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This book advances a new distributional framework to guide the evaluation and design of environmental policies. Drawing on capabilities theory, and especially on Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach to justice, the book proposes that environmental policies should aim to secure the basic capabilities that make it possible for people to live a flourishing and dignified human life. Holland establishes the protection of the natural environment as central to securing these capabilities and then goes on to consider the implications for debates in environmental valuation, policy justification, and administrative rulemaking. In each of these areas, she demonstrates how her “capabilities approach to social and environmental justice” can minimize substantive and procedural inequities that result from how we evaluate and design environmental policies in contemporary society. Holland’s proposals include valuing environmental goods and services as comparable—but not commensurable—across the same dimension of wellbeing of different people, justifying environmental policies with respect to both the capability thresholds they secure and the capability ceilings they establish, and subjecting the outcomes of participatory decisions in the administrative rulemaking process to stronger substantive standards. In developing and applying this unique approach to justice, Holland primarily focuses on questions of domestic environmental policy. However, in the closing chapter she turns to theoretical debates about international climate policy and sketches how her approach to justice could inform both the philosophical grounding and practical application of efforts to achieve global climate justice. Engaging current debates in environmental policy and political theory, the book is a sustained exercise of both applied and environmental political theory.

This book explores the legal and political issues that underlie the campaign for animal rights and the opposition to it. Addressing ethical questions about ownership, protection against unjustified suffering, and the ability of animals to make their own choices free from human control, its chapters offer numerous different perspectives on animal rights and animal welfare. They show that whatever one's ultimate conclusions, the relationship between human beings and nonhuman animals is being fundamentally rethought. The book offers a modern treatment of that rethinking.

The Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC is now out and it contains a detailed analysis of the threats climate change poses to human security. IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri put the matter succinctly in stating recently that the new report shows how our persistent inaction on climate change presents a grave threat to ‘the very social stability of human systems’. Williston’s book is an attempt to make philosophical sense of this. We are now in ‘the human age’—the Anthropocene—but he argues that this is no mere geological marker. It is instead best viewed as the latest permutation of an already existing moral and political project rooted in Enlightenment values. Williston shows that it can be fruitful to do climate ethics with this focus because in so many aspects of our culture we already endorse Enlightenment principles about progress, equality, and the value of knowledge. But these principles must be robustly instantiated in the dispositions of moral agents, and so we require a climate ethics focused on the virtues of justice, truthfulness, and rational hope. One of the book’s most original claims is that our moral failure on this issue is, in large part, the product of motivated irrationality on the part of the world’s most prosperous people. We are not living up to our commitments to justice and truthfulness because we are, respectively, morally weak and self-deceived. Understanding this provides the basis for the rational hope that we might yet find a way to avoid climate catastrophe.

When policies of or activities within one country and generation cause deleterious consequences for those of other nations and later generations, they can constitute serious injustices. Hence, anthropogenic climate change poses not only a global environmental threat, but also one to international and intergenerational justice. The avoidance of such injustice has been recognized as a primary objective of global climate policy, and this book aims to comprehend the nature of this objective–to explore how climate change raises issues of international and intergenerational justice and to consider how the design of a global climate regime might these aims into account. Enlisting conceptual tools from ethics as well as legal and political theory, it treats justice as concerned with equity and responsibility and considers how each is undermined by climate change but might be incorporated into climate policy. Various theoretical problems in applying norms of equity and responsibility across borders, over time, and to nations for their greenhouse emissions are considered, and responses are given to these challenges. Finally, an outline for a global climate policy that adequately incorporates norms of justice is articulated and defended, along with a case for procedural fairness in policy development processes. Demonstrating how political theory can usefully contribute toward better understanding the proper human response to climate change as well as how the climate case offers insights into resolving contemporary controversies within political theory, the book offers a case study in which the application of normative theory to policy allows readers to better understand both.

Ecological citizenship cannot be fully articulated in either liberal or civic republican terms. It is, rather, an example and an inflection of ‘post‐cosmopolitan’ citizenship. Ecological citizenship focuses on duties as well as rights, and its conception of political space is not the state or the municipality, or the ideal speech community of cosmopolitanism, but the ‘ecological footprint’.

Ecological citizenship contrasts with fiscal incentives as a way of encouraging people to act more sustainably, in the belief that the former is more compatible with the long‐term and deeper shifts of attitude and behaviour that sustainability requires. This book offers an original account of the relationship between liberalism and sustainability, arguing that the former's commitment to a plurality of conceptions of the good entails a commitment to so‐called ‘strong’ forms of the latter.

How to make an ecological citizen? The potential of formal high school citizenship education programmes is examined through a case study of the recent implementation of the compulsory citizenship curriculum in the UK.

The book applies a justice framework to analysis of the actual and potential role of international law with respect to people on the move in the context of anthropogenic climate change. That people are affected by the impacts of climate change is no longer doubted, including with implications for the movement of people (migration, displacement, relocation, etc.). The book tackles unique questions concerning international responsibility for people movement arising from the inequities inherent to climate change. Corrective and distributive justice provide the analytical backbone. They are explored in a substantial theoretical chapter and then applied to subsequent contextual analysis. Corrective justice supports analysis as to whether people movement in the climate change context could be conceived or framed as harm, loss, or damage which is compensable under international law, either through fault-centred regimes or no-fault regimes (i.e., insurance). Distributive justice supports analysis as to whether such movement could be conceived or framed as a disproportionate burden, either for those faced with movement or those faced with sheltering people on the move, from which duties of redistribution may stem. The book contributes to the growing scholarship and analysis concerning international law or governance and people movement in response to climate change by investigating the bounds of the law where the phenomenon is viewed as one of (in)justice.

Global climate change challenges standard theories of moral accountability. Many of us take it for granted that we ought to cooperate to tackle it, but where does this requirement come from? Climate change does very great harm, to our fellow humans and to the non-human world, but no one causes it on their own and it isn’t the result of intentionally collective action. What, moreover, should each of us be doing in the absence of effective global-level cooperation? Is there anything we can do, as individuals, that will leave us able to live with ourselves? This book responds to these challenges. It makes the moral case for collective action on climate change by appealing to moralized collective self-interest, collective ability to aid, and an expanded understanding of collective responsibility for harm. On top of these, it argues that collective action is something we owe to ourselves, as moral agents, because without it we are left facing marring choices. In the absence of collective action, it is argued that the primary individual duty is to promote such action, with a supplementary duty to aid victims directly. The argument is not that we should not be cutting our own emissions: this can be a necessary part of bringing about collective action or alleviating harm. However, such ‘green’ lifestyle choices cannot be straightforwardly defended as duties in their own right, and they should not take priority over trying to bring about collective change.

Can contemporary democratic governments tackle climate crisis? Some say that democracy has to be a central part of a strategy to deal with climate change. Others say that experience shows it not to be up to the challenge in the time frame available—that it will require a stronger hand, even a form of eco-authoritarianism. This work seeks to sort out and assess the competing answers to a question that is not easily resolved. While the book supports the case for environmental democracy, it argues that establishing and sustaining democratic practices will be difficult during the global climate turmoil ahead, especially if confronted with permanent states of emergency. This inquiry undertakes a search for an appropriate political-ecological strategy capable of preserving a measure of democratic governance during hard times. Without ignoring the global dimensions of the crisis, the analysis finds an alternative path in the theory and practices of participatory environmental governance embodied in a growing relocalization movement, and a form of global eco-localism. Although these movements largely operate under the radar of the social sciences, the media, and the political realm generally, such vibrant socio-ecological movements not only speak to the crisis ahead, but are already well established and thriving on the ground, including ecovillages, eco-communes, eco-neighborhoods, and local transition initiatives. With the help of these ideas and projects, the task is to shift the discourse of environmental political theory in ways that can assist those who will face the climate crisis in its full magnitude in real terms.

The global governance of climate change is in flux. Conventional strategies of addressing climate change through universal, interstate negotiations—the most prominent of which is the Kyoto Protocol—have been stymied by the gaps that exist between the negotiating powers of states, rendering such initiatives stagnant and ineffectual. In response, a number of new actors and processes have begun to challenge the traditionally exclusive authority of nation-states to create rules and manage environmental problems via multi-national treaties. Dozens of innovative climate response initiatives, or “governance experiments,” have emerged at multiple levels of politics and across multiple jurisdictions: individuals, cities, states/provinces, corporations, and even new multilateral initiatives. This book explains how and why these new governance experiments have emerged, drawing upon a database of such initiatives to ascertain how these initiatives fit together and how they influence what is defined as environmental governance. In assessing the relational impact of these initiatives (whether they complement each other or clash; whether they can be scaled up or down; and whether they can be expanded beyond their current jurisdictional and geographic boundaries), the book provides insight into whether this experimentation is likely to result in an effective response to climate change. Additionally, it draws broader conclusions about how we understand global governance, addressing questions of how we understand authority and what we accept as modes of rule-making in global political spaces.

Climate change confronts humanity with a challenge it has never faced before. It combines issues of global justice and intergenerational justice on an unprecedented scale. In particular, it stands to adversely affect the global poor. So far, the global community has failed to reduce emissions to levels that are necessary to avoid unacceptable risks for the future. Nor are the burdens of emission reductions and of coping with climate impacts fairly shared. The shortcomings of both political and individual climate action thus seem like a paradigmatic case for non-ideal theory. Non-ideal theory can be understood as a form of political theorizing that compares different responses to (i) failures of agents to comply with the demands of justice and (ii) unfavourable circumstances. Insofar as non-ideal theory also aims to be action-guiding, it asks normative theorists for a more thorough engagement with the empirical context so as to arrive at practical recommendations for the ‘here and now’. This volume examines the normative issues that become relevant when the non-ideal circumstances of the climate context are fully taken into account. It comprises three parts. The first collects chapters that reflect on general issues in responding to the shortcomings of current climate action. Chapters in the second part propose more specific practical reforms. The third part examines how moral values ought to be brought into the scientific, political, and public debates under the non-ideal circumstances of this world.

The basic task of this book is to explore what, exactly, is meant by ‘justice’ in definitions of environmental and ecological justice. It examines how the term is used in both self-described environmental justice movements and in theories of environmental and ecological justice. The central argument is that a theory and practice of environmental justice necessarily includes distributive conceptions of justice, but must also embrace notions of justice based in recognition, capabilities, and participation. Throughout, the goal is the development of a broad, multi-faceted, yet integrated notion of justice that can be applied to both relations regarding environmental risks in human populations and relations between human communities and non-human nature.

How do societies negotiate the apparently competing agendas of environmental protection and social justice? And why do some countries perform much better than others? Democracy in the Woods answers these question by explaining the trajectories of forest and land rights—and the fate of forest-dependent peasants—in the forested regions of India, Tanzania, and Mexico. To organize a comparative inquiry that straddles the fields of comparative politics, historical institutionalism, and policy studies, this book develops a political economy of institutions framework. It shows that differences in structures of political intermediation—venues that help peasant groups and social movements engage in political and policy processes—explain the varying levels of success in combining the pursuits of social justice and environmental conservation. This book challenges the age-old notion that populist policies produce uniformly deleterious environmental consequences that must be mitigated via centralized systems of environmental regulation. It shows instead that the national leaders and dominant political parties that must compete for popular support in the political arena are more likely to fashion interventions that pursue conservation of forested landscapes without violating the rights of forest-dependent people. Mexico demonstrates the potential for win-win outcomes, India continues to stumble on both environmental and social questions despite longstanding traditions of popular mobilization for forestland rights, and Tanzania’s government has failed its forest-dependent people despite a lucrative wildlife tourism sector. This book’s political analysis of the control over and use of nature opens up new avenues for reflecting on nature in the Anthropocene.

When constructing environmental policies in democratic regimes, there is a need for a theory that can be used not only by academics but also by politicians and activists. So why has the major part of environmental ethics failed to penetrate environmental policy and serve as its rationale? Obviously, there is a gap between the questions that environmental philosophers discuss and the issues that motivate environmental activists. Avner de‐Shalit attempts to bridge this gap by combining tools of political philosophy with questions of environmental ethics and environmental politics. He defends a radical position in relation to both environmental protection and social policies, in order to put forward a political theory, which is not only philosophically sound, but also relevant to the practice of environmental activism. The author argues that several directions in environmental ethics can be at odds with the contemporary political debates surrounding environmental politics. He then goes on to examine the environmental scope of liberalism, communitarianism, participatory democracy, and socialism, and concludes that while elements of liberalism and communitarianism may support environmental protection, it is participatory democracy and a modified version of socialism that are crucial for protecting the environment.

Over the last thirty years, the European Union (EU) has created a system of environmental governance in Europe. With a large number of legislative measures, the EU's environmental policy is broad in scope, extensive in detail, and often stringent in effect. Environmental governance also extends to the ways in which decision-making on environmental policy has become institutionalised within Europe, both at the level of the EU itself and in the practices of the member states. This book seeks to understand this new system of environmental governance both at the European level and at the level of member states. It argues that the system is multi-level, horizontally complex, evolving, and incomplete. Locating developments at the European level in theories of European integration, it goes on to examine the extent of convergence and divergence in environmental policy among six member states: Germany, Spain, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. It then looks at the operation of the system of environmental governance through an examination of policy case studies before examining the wider political significance of these developments.

In this first ever theoretical treatment of the environmental justice movement, David Schlosberg demonstrates the development of a new form of ‘critical’ pluralism, in both theory and practice. Taking into account the evolution of environmentalism and pluralism over the course of the century, Schlosberg argues that the environmental justice movement and new pluralist theories now represent a considerable challenge to both conventional pluralist thought and the practices of the major groups in the US environmental movement. Much of recent political theory has been aimed at how to acknowledge and recognize, rather than deny, the diversity inherent in contemporary life. In practice, the myriad ways people define and experience the ‘environment’ has given credence to a form of environmentalism that takes difference seriously. The environmental justice movement, with its base in diversity, its networked structure, and its communicative practices and demands, exemplifies the attempt to design political practices beyond those one would expect from a standard interest group in the conventional pluralist model. The book is arranged in four parts: I. Environmentalism and Difference: The Pluralist Challenge (two chapters); II. Critical Pluralism in Theory (two chapters); III. Environmental Justice: Critical Pluralism in Practice (two chapters); and IV. Conclusion (one chapter).

Contributors to this edited book consider the normative issues at stake in the relationship between environmental sustainability and social justice. If future generations are owed justice, what should we bequeath them? Is ‘sustainability’ an appropriate medium for environmentalists to express their demands? Is environmental protection compatible with justice within generations? Is environmental sustainability a luxury when social peace has broken down? The contested nature of sustainable development is considered––is it a useful concept at all any longer? Is it reconcilable with capital accumulation? Liberal––particularly Rawlsian––and socialist notions of justice are tested against the demands of sustainability, and policy instruments for sustainability––such as environmental taxation––are examined for their distributive effects.

International organizations do not always live up to the expectations and mandates of their member countries. One of the best examples of this gap is the environmental performance of the multilateral development banks, which are tasked with allocating and managing approximately half of all development assistance worldwide. In the 1980s and 1990s, the multilateral development banks came under severe criticism for financing projects that caused extensive deforestation, polluted large urban areas, and displaced millions of people. In response to these failures, member countries established or strengthened administrative procedures, citizen complaint mechanisms, project evaluation, and strategic planning processes. These reforms were intended to close the gap between the mandates and performance of the multilateral development banks by shaping the way projects are approved. This book provides a systematic examination of whether these efforts have succeeded in aligning allocation decisions with performance. It demonstrates that reforms undertaken to increase the amount of information about performance have caused the multilateral development banks to give aid more effectively by promoting selectivity—moving toward projects with a record of success and away from projects with a record of failure for individual countries. This outcome happens when information about performance makes less successful projects harder to approve or more successful projects easier to approve. This argument is substantiated with an extensive analysis of evaluations across four multilateral development banks and two decades, together with in-depth case studies and dozens of interviews. Member countries have a number of mechanisms that allow them to manage international organizations for results.

Green growth is the idea that a society’s ecological and economic goals can be pursued as a mutually reinforcing, positive sum. It accepts that economies increase in scale and efficiency, but that economic growth may occur in less harmful ways ecologically through the use of new policies, patterns of investment, technology innovation, and behavioral change. The ultimate goal is a green economic transition, in which ecological objectives and policies are effectively integrated with many others—energy, transportation, manufacturing, and infrastructure, to name a few—and all sectors of society work more collaboratively to maximize opportunities for positive-sum solutions. The concept of green growth offers a means of reframing ecology–economy relationships and defining a pragmatic framework for making and implementing policy choices. The feasibility of and capacity for green growth depends on three sets of factors: understanding ways of linking ecological and economic goals; having governance capacities for ecological protection and policy integration; and creating the social conditions for acting collectively and valuing ecological public goods. Political systems vary in their ability to meet these conditions. For the United States, which exhibits both advantages and disadvantages in the pursuit of a green growth path, the challenge is to achieve the political conditions for promoting change. Principal among these conditions are to build a political coalition in support of a green economic transition, implement institutional reforms that enhance democracy, reduce economic inequality, and stress global action and interdependency.

When international agreements fail to solve global problems like climate change, transnational networks attempt to address them by applying global best practices, like Integrated Watershed Management, locally around the world. Grassroots Global Governance uses nodal governance theory to explain why some efforts succeed and others fail, but also why the process of implementing global ideas locally causes them to evolve. Transnational actors’ success in implementing global ideas depends on the strategies they use to activate networks of grassroots actors influential in local social and policy arenas. Yet, grassroots actors neither accept nor reject global ideas as presented by outsiders. Instead, they negotiate how to adapt them to fit local conditions. This contestation produces experimentation with unique institutional applications of a global idea infused with local norms and practices. Local experiments that endure are perceived as successful, allowing those involved to activate transnational networks to scale up and diffuse innovative local governance models globally. These models carry local norms and practices to the international level where they challenge existing global approaches. By guiding the way global ideas evolve through local experimentation, grassroots actors reshape international actors’ discourse, organizing, and the strategies they pursue globally. This makes them grassroots global governors. To demonstrate this, the book compares transnational efforts to implement local Integrated Watershed Management programs across Ecuador and shows how local experiments altered the global debate over how to conceptualize and implement sustainable development. In doing so, the book reveals the grassroots level as a terrain where global governance is constructed.

The debate on whether to privilege economic growth over ecological security is passé. Environmental considerations must be at the heart of economic growth, especially for a country of 1.25 billion people destined to add another 400 million by the middle of the century. This book chronicles the ‘1991 moment’ in India’s environmental decision-making, telling the story of how, for the first time, the doors of the environment ministry were opened to voices, hitherto unheard, into the policy-making process. It details efforts to change the way environment is viewed both by proponents of environmental security and those who prize economic growth at all costs. Told from the perspective of a pivotal decision-maker, the book addresses the challenges involved in trying to ensure economic growth with ecological security. It takes us through India’s coming of age in the global environmental and climate change community to take on a leadership role that is progressive, proactive, and steeped in national interest. Using speaking orders on high-profile projects, notes and letters to the Prime Minister, ministerial colleagues, chief ministers and others, the author gives an insight into the debates, struggles, challenges, and obstacles to bringing environmental considerations into the mainstream of political and economic decision-making. This collection reveals the story of the author’s attempt at the highest levels of governance to introduce effective decision-making, a transparent and accountable administration, and to make environmental concerns an essential component of a nation’s quest to accelerate economic growth and end the scourge of poverty and deprivation.