss. This critical integrative review updates Liotta and colleagues' multidimensional environmental justice approach using a bounded corpus of Scopus-exported studies through October 2026. We synthesize developments in spatial accessibility, cumulative environmental burdens, heat exposure, social segregation, health and lived experience, green gentrification, participatory governance, historical repair, and multispecies justice. Four comparative evidence tables distinguish conceptual propositions, empirical findings, analytical instruments, and planning implications. The synthesis identifies five interlocking limitations in conventional greening appraisal: reliance on land-cover proxies, neglect of heterogeneous needs, insufficient temporal and housing-market analysis, weak institutional accountability, and anthropocentric valuation. We advance a justice-centered decision framework that separates environmental provision from realized benefit, embeds multidimensional distributional assessment within participatory and reparative institutions, and treats ecological integrity as a substantive constraint rather than an interchangeable benefit. Contradictory findings across cities are interpreted as evidence of institutional, historical, and ecological contingency rather than universal planning failure. We outline testable propositions concerning multimodal access, displacement moderation, community decision authority, historical path dependence, and ecological safeguards. The review argues that sustainable infrastructure should be evaluated not by greening volume alone, but by who benefits, who remains protected over time, whose knowledge shapes decisions, and whether urban transformation sustains nonhuman life. These criteria offer an accountable basis for policy assessment.
Keywords: environmental justice; sustainable urban infrastructure; urban green infrastructure; multispecies justice; green gentrification
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