Legal remedies for energy injustice in the ECOWAS sub-region: the role of the ECOWAS Court

Abstract

The concept of energy justice has been of much scholarly interest in applying justice principles to energy policy, energy production and systems, energy consumption, political economy of energy and climate change, among other areas. However, legal remedies for energy injustice have not been seriously examined; nor has the topic been considered from the perspective of the Global South. Therefore, this article seeks to examine legal remedies for energy injustice in the ECOWAS sub-region and the role that the Economic Community of West African States Court of Justice, otherwise known as ECOWAS Court, can play in granting these remedies. It finds that the concept of energy justice is an evolving one and that at its current level of evolution, the concept has somewhat incorporated the idea of distributional justice, recognition-based justice and procedural justice. Against the backdrop of these findings, the article argues that energy justice in a distributional, recognition-based and procedural sense can be couched in terms of human rights law under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and can be actualised before the ECOWAS Court. It concludes that energy justice, in its present state of evolution, can be substantially actualised in terms of human rights law before the ECOWAS Court.