Session 7: Ethics and Environmental Justice

Asghar Ali - A Conceptual Framework for Environmental Justice based on Shared but Differentiated Responsibilities
School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK

Environmental justice has become a major issue in the discourses of environment. The calls for environmental equity and justice are now part of major environmental negotiations like the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol, to give some examples. In this paper I locate the issues of environmental justice within the broader framework of environmental sustainability and the contemporary debates about theories of justice. The environmental justice/racism movement in the USA, which has gained popular momentum in recent years, is briefly studied. This particular grassroots movement appears to be redefining the sustainability agenda with a strong social justice content. It has similarities with environmentally informed social justice movements in the developing world, the so- called 'environmentalism of the poor'. Employing a critical, and somewhat discursive, methodology I briefly and critically review some of the well-known theories of justice based on different principles of justice like need, desert and entitlement. These are looked at within the contemporary debates of universalism versus particularism or the 'abstract' liberal versus (concrete) communitarian theories and some other critical perspectives on justice. I argue for a broader conception of environmental justice that takes into account different contextual particularities but is also sensitive to the global nature of many of the environmental problems that are spread and have differential impacts across regions, territories and even countries. In such situations it becomes necessary, as a matter of justice, to take into account differentiated impacts arising out of disproportionate contributions to environmental harms or 'bads'. I further argue that a theory of justice, which will recognize this fact, will also have to consider differentiated responsibilities.

John Callewaert - The Multiple and Competing Conceptions of Environmental Justice
Director, Institute for Community and Environment, Colby-Sawyer College, 100 Main Street, New London, USA

Environmental justice is concerned with the distribution of environmental benefits and harms. Its asks whether the procedures and impacts of decision making are fair to the people they affect. In the U.S., environmental injustice primarily involves the disproportionate exposure of communities of color and low-income groups to environmentally hazardous facilities (landfills, incinerators, etc.) and other environmental disamenities. Environmental historian Martin Melosi (1995) suggests that because of its emphasis on race, class, the environment, and its questioning of the goals and objectives of mainstream environmentalism, the environmental justice movement is playing a historic role in reintroducing equity into the public and academic debate over environmental policy. At a more fundamental level, though, there has not been adequate discussion of environmental justice with respect to other theories of justice and social equity. Such a discussion can help strengthen notions of environmental justice. It may also help to better inform policy initiatives.
In order to explore more fully the connections between social and environmental justice, recent research findings and analysis will be presented from a qualitative study of three environmental justice complaints filed under the United States Environmental Protection Agency's Interim Guidance for Investigating Title VI Administrative Complaints Challenging Permit. Since 1992, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has received more than 100 complaints under Title VI. The three Title VI complaints offer an exceptional perspective on some of the multiple and competing conceptions of environmental justice and social equity from among the three primary environmental justice stakeholders - community groups, industry and government. This paper will focus on the link between social justice theory and environmental justice theory and research. Using examples from the Title VI case studies, it will be suggested that incorporating clearer notions of social justice concepts and strategies with respect to environmental justice policy initiatives can potentially reduce the incidence of environmental injustices and promote sustainability.

Reference List

Melosi, Martin V. 1995. "Equity, Eco-Racism and Environmental History." Environmental History Review 19:1-16.

Anders Melin - The Method of Effective Equilibrium as a Means for Bridging the Gap between Environmental Politics and Environmental Ethics
Centre for Applied Ethics, University of Linköping, Linköping, Sweden

The growth of environmental consciousness during the recent decades has brought to the fore the seldom acknowledged moral question whether humans owe moral duties towards non-human life forms. Since the end of the 1960s a sub-discipline - environmental ethics - has developed, which focuses on this moral issue. Within environmental ethics the anthropocentric character of traditional Western moral philosophy is problemized. Different "naturocentric" standpoints have been developed according to which humans owe moral duties also towards natural entities. Naturocentrism can be
divided into biocentrism and ecocentrism. Biocentric ethicists claim that humans owe moral duties towards all kinds of living beings, independent of their level of consciousness. According to ecocentric ethicists humans owe duties also towards ecological wholes such as species and ecosystems. The debate within environmental ethics has been fruitful in the sense that
a lot of different moral standpoints and theories have emerged, but it has had a limited influence on environmental politics. It is therefore an important task for applied ethics to analyse in more detail than often has been done what relevance environmental ethics has for environmental politics. It can, for example, be important to examine how particular moral
judgements within environmental politics can be supported rationally by ethical principles and theories. In this paper I discuss how the method of reflective equilibrium can give a contribution to the task of bridging the gap between environmental politics and environmental ethics. The idea of a reflective equilibrium was first presented by John Rawls in "A Theory of Justice" (1971) and has since then become one of the most advocated methods within applied ethics.