Justice in and to the Environment: Ethical Uncertainties and Political Practices

Abstract

As the world moves towards increasing rather than reducing inequality, the question of justice forces itself on to the political agenda. But that agenda is also shaped today by people's growing fears for the future of the planetary environment. In this paper we explore the connection between just distributions of environmental values—justice in the environment—and the just relationship between humanity and nature—justice to the environment. We discuss current uncertainties about ‘justice’ as an ethical category. We conclude that justice cannot be dispensed with. But, in the face of postmodernist critique of ‘totalising discourse’, how can universal principles be reasserted? There is a continuing and healthy debate about ‘human rights’ which is focused upon all human beings on the planet. The debate is about the principles which apply to this population, and not to any culturally circumscribed space. It is in this sense ‘universal’. Turning to the relationship between humanity and nature we ask whether an ethic of justice applies to this relationship. Early green utopias which suggest authoritarian solutions are rejected as politically unsustainable, but institutional forms based on an ecological rather than a purely anthropocentric perspective are required to ensure future survival. We conclude that, in the interests of justice, a global nexus of institutional forms is required which is capable of reconciling the universal with the particular and which embodies a recovery of the progressive elements in social and environmental discourse.