Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies.

Fair treatment in the sense that, no group of people should bear a disproportionate share of the negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, governmental and commercial operations or policies, rather, the negative environmental consequences should be borne in the same proportion in which the positive consequences were borne.

Meaningful involvement means people have an opportunity to participate in decisions about activities that may affect their environment and/or health in order words, the people should be part of the decision making process. 

It also means:

• The public's contribution can influence the regulatory agency's decision;
• Community concerns will be considered in the decision making process; and
• Decision makers will seek out and facilitate the involvement of those potentially affected. (Wikipedia)

In Ghana, gold mining has become very common with new mining companies coming into the country. Gold mining comes with its own baggage, some of which include, water pollution and destruction of vegetation. Even though the people in the communities in which these companies operate are compensated before operations begin, the compensation hardly sustains the people since they will have to resort to buying everything they consume due to the pollution of water and the destruction of vegetation.

This can be seen as a form of environmental injustice since the community people suffer the most and benefit less while the miners suffer less and benefit the most.

One may argue that the community folks benefit equally because they are compensated but the reality is that they are only compensated once, which is not enough to allow them to continue to buy bottled water and food stuff for ever, while the company folks are paid huge sums of money monthly and who will eventually move away to cleaner and eco friendly environments, after mining all the gold and polluting the environment, leaving the community folks to suffer the consequences.