Resources and Social Justice in Meso- and Macro-Level Environmental Conflict

Abstract

Abstract This chapter considers meso- and macro-level resource issues in environmental conflict as well as their just resolution. It examines how resources and social justice connect when the Foas’ resource exchange framework is applied to environmental issues. The chapter notes that pairing the Foas’ adjacent resource classes yields three kinds of resource contexts—physical (e.g., goods and services), societal (e.g., information and money), and individual/psychological (e.g., status and caring)—and these three environmental contexts work well as a typology of environmental resources. Turning to the relationship between social justice and environmental resources, the chapter observes that exclusionary policies that curtail access to resources for individuals, groups, or regions do so by legitimizing unjust, even cruel treatment of those positioned as outside the scope of justice and therefore as nonmembers of one’s moral community.