Biodiversity Loss: An Injustice?

This chapter investigates whether biodiversity loss is an injustice. Even though there is a fairly widely shared belief by conservation biologists and environmental ethicists that species extinctions are morally wrong, this intuition has usually not been framed in terms of justice. The chapter then looks at biodiversity loss from the harm avoidance perspective, exploring whether the harm of human-caused species extinctions can be considered an injustice (if it constitutes a harm at all) and not merely something that is morally lamentable or even morally neutral. It argues that rather than constituting an injustice in itself, biodiversity loss should be understood as an indicator for past injustices. Thus, it is the outcome of injustice rather than injustice itself which explains how the current extinction crisis embodies an injustice.

The Principles of Distributive Justice

This chapter focuses on developing principles of distributive justice — not only looking at ecological justice but also proposing complementary principles of environmental justice. In the context of a multitude of environmental crises and in regard to considerations about distributive justice in particular, it has become apparent that the circumstance of scarcity plays an important role for the articulation of appropriate principles of justice. Based on the assumption that ecological space is (to a degree) finite, considering different scarcity scenarios becomes highly relevant in order for considerations of distributive justice to be able to make recommendations for a world shaped by scarcity, which in turn is where distributive justice becomes most salient. The chapter begins by considering the character of scarcity of ecological space and then turns to the demands of environmental and ecological justice in moderate scarcity scenarios. Based on this, it introduces a grid of different principles of justice that follow from different, more demanding, scarcity scenarios. Finally, the chapter sketches some of the theoretical space surrounding this distributive justice framework by highlighting, among other things, its links with environmental virtue ethics.

Ecological Justice and the Capabilities Approach

This chapter presents an alternative theoretical framework for grounding ecological justice: the capabilities approach. Rather than focusing on the distribution of some material goods themselves, the focus of the capabilities approach lies on the functionings — that is, doings and beings — and the capabilities — that is, opportunities or freedoms to achieve these functionings — of humans. The provision of these capabilities, which require different inputs depending on the individual in question, are at the heart of its concern. In other words, capability theorists are concerned with the opportunities that individuals need to live fully functioning — or flourishing — lives. On first examination, the capabilities approach has a lot of intuitive force in the domain of ecological justice, arguably because of its close connection to the concepts of needs and flourishing. However, accounts of interspecies justice based on the capabilities approach have been met with powerful criticism which leads to the conclusion that the project of expanding the capabilities approach into the nonhuman sphere will require considerable adjustments, and consequently the task of developing interspecies justice should rather be left to less anthropomorphist approaches.

The Currency of Distributive Justice

This chapter examines ecological space as a suitable currency of distributive justice by analysing a range of different definitions of the concept. Ecological space is originally defined as comprising 'all the environmental goods and natural resources that play a part in the socio-economic life of humankind'. The chapter surveys how the concept of ecological space has been used in environmental political theory and how it relates to similar concepts. Based on this, it is possible to propose that green theories of justice should understand ecological space as the (potential) benefits provided by the Earth's life-support systems and physical resources such as land, and non-renewable and renewable natural resources. The chapter then explains why this is an appropriate distribuendum for green theories of justice and indicates how such an understanding of ecological space might be operationalised in order to assess real world distribution problems.