Volume 7: Issue 1 (2011)
Rawls and Sustainable development
Gail E. Henderson
Abstract:The concept of sustainable development is ubiquitous in environmental law and policy, but its meaning and objectives are often left unclear. This article applies Rawls’ theory of justice to set out a possible framework for sustainable development that addresses both the economic development and intergenerational justice sides of the discussion. This framework has two main principles drawn from Rawls’ theory of justice. First, Rawls’ theory of justice points to an alternative to the current paradigm of continuous economic growth for its own sake by providing an end or goal for economic development, namely the establishment and maintenance of just institutions. Second, an expanded understanding of Rawls’ principle of fair equality of opportunity, understood as preserving the range of choices available to future generations to pursue their own conceptions of the good, can help to define the obligations of current generations to future ones and to provide an overarching principle from which rules and institutions can be derived and assessed. The article also discusses whether the principle of fair equality of opportunity for future generations might form the basis of an “overlapping consensus” on the importance of environmental protection among citizens with divergent views about the value of nature.
Benoît Mayer
Abstract: The notion of « environmental refugee » is not only an elusive and inapplicable one that has no legal basis in today’s international law. More fundamentally, this article argues that it has led to an incorrect conception of migration induced by environmental changes—the result being that such migrations are essentially seen as analogous to political asylum. An adequate framework for the protection of people affected by an environmental change should go beyond human rights guarantees, which would be insufficient given the great diversity of situations at issue. Because the causal relationship between environmental change and migration is most often indirect, a collective approach that would be tailored to each particular environmental migration scenario is necessary. Ad hoc solutions, adopted after regional or even bilateral negotiations, are preferable to the monolithic approach of a single, universal convention that would merely copy the Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.
Robin Perry
Abstract: International development institutions have embraced the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) as the principal instrument for promoting an enlightened “post-Washington” conception of development which incorporates social concerns. In particular, PRSPs have become a critical device for integrating human rights into development strategies, so that the realisation of human rights could now be said to be one of the objectives of, and not merely a means to, development.
Amidst the lofty rhetoric, however, it is possible to discern a continuation of the inhibiting orthodoxies which have been at the heart of development since its inception. PRSPs have the potential to neuter the oppositional, political qualities of human rights and occupy the dynamic space in which those rights might otherwise operate. In short, poverty reduction has become the institutional vehicle for shaping and directing the application of human rights towards achieving the orthodox consensus of what constitutes development. In doing so, it reduces the normative potential of human rights to encompass an articulation of developmental aims which go beyond the limits of this consensus. Hence, human rights take an established, positivist and “universal” form “within” development, on the one hand, and an unsettled resistive form within civil societies on the other.
Richard K. Norton
Reviewed: Takings International, by Rachelle Alterman
Equality and Environmental Protection: a constitutional approach in the Navarro case
Érika Fontánez-Torres
Reviewed: Navarro case
Abstract: Environmental protection and social justice are often in tension and not infrequently can have contradictory and overlapping objectives. The “Navarro” Case, of the Colombian Constitutional Court, illustrates these tensions and serves as an example of what has been referred to as an environmental justice case or, in this particular case, an “environmental justice case in reverse”. Privileging an environmental justice and a socio-legal approach, the article presents the facts of this interesting case along with an analysis in which it will be argued that environmental policy controversies cannot be separated from power, social and economic rights issues. Environmental regulations should guarantee that individual and social rights are not unreasonable affected, must take into account elements of power, equality and social justice and include the participation of disadvantaged groups in the decisions and implementation of procedures and regulations. The “Navarro” case demonstrates that actions taken to ensure environmental protection are inseparable from social justice and equality.
