Environmental and Ecological Justice

Abstract

Justice is a central theme in international environmental politics (IEP). In fact, one of the most distinctive contributions of IEP to the broader International Relations (IR) scholarship and discourse is arguably the firm insertion and elevation of questions of distributive justice. It is broadly accepted that justice occupies a central position in Western moral political philosophy. Hume (1975) described justice as the most important virtue of social relations and political institutions. St Augustine (1467/2003: 139) considered that the very legitimacy of a state lay on its claim to do justice. Rawls (1971) argued that any political institution deserves to be abolished if found to be unjust, because ‘justice’, he says, ‘is the first virtue of social institutions’ (3) and the ‘rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or the calculus of social interest’ (5). Aristotle (1874/1998) regarded justice as co-extensive with virtue and therefore as the greatest of all virtues. ‘In justice’, he said, ‘every virtue is comprehended’.KeywordsClean Development MechanismClimate PolicyProcedural JusticeEnvironmental JusticeEnvironmental GovernanceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.