Epistemic Justice and Environmental Knowledge

Epistemic injustice occurs when certain people's testimony is systematically devalued—as happened to Sor Juana, whose intellectual contributions were dismissed because she was a woman and colonized subject. In environmental contexts, epistemic injustice means that Bangladeshi climate refugees, Pacific Islander communities, and Amazon Indigenous peoples witness their own environmental realities but are told by wealthy nations and corporations that their interpretations are unreliable or exaggerated. Meanwhile, the same societies treat petroleum geologists and financial analysts as truth-tellers about the climate future. Climate justice requires epistemic repair: centering the testimony of those living climate breakdown daily, validating Indigenous land management as sophisticated climate science, and critically examining whose knowledge is institutionally amplified. Sor Juana's intellectual legacy insists that justice begins with recognizing whose voice is silenced and deliberately restructuring institutions to hear the previously dismissed.