ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, LATENT AND MANIFEST CONFLICTS: A CASE STUDY OF THE ARTISANAL FISHERMEN IN THE NORTHERN REGION OF THE STATE OF RIO DE JANEIRO GIULIANA FRANCO LEAL 1 Introduction Environmental justice may be an important concept when thinking about existing and potential social relations, either as utopias or as real situations. Environmental justice refers to the opportunity of exercising the right to make decisions on the use of the en- vironment, via environmental policies such as the distribution of environmental costs of social or economic ventures, in accordance with the equity principle (Herculano, 2002). In contrast, the term ‘environmental injustice’ is used to refer to inequality in relation to the environmental damages caused by economic growth (Ferreira, 2011). Martinez-Alier (1997) uses the concept of ecological distribution in a similar way to refer to “social, spatial and temporal asymmetries and the unequal use of environmental services and resources by human beings such as the exhaustion of natural resources (including the loss in biodiversity) and the impact of pollution” (p.122). Within the field of socio-environmental studies known as Political Ecology, envi- ronmental justice relates to conflicts involving territorial rights and cultural meanings, as defined by Zhouri et al (2005). He argues that conflicts occur when the meaning and the use given to an environ- mental space by a particular group negatively affect the meanings and uses given by other social segments in order to ensure the reproduction of their way of life (Zhouri et al., 2005, p.18). 1. Sociology professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)/Macaé campus, Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Campinas (Unicamp). E-mail: giulianafrancoleal@yahoo.com.br