06 - Environmental Justice - STRI

Home readings

[[(W6) - Justice in energy transitions]]
[[(W6) - When Does Unequal become Unfair? Judging Claims of Environmental Injustice]]

Lecture

When is something unfair?

Distributive justice
Procedural justice

Why do we need just transitions?

Transitions have the potential to create or reinforce injustices
Importance of governance processes in transitions:
- Who is part of governance processes and experiments???
- Who wins and who loses?

(Williams & Doyon, 2019)

From a normative standpoint, unjust transitions are not sustainable.
From an instrumental standpoint, injustice erodes political support and social acceptance for transitions

What are the risks of not incorporating justice? There are many answers provided by (Williams & Doyon, 2019):

Availability and affordability
focus on costs and risks rather than benefits
lack of public support
exclusion of stakeholders
growing support for populist movements that reject transitions
sub-optimal decisions due to exclusion knowledge of excluded stakeholders
mismatch innovations/solutions with excluded stakeholders

How to overcome these risks?

Consider transitions as opportunities for teh transformation of unjust socio-technical systems
Design fair and inclusive participatory processes
Provide space for dissenting views and voices
Recognise diversity of needs and identities of people and communities

justice

Justice is not about how people are treated (legal rights), but also gow the venefits and burdes of societal activities are distributed ([[Distributive justice]]) and how this distribution is decided upon ([[Procedural justice]]).

Environmental justice:
Social justice
climate justice
energy justice
mobility justice
flexibility justice
data justice

Based on the approach or framework we use we can distinguish ((Williams & Doyon, 2019)):

Distributive justice
procedural justice
justice as recognition
Or (Davoudi & Brooks, 2014):
distribution
recognition
participation
responsibility
capabilities

Environmental justice

See papers:

[[(W6) - Justice in Energy Transitions]]
[[(W6) - When Does Unequal become Unfair? Judging Claims of Environmental Injustice]]

The 5 lenses of justice

Distribution

Who gets what

Most people agree that "a just society is one in which everyone receives a fair share of the available resources", but there is much disagreement on what counts as fair.

3 main theories can be listed:

[[Egalitarianism]]: Equality - everyone should receive the same amount regardless of their input or need
[[Libertarianism]]: Equity - what people receive from society should be based on what they contribute to it
Utilitarianism: Welfare - what people receive should be based on their needs

Environmental Justice (EJ) has moved beyond pollution and toxic waste to incorporate the distributional patterns of an expansive range of both environmental bads and environmental goods

Recognition

Who counts?

We should not ignore cultural and institutional processes and legacies that have explicitly or implicitly given individuals, communities, or social groups unequal recognition.

Recognition is about equality in differences. It questions how can justice be blind to difference and treat everyone equally while at the same time recognising people's different identities and vulnerabilities.

It's about understanding the differences of those affected by a particular distribution of goods and bads

Participation

Who gets heard?

Justice is not only about sharing resources but also about joining the debate about what that sharing involves an how it should be managed.

See [[05 - Participation - STRI]].

Capabilities

What matters?

Environmental burdens and benefits have a profound impact on people’s capabilities. They can enable or inhibit their ability to convert other goods to well-being and freedom to function in ways that they have reason to value.

It's about concentrating on actual opportunities rather than the means of living.

On such a basis, justice is not focused on individuals' happiness or pleasure ([[Utilitarianism]]) or their income and wealth (resource based approach), but on their freedom and capabilities.

Justice is the capacity of people to function in the lives they choose for themselves.

Capability concerns the equal distribution of the capacities that people need for leading a life of their own design.

Interesting questions to ask:

Does the environmental burden limit or increase the freedom of people to pursue their valued goals?
What do the costs, benefits, and risks mean for different stakeholders?
Are affected people or communities particularly vulnerable for the impacts of (environmental) burdens?
Can the end-users bear risk? Do they want to?
Under which conditions could the distribution be acceptable (trade-offs, performance requirements, etc.)?

Responsibility

Who does what?

Obligations and responsibilities are central to any account of justice because being subjected to the harms in which we have had no choice or responsibility reinforces people's sense of injustice.

In environmental justice, we have to raise the issue of not only identifying responsibility towards humans, but also nonhuman nature. There is little attention to the latter, as usually the literature tends to have an anthropocentric view of the world.

We can distinguish instrumental (nature for human's sake) and moral (nature for nature's sake) reasons for taking responsibility for the environment.