Global Justice and Environmental Sustainability
Questions of global justice inescapably raise questions of environmental sustainability and the nature of our obligations to future generations. The kinds of activities protected by theories of justice tend to have significant impacts on the natural world (like climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, air pollution, natural resource depletion) [what I have termed the environmental impacts claim]. At the same time, the enjoyment of the kinds of interests protected by theories of justice also require certain environmental preconditions. For example, access to food, health, life are threatened by climate change and other kinds of global environmental degradation [what I have termed the environmental preconditions claim]. Given this it is important that we live within our means and do not affirm accounts of justice whose impacts on the natural world prevent people from enjoying their entitlements. For example, if everyone is entitled to enjoy a certain standard of living, we cannot determine how high this can be without considering what limits, if any, the environment places on it.
I have addressed these questions in the following
[1] 'Tolstoy's Question: The Ecological Foundations of Global Justice' (unpublished). I gave this as an Amnesty Lecture in 2012.
[2] 'Just Emissions', Philosophy & Public Affairs vol.40 no.4 (2012), pp.255-300. [This discusses the environmental impacts claim and the environmental preconditions claim. Though it is focused on the emission of greenhouse gases in particular, the method set out in the paper (I argue) applies not just to climate change but to all environmental issues. I hope (and believe) that it provides a helpful way of thinking about all global environmental problems and what principles of justice apply to them.]
[3] ‘Global Distributive Justice and the Environment’ in Between Cosmopolitan Ideals and State Sovereignty: Studies on Global Justice (London: Palgrave, 2006) edited by Ronald Tinnevelt and Gert Verschraegen, pp.51-63. [This examines how rights-based, goal-based and duty-based accounts of global justice treat the natural world.]