Overview

Environmental sustainability and social, or distributive, justice are both widely regarded as desirable social objectives. But can we assume that they are compatible with each other? In this path-breaking study, Professor Dobson, a leading expert on environmental politics, analyses the complex relationship between these two pressing objectives. Environmental sustainability is taken to be a contested idea, and three distinct conceptions of it are described and explored. These conceptions are then examined in the context of fundamental distributive questions such as: Among whom or what should distribution take place? What should be distributed? What should the principle of distribution be? The author critically examines the claims of the `environmental justice' and `sustainable development' movements that social justice and environmental sustainability are points on the same virtuous circle, and concludes that radical environmental demands are only incompletely served by couching them in terms of justice.

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9780198294955

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Reviews

`Justice and the Environment is invaluable both in clarifying the notoriously ambiguous concept of sustainability and in setting the parameters for future debate on this issue... essential reading not only for ethicists and political theorists but also for ecologists, environmentalists, social justice activists, policy makers, and citizens.' Peter F. Cannavo, Environment Vol.42 No.3

Justice and the Environment is invaluable both in clarifying the notoriously ambiguous concept of sustainability and in setting the parameters for future debate on this issue... essential reading not only for ethicists and political theorists but also for ecologists, environmentalists, social justice activists, policy makers, and citizens. Peter F. Cannavo, Environment Vol.42 No.3

Author Information

Andrew Dobson is Professor of Politics at Keele University. From 1984-1987 he was a Postdoctorate Research Fellow at St John's College, Oxford

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