RÉSUMÉ
Até a Conferência da ONU no Rio de Janeiro em 1992, era grande a desconfiança dos movimentos sociais tradicionais com relação ao discurso ambiental. A partir de 2001, essa distância começou a se reduzir, coincidindo com a criação da Rede Brasileira de Justiça Ambiental. O presente artigo descreve os passos da constituição dessa Rede, procurando caracterizar o processo de reapropriação local da experiência internacional dos movimentos por justiça ambiental, discutindo como se procurou superar a dissociação corrente entre as questões ambientais e as questões sociais, ao mesmo tempo que se expandiu o sentido da noção de "justiça ambiental" originalmente concebido por movimentos sociais nos Estados Unidos.
A strong distance was maintained by traditional social movements that, despite the intense circulation of ideas through the whole Rio 1992 UNCED process, lacked confidence towards environmental discourse. In 2001 this distance began to be reduced, after the creation of the Brazilian Network of Environmental Justice. The present text describes the steps towards this Network creation, as well as the observed specific process of local re-appropriation of international experience, mainly that of the US environmental justice movement. It is discussed here how this process was characterized by an effort of reframing both the environmental-justice dissociation felt currently in the Brazilian experience and the American environmental justice concept, as it was originally built on the US black movement experience.