environmental justice — English

This is probably the most elusive environmental term to define. While environmental management deals with concepts and theories and scientific facts that can easily be defined, and environmental law deals with the written law, neither of the two deals with justice. Justice is an intangible, philosophical concept embedded in an equally intangible construct, namely ethics. It deals with what is good, what is bad, wrong or right, fair or just and unfair or unjust. These are not things scientists and lawyers are at ease with! In ethics, justice encompasses the principle of fairness that like cases should be treated alike, that a particular distribution of benefits and burdens should be fair, and that punishment should be proportionate to the offence. The entire idea of justice is extremely important in environmental matters. The poor, rural communities in many parts of the world have no option but to exploit their natural environment (see “environmental resources” and “exploitation”) in order to survive. Yes, they cause enormous environmental degradation, but what else must they do? Yet, they are often severely criticized for their actions, especially by well-heeled tourists who drive through these devastated communal areas en route to exorbitantly expensive nature reserves and eco-lodges (see “eco-lodges”). Is this criticism fair or just? The major air polluters in the world are the rich, industrialised, developed nations, but the effects of atmospheric pollution are often experienced more severely by the poor countries than the rich countries. Is this fair or just? Brazil is harshly criticized for destroying vast tracts of the Amazonian forests for staggering profits. The destruction of forests out of greed is morally not justifiable, but to expect Brazil to preserve the forests in order to filter the atmosphere of the CO2 that the developed countries such as the United States of America release into the atmosphere is neither fair nor just. These matters were not even on the agenda at the start of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, but the developing countries made sure that it became the main point of discussion at the summit. The paradox between greed and morality has been part of all environmental thinking ever since. The legal entrenchment of the principle that the polluter must pay, is probably the only true advance made in this regard.

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