Abstract
We discuss how the normative dimension of sustainability can be captured in terms of justice. We (i) identify the core characteristics of the concept of sustainability and discuss underlying ethical, ontological and epistemological assumptions; (ii) introduce a general conceptual structure of justice for the analysis and comparison of different conceptions of justice; and (iii) employ this conceptual structure to determine the specific characteristics and challenges of justice in the context of sustainability. We demonstrate that sustainability raises specific and partly new challenges of justice regarding the community of justice, the judicandum, the informational base, the principles, and the instruments of justice.
Highlights
Sustainability is a societal vision about how to act within coupled social and natural systems over the long term
We have argued that the normative dimension of sustainability can be captured in terms of justice
Based on the core characteristics of sustainability, we have discussed the shapes of sustainability-fitting justice conceptions along the lines of a general conceptual structure of justice
Summary
Sustainability is a societal vision about how to act within coupled social and natural systems over the long term. The modern concept of sustainability, as it has evolved and gained global momentum since the 1980s, obviously has a normative dimension. This normative dimension is of key importance for sustainability policy and public debate, as well as for sustainability research [1,2]. While there are other—not mutually exclusive—perspectives such as responsibility [4,5,6,7], virtues, the good life, and ethics of care [2,8], we consider justice to be a good candidate for the specification of the normative dimension of sustainability because justice is well suited to address concerns of limits, scarcities and conflicts. We ask: What are the characteristics and challenges of justice in the context of sustainability? What is an adequate approach to analyse them?
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