The principle of environmental equity constitutes a challenge to local autonomy & democratic practice. Community protest is sometimes hailed as an expression of local autonomy, sometimes derided as not-in-my-backyard-(NIMBY-)ism. To disentangle these issues, environmental justice must be reexamined in light of the distinction between distributional & procedural justice. A search for just procedures for distributing environmental burdens represents an unnecessarily truncated view. However, procedural equity entails democratic participation not only with regard to distribution, but in prior decisions affecting production of costs & benefits. Two brief case studies illustrate the possibility of reconciling environmental equity with local autonomy. Geographers concerned with environmental inequity might turn from mapping the distribution of burdens to mapping power relations between local communities & the structures producing those burdens. 33 References. Adapted from the source document.