Environmental Justice Imperatives for an Era of Climate Change
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2009.00456.x |
| Published date | 01 March 2009 |
| Date | 01 March 2009 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 36, NUMBER 1, MARCH 2009
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 55±74
Environmental Justice Imperatives for an Era of
Climate Change
Mark Stallworthy*
This paper is about intra- and inter-generational equity, connecting
environmental justice discourse with necessary responses to climate
change. It offers a review of the role of globalization in this pervasive
context, contrasting the disaggregated nature of localized impacts, and
seeks to address the potential for adjusting law-policy frameworks as a
key part of the search for solutions. It argues that environmental justice
approaches can incorporate values into law-policy processes based
upon vital aspects of the integrity and functioning of communities,
distributional fairness, and capacities for wider engagement and par-
ticipation in the search for necessary behavioural change. The conclu-
sion is that the ultimate success of the urgent process of addressing
climate-related threats, through a meaningful degree of mitigation and
adaptation, and multiple levels of decision-making and response, must
be informed by the precepts of environmental justice.
INTRODUCTION
The existential threat from climate change, brought about primarily by
human-induced greenhouse gas emissions,
1
will ultimately be played out
globally, although local early-onset harms already threaten, in widely
differentiated ways.
2
It has been powerfully argued that societies tend to
collapse soon after reaching a `peak' that is marked by impacts outstripping
resources alongside loss of core values,
3
and this suggests a justification for
55
ß2009 The Author. Journal Compilation ß2009 Cardiff University Law School. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
*School of Law, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP,
Wales
m.stallworthy@swansea.ac.uk
1 IPCC, Fourth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2007 ± The Physical Science
Basis (2007). Note that carbon dioxide represents about 85 per cent of United
Kingdom greenhouse gas emissions.
2E.Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe (2006).
3J.Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive (2006) 433, 509.
the adoption of strongly risk-averse strategies.
4
Meanwhile the commitment
to sustainable development, for all its roots in `same boat' idealism,
5
has
failed thus far to challenge those established geopolitical systems and
sources of power that globally preside over the carbon energy-intensive
growth that continues to fuel climate change.
6
In light of the need for
meaningful mitigatory and adaptive responses, it is here argued that environ-
mental justice considerations must inform this urgent process at all levels of
decision-making.
Justice-related arguments based upon principles of equity and social
solidarity have a problematic place in not only the neo-liberal discourse that
has characterized globalization, but perhaps also wider ecological discourse.
On the one hand, globalization has depended on maximization of wealth
generation as defined a nd measured through the c omplex economic
valuation mechanisms of global capital markets; on the other, ecological
perspectives variously support intrinsic, non-utilitarian valuations of
environmental interests in ways that challenge anthropocentric views of a
natural world that exists to be exploited. A normative focus on social justice,
with an emphasis on distributional effects, whether consequent upon
environmental degradation itself or those policies that seek its redress,
7
arguably challenges both positions.
8
That said, environmental justice can be
seen as more multi-textured than a preoccupation with equity alone might
represent, and is also capable of more fully connecting with objectives of
ecological justice.
9
What follows proceeds therefore from related propositions. If humankind
is successfully to address the complexities and dangers inherent in this new
generation of ecological risk, then it is crucial, first, to acknowledge the
multiple implications of comparative advantage and disadvantage; and
secondly, to accord priority to legal paradigms that best advance the
ecological needs of communities and maximize the engagement of civil
society in the search for solutions. Environmental justice arguments must
therefore address, both normatively and instrumentally, the challenge of
reworking more traditional claims in the face of the threats that climate
56
4See N. Stern, Economic Impacts of Climate Change (2006).
5 World Commission for Environment and Development (WCED), Our Common
Future (The Brundtland Report) (1987).
6 For a contextual treatment of a national vulnerability within, and responsibility
beyond, see K. Dunion and E. Scandreth, `The Campaign for Environmental Justice
in Scotland as a Response to Poverty in a Northern Nation' in Just Sustainabilities ±
Development in an Unequal World,eds. J. Agyeman et al. (2003).
7R.J. Lazarus, `Pursuing ``Environmental Justice'': the Distributional Effects of
Environmental Protection' (1993) 87 Northwestern University Law Rev. 787, 847.
8A.Dobson, Justice and the Environment ± Conceptions of Environmental
Sustainability and Theories of Distributional Justice (1998) 13.
9D.Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice: Theories, Movements, and Nature
(2007) ch. 2.
ß2009 The Author. Journal Compilation ß2009 Cardiff University Law School
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