Justice

Cf.

Definitions

Justice is a process-oriented, relational practice that organises collective decision-making to remain open, accountable, and responsive to the plurality of beings, relations, and temporalities that constitute shared worlds.

It is agnostic about specific outcomes or states and instead evaluates justice by the extent to which processes:

recognise and include human and more-than-human participants, specify how decisions are made, and how they can be challenged (individuals, species, ecosystems, Earth systems);1^,2^,3 justice concerns sustaining the relationships that make collective life possible rather than protecting isolated individuals,4 and relational justice focuses on maintaining reciprocity, cooperation, and "right relations".5
sustain the conditions for present and future beings to flourish, including across multiple generations,6 and avoid the denial of futures.
enable ongoing participation, contestation, and revision under conditions of uncertainty and plurality regarding knowledge, values, and futures, accommodating plural perspectives within inclusive decision-making.3
maintain reciprocal, non-dominating relationships across asymmetries of power, knowledge, and scale; even participatory or relational systems can produce exclusion if they restrict who counts as a legitimate participant or concentrate authority without accountability; inclusive justice therefore requires continuous and systematically supported reflexivity about inclusion, representation, and power.

Concerns about social inequities extend beyond humans to include non-human species.

Most of urban policies and planning measures prioritise human needs over the needs of non-human species.

They also often favour already advantaged humans over others. (Escobar; Houston; Pellow; Steele).

Escobar, Arturo. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Houston, Donna, Jean Hillier, Diana MacCallum, Wendy Steele, and Jason Byrne. ‘Make Kin, Not Cities! Multispecies Entanglements and “Becoming-World” in Planning Theory’. Planning Theory 17, no. 2 (2018): 190–212. https://doi.org/10/gdkqp6.

Pellow, David Naguib, and Robert J. Brulle, eds. Power, Justice, and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005.

Steele, Wendy, Ilan Wiesel, and Cecily Maller. ‘More-than-Human Cities: Where the Wild Things Are’. Geoforum 106, no. 2019 (2019): 411–15. https://doi.org/10/gf49st.

The human-centred orientation of urban environments is increasingly under challenge.

There is a growing understanding about the interdependencies between humans and other life forms.

For example:

in planning (Houston; Narayanan)

Narayanan, Yamini. ‘Street Dogs at the Intersection of Colonialism and Informality: “Subaltern Animism” as a Posthuman Critique of Indian Cities’. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 35, no. 3 (2017): 475–94. https://doi.org/10/f98rdd.

Health

Goals or Objectives of Justice

Thriving, flourishing? Fairness, the equitable application of rules. Cf. the difference between truth and justice in criminal prosecution. It does not matter what is true or rather it matters more that the rules are applied evenly.

Cf. an anecdote in

Ellenberg, Jordan. How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking. New York: The Penguin Press, 2014.

Frames of Justice

The field is heterogeneous and contested.7^,8^,9 Environmental, ecological, and planetary justice do not replace one another. They coexist, overlap, and conflict. This plurality is central rather than accidental.7^,8

Two axes organise the shifts:

From human-centred distributional justice towards multispecies and Earth-system justice, where justice includes nonhuman beings, ecological relations, and even material systems.7^,10^,11
From one-world ontologies towards pluriversal ontologies, where different worlds are enacted through different relations, knowledges, and practices.12^,13^,14 Cf. Ontology, Worlding, and one world and many worlds below.

Worlds and constructed niches are synonymous (see Niche): through actions, behaviours, and emergent processes, novel conditions and opportunities arise as spatial, informational, processual, cognitive, reproductive, cultural, and other configurations. Call this worlding.

The frames below (environmental, ecological, planetary) elaborate this progression. The eel (Eel) recurs as a worked example because it crosses habitats, jurisdictions, and epistemic worlds.

Environmental Justice

Environmental justice usually begins with human communities: unequal exposure to pollution, dispossession, sacrificed environments, and procedural exclusion from environmental decision-making.15 Key questions: who bears harms, who decides, and whose knowledge counts? This frame can include nonhumans, but usually through human health, livelihood, culture, and rights.15^,16

Indigenous environmental justice grounds justice in Indigenous legal orders, knowledge systems, and responsibilities, rather than treating Indigenous claims as one more stakeholder perspective.15 Cf. Indigenous.

Cf. Environmental Data Justice below and Oppression.

Ecological Justice

As distinct from 'environmental justice' that focuses on how human communities fair amidst environmental measures and impacts.

Cf.:

ecojustice
multispecies justice (but this is more narrow, biocentric or even zoocentric)

Ecological justice expands the moral and political community beyond humans to include species, ecosystems, habitats, and sometimes individual nonhuman lives.16^,17 An active debate concerns whether justice should prioritise collectives (ecosystems, species) or individuals (sentient animals), and how to handle conflicts between them.16^,17

The eel (Eel) makes this productive. Ecological justice can ask whether justice concerns the eel as an individual animal, anguillid populations, eel migration corridors, river-ocean connectivity, or the socioecological relations that sustain all of these at once.16^,17^,18

Klaus Bosselman defines ecological justice as consisting of three elements: intragenerational justice, intergenerational justice, and interspecies justice.

Bosselmann, Klaus. ‘Ecological Justice and Law’. In Environmental Law for Sustainability: A Reader, edited by Benjamin J. Richardson and Stepan Wood, 129–63. Oxford: Hart, 2006.

Interspecies justice or equality is "the concern for the non-human natural world"

Bosselmann, Klaus. The Principle of Sustainability: Transforming Law and Governance. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008, 99.

Angie Pepper, “Delimiting Justice: Animal, Vegetable, Ecosystem?,” Les Ateliers de l’éthique / The Ethics Forum 13, no. 1 (2018): 210–30, https://doi.org/10/ggcbsc.

Baxter, Brian. A Theory of Ecological Justice. London: Routledge, 2005.

Three parts of justice:

equity in the distribution of environmental risk
recognition of the diversity of the participants and experiences in affected communities
participation in the political processes which create and manage environmental policy

(in out cases explicitly involving nonhuman beings)

Schlosberg, David. ‘Reconceiving Environmental Justice: Global Movements and Political Theories’. Environmental Politics 13, no. 3 (2004): 517–40. https://doi.org/10/dv3kpd.

Washington, Haydn, Guillaume Chapron, Helen Kopnina, Patrick Curry, Joe Gray, and John J. Piccolo. ‘Foregrounding Ecojustice in Conservation’. Biological Conservation 228 (2018): 367–74. https://doi.org/10/ghn7vn.

In distributive terms, the argument can be to share the Net Primary Productivity (NPP). This, however, is restrictive as without relationships, behaviours, and cultures that productivity is not meaningful.

An alternative to energy is space for example, and the reasonable measure would be 'optimal' populations, as in bio-proportionality.

Mathews, Freya. ‘From Biodiversity-Based Conservation to an Ethic of Bio-Proportionality’. Biological Conservation 200 (2016): 140–48. https://doi.org/10/f83bj9.

Justice should imply that ecojustice must supersede social justice in order to protect the remaining natural world on which we all lifeforms depend, including humans.

Literature review showing that 'nature-based solutions' fail to lead to ecologically just cities:

Pineda-Pinto, Melissa, Niki Frantzeskaki, and Christian A. Nygaard. ‘The Potential of Nature-Based Solutions to Deliver Ecologically Just Cities: Lessons for Research and Urban Planning from a Systematic Literature Review’. Ambio, no. 51 (2022): 167–82. https://doi.org/10/gm5hmh.

Barriers:

priviledge
internalised dominance
opression

Sensoy, Özlem, and Robin DiAngelo. ‘Developing Social Justice Literacy an Open Letter to Our Faculty Colleagues’. Phi Delta Kappan 90, no. 5 (2009): 345–52. https://doi.org/10/gqvhrf.

Planetary Justice

Cf.

Earth

Cf. Justice

Planetary justice stretches justice across planetary scale, long time horizons, entwined social and biophysical systems, and human and nonhuman realms.7^,8^,10 Its stronger formulations do not simply upscale environmental justice. They ask how justice changes when Earth-system processes, planetary boundaries, colonial histories, and multispecies interdependence become central.7^,10^,11

Planetary justice is not automatically universalist. Recent scholarship asks whether Earth-system frames and pluriversal, decolonial, and multispecies frames can be reconciled, or whether they pull in different directions.8^,9 See one world and many worlds.

Themes

Theme	Description
Multiscalar governance	Emphasis on governance across planetary, national, and local levels (subsidiarity, polycentric models).
Expanded scope of justice	Inclusion of non-human animals, ecosystems, and abiotic entities as subjects of justice.
Ethical pluralism	Integration of diverse philosophical traditions and Indigenous worldviews.
Institutional reform	Critique of existing global institutions and proposals for new planetary bodies.
Temporal consciousness	Consideration of deep time, intergenerational justice, and historical responsibility.
Self and relational ethics	Focus on personal transformation, moral accountability, and relational justice.

Key issues and disagreements

Subject of justice: states vs persons vs communities; include future generations, nonhuman life.
Metric of justice: equality vs sufficiency vs capabilities vs rights; weigh social floors vs ecological ceilings; allocate carbon budgets, land, water, biodiversity space .
Scale and governance: global compacts vs polycentric governance; mismatch between causes, harms, authority.
Responsibility and liability: historical responsibility, capacity, beneficiary‑pays vs polluter‑pays; loss‑and‑damage, transition‑mineral footprints; links to Common but Differentiated Responsibilities.
Procedure and knowledge: representation for vulnerable groups, future people, species; roles for Indigenous knowledge, guardianship, rights of nature; data justice for monitoring.
Transition pathways: speed vs fairness during rapid decarbonisation; green growth vs degrowth; choices near tipping points.
Implementation: indicators, benchmarks, courts, treaties, corporate duties; avoid justice‑washing while building workable tools.

Approaches in practice

Safe‑and‑just targets that extend planetary boundaries with equity constraints, plus sectoral budgets.
Equity‑based allocation rules: capacity, responsibility, need, right‑to‑development, convergence.
Just‑transition compacts: social protection, reskilling, regional diversification.
Polycentric experiments: city networks, Indigenous‑led stewardship, transboundary basin councils.
Legal innovation: rights of nature, guardians for future generations, biodiversity benefit‑sharing.
Data and accountability: open monitoring, equity dashboards, grievance mechanisms.
Knowledge pluralism: co‑production with affected communities, respect for Indigenous data sovereignty.

Sample Literature

Biermann, Frank, and Agni Kalfagianni. “Planetary Justice: A Research Framework.” Earth System Governance, vol. 6 (2020): 100049. https://doi.org/10/gkm3qx.

Gupta, Joyeeta, Xuemei Bai, Diana M Liverman, Johan Rockström, Dahe Qin, Ben Stewart-Koster, Juan C Rocha, et al. “A Just World on a Safe Planet: A Lancet Planetary Health–Earth Commission Report on Earth-System Boundaries, Translations, and Transformations.” The Lancet Planetary Health 8, no. 10 (October 2024): e813–73. https://doi.org/10/g8zcmr.

Anthony Burke, ‘Interspecies Cosmopolitanism: Non-Human Power and the Grounds of World Order in the Anthropocene’, Review of International Studies 49, no. 2 (2023): 201–22, https://doi.org/10/gtztgf.

Biermann, Frank, and Agni Kalfagianni. ‘Planetary Justice: A Research Framework’. Earth System Governance 6 (2020): 100049. https://doi.org/10/gkm3qx.

Bendik-Keymer, Jeremy. “The Self-Work of Planetary Justice.” Environmental Politics 33 (2023): 1166–84. https://doi.org/10/gtgq4q.

Blake, Jonathan S., and Nils Gilman. Children of a Modest Star: Planetary Thinking for an Age of Crises. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2024.

Celermajer, Danielle, Anthony Burke, Stefanie Fishel, Erin Fitz-Henry, Nicole Rogers, David Schlosberg, and Christine Winter. Institutionalising Multispecies Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025.

Gabrys, Jennifer. ‘Smart Forests and Data Practices: From the Internet of Trees to Planetary Governance’. Big Data & Society 7, no. 1 (2020): 1–10. https://doi.org/10/ggmzf2.

Hickey, Colin, and Ingrid Robeyns. ‘Planetary Justice: What Can We Learn from Ethics and Political Philosophy?’ Earth System Governance, Exploring Planetary Justice, 6 (2020): 100045. https://doi.org/10/gjphcb.

Kalfagianni, Agni, Stefan Pedersen, and Dimitris and Stevis. “Planetary Justice: A Systematic Analysis of an Emerging Discourse.” Environmental Politics 33, no. 7 (2024): 1146–65. https://doi.org/10/g9rt97.

Pedersen, Stefan, Dimitris Stevis, and Agni and Kalfagianni. “What Is Planetary Justice?” Environmental Politics 33, no. 7 (2024): 1137–45. https://doi.org/10/g8vrnw.

Rockström, Johan, Louis Kotzé, Svetlana Milutinović, Frank Biermann, Victor Brovkin, Jonathan Donges, Jonas Ebbesson, et al. “The Planetary Commons: A New Paradigm for Safeguarding Earth-Regulating Systems in the Anthropocene.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121, no. 5 (2024): e2301531121. https://doi.org/10/gtfk3h.

Ryder, Stacia, Erik Kojola, and David Pellow. “Power and Temporality in Pursuing Transformative Planetary Justice.” Environmental Politics 33, no. 7 (2024): 1245–64. https://doi.org/10/g933tc.

Shiva, Vandana. Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability and Peace. London: Zed Books, 2016.

Stevis, Dimitris, and Romain Felli. ‘Planetary Just Transition? How Inclusive and How Just?’ Earth System Governance, Exploring Planetary Justice, 6, no. 100065 (2020): 1–11. https://doi.org/10/ghsxc7.

Young, Oran R. Addressing the Grand Challenges of Planetary Governance: The Future of the Global Political Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Working Group of the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture. ‘Terra Viva: Our Soil, Our Commons, Our Future. a New Vision for Planetary Citizenship’. Tuscany: Navdanya International, 2015.

Earth System Law

Cf. Earth System Law

From One World to Many Worlds

The pluriverse names a world where many worlds fit: justice cannot assume one correct epistemology and a single sovereign political vocabulary.12^,13^,14 Cf. Ontology, Worlding, Inclusion (Private).

In a one-world frame, eels (Eel) appear as resources, stocks, indicators, invasive species, or conservation targets.18^,19 In a pluriversal frame, eels may also appear as kin, ancestors, legal subjects, teachers, companions in water relations, or participants in Indigenous and community worlds.15^,19

Dimensions of Justice

A mapping device. Any justice claim can be located across six dimensions.

Subjects of justice: who counts. Humans only, humans plus sentient animals, species and ecosystems, Earth-system processes, or pluriversal collectives that include ancestors, waters, territories, and nonhuman beings.10^,15^,4
Units of concern: what is protected. Individuals, populations, species, habitats, migration corridors, watersheds, oceanic currents, relations, or lifeworlds.16^,17 Cf. the individual-versus-collective debate under Ecological Justice above.
Forms of injustice: what is diagnosed. Maldistribution, exclusion, erasure of knowledge, habitat fragmentation, extinction risk, disruption of migration, ontological domination, or colonial interruption of relations.7^,15^,19 Cf. Oppression.
Scales: where justice operates. Body, community, watershed, migration route, bioregion, ocean basin, planet, deep time, intergenerational time. Planetary-justice scholarship treats scale and temporality as constitutive, not secondary.7^,11
Modes of representation: how nonhumans are represented. Scientific proxy, legal rights, guardian institutions, co-governance, Indigenous legal orders, multispecies institutions, or narrative and ceremonial presence.15^,4
Ontologies: how justice is framed. A one-world ontology, a relational ontology, or a pluriversal setting of ontological coexistence and conflict.8^,12^,14 See one world and many worlds above.

Registers of Justice

Distinct registers, several developed through the eel (Eel) but generalisable to other migratory and more-than-human beings.

Mobility Justice

For migratory beings, justice concerns passage, not only habitat or rights. Anguillid eels depend on uninterrupted movement across rivers, estuaries, coasts, and ocean basins. Dams, pumps, turbines, floodgates, and channelisation create injustice as blocked or deadly mobility.18 This bridges ecological and planetary justice.10

Infrastructural Justice

Eels suffer from hydropower, pumping regimes, drainage systems, culverts, and industrial water control.18 This brings design and governance into the frame without reducing eels to design objects. Cf. Infrastructure.

Hydro-Ontological Justice

Water is not background. Justice can be mapped through relations among beings, flows, salinity gradients, sediments, currents, and migration timing. Recent planetary-justice work asks whether matter itself belongs within justice, opening a path to justice for watery conditions and not only for organisms.8^,11

Temporal Justice

Eels expose long temporalities: larval drift, delayed maturation, generational uncertainty, and cumulative damage from infrastructures and extraction.18 Justice must include time, thresholds, and intergenerational effects.7^,10^,11 See Intergenerational Justice below.

Ontological Justice

Perhaps the most important addition for the shift from one world to many worlds. Ontological justice asks whether institutions permit more-than-modern ways of worlding, including legal and political relations in which eels are not mere fauna.12^,13^,15 It aligns with Indigenous environmental justice and pluriversal politics.12^,14^,15 See one world and many worlds above.

Multispecies Institutional Design

For multispecies justice to have impact, it must address institutions, representation, and governance mechanisms, connecting philosophical progression to design and policy.4 Cf. interspecies and multispecies justice below and Oppression.

Environmental Data Justice

Vera, Lourdes A., Dawn Walker, Michelle Murphy, Becky Mansfield, Ladan Mohamed Siad, and Jessica Ogden. ‘When Data Justice and Environmental Justice Meet: Formulating a Response to Extractive Logic Through Environmental Data Justice’. Information, Communication & Society 22, no. 7 (2019): 1012–28. https://doi.org/10/gf8sr4.

Capabilities Approach

Sen, Nassbaum

Robeyns, Ingrid. “Capability Approach.” In Handbook of Economics and Ethics, edited by Jan Peil and Irene van Staveren, 39–46. Cheltenham: Elgar, 2009.

Robeyns, Ingrid. Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice: The Capability Approach Re-Examined. Cambridge: OpenBook Publishers, 2017.

City and animals

Delon, Nicolas. “Animal Capabilities and Freedom in the City.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 22, no. 1 (2021): 131–53. https://doi.org/10/gmnmnb.

Cf. Armstrong's desire to replace 'capabilities' with 'considerata'. Seems more vague.

Kortetmäki, Teea. ‘Justice in and to Nature: An Application of the Broad Framework of Environmental and Ecological Justice’. PhD Thesis, University Of Jyväskylä, 2017.

Katy Fulfer, “The Capabilities Approach to Justice and the Flourishing of Nonsentient Life,” Ethics and the Environment 18, no. 1 (2013): 19–42, https://doi.org/10/gfsp32.

Interspecies/Multispecies Justice

Multi-optic vision as opposed to single-optic vision that can priviledge one but obscure other injustices. Cf. “ethics of mutual avowal” (Kim, 2015, p. 20): link multiple forms of oppression and the interconnectedness between them. Cf. Intersectionality (Kim, 2015. See also Deckha 2007 and her discus-sion of bell hooks and her radical openness of mind).

Kim, Claire Jean. Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species, and Nature in a Multicultural Age. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Deckha, Maneesha. ‘Animal Justice, Cultural Justice: A Posthumanist Response to Cultural Rights in Animals’. Journal of Animal Law and Ethics 2 (2007): 189–230.

Celermajer, Danielle, Anthony Burke, Stefanie Fishel, Erin Fitz-Henry, Nicole Rogers, David Schlosberg, and Christine Winter. 2025. Institutionalising Multispecies Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ecological justice, etc.

Theses with overviews:

Kortetmäki, Teea. ‘Justice in and to Nature: An Application of the Broad Framework of Environmental and Ecological Justice’. PhD Thesis, University Of Jyväskylä, 2017.

This one advocates an individualistic and biocentric approach.

Wienhues, Anna. ‘Life in Common: Distributive Ecological Justice on a Shared Earth’. PhD Thesis, The University of Manchester, 2018.

Anna Wienhues, “Sharing the Earth: A Biocentric Account of Ecological Justice,” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 30, no. 3 (2017): 367–85, https://doi.org/10/gbtvts.

Wienhues, Anna. Ecological Justice and the Extinction Crisis: Giving Living Beings Their Due. Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2020.

On interspecies justice:

Cochrane, Alasdair. Sentientist Politics: A Theory of Global Inter-Species Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Donaldson, Sue, and Will Kymlicka. Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Garner, Robert. ‘Animals, Politics and Democracy’. In The Political Turn in Animal Ethics, edited by Robert Garner and Shiobhan O’Sullivan, 103–17. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.

Matevia, Marilyn. ‘Justice for All: Revisiting the Prospects for a Biocommunitarian Theory of Interspecies Justice’. Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy 19, no. 3 (2016): 189–202. https://doi.org/10/gmtp4g.

McLeod-Kilmurray, Heather. ‘Commoditizing Nonhuman Animals and Their Consumers: Industrial Livestock Production, Animal Welfare, and Ecological Justice’. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 32, no. 1 (2012): 71–85. https://doi.org/10/gmtp4t.

Heather McLeod-Kilmurray, Commoditizing Nonhuman Animals and Their Consumers: Industrial Livestock Production, Animal Welfare, and Ecological Justice, 32(1) Bull. Sci., Tech. & Soc’y 71 (2012)

Marcel Wissenburg & David Schlosberg eds., Political Animals and Animal Politics (2014)

Andrew Woodhall & Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade eds., Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues (2017)

Rafi Youatt, Interspecies Relations, International Relations: Rethinking Anthropocentric Politics, 43(1) Millennium J. Int’l Stud. 207 (2014).

Community of Justice

A conception that distinguishes recipients of justice from other entities.

Argument based on the similarity between humans and other beings suggests the inclusion of other life.

Traditional justice theorists argue that nonhuman nature does not understand contracts (probably true) or have a notion of the good (likely not true)
There is significant similarity between humans and nonhuman beings and their environments.
These similarities (needs, sentience, interests, agency, physical integrity, and the unfolding of potential) is the bases for consideration and recognition.

Schlosberg, David. Defining Environmental Justice: Theories, Movements, and Nature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Justice among Nonhuman Beings

Can animals and other nonhuman beings have the sense or concept of justice? To put it in other ways. Do animals have a sense of morality? Do they know right from wrong?

Morality is relevant here because one can say that:

Justice as a human perception of morality.

In turn, one can say that:

Morality is a way to differentiate between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour.

Even if they cannot, it does not prevent the useful operation of this concept as understood by humans but applied to nonhuman others with their participation.

However, evidence exists that animals in particular also have morality.

Wolves, coyotes, elephants, whales and many other social groups or co-inhabitants have rules of behaviour and the forms of morality, governance, law, etc.

For references:

Bekoff, Marc, and Jessica Pierce. Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Bekoff, Marc. ‘Wild Justice and Fair Play: Cooperation, Forgiveness, and Morality in Animals’. Biology and Philosophy 19, no. 4 (2004): 489–520. https://doi.org/10/dv8g2m.

On the evolution of shame in humans, its public nature and the relationship of shame with submission behaviour in social animals.

Maibom, Heidi L. ‘The Descent of Shame’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 80, no. 3 (2010): 566–94. https://doi.org/10/ckjfd3.

Epistemic Injustice

Intergenerational Justice

Especially as it help to think in longer timeframes and provides an entrance to nonhuman beings.

Fritsch, Matthias. Taking Turns with the Earth: Phenomenology, Deconstruction, and Intergenerational Justice. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018.

Transition Justice

Cf. Transformation

Justice as a Goal

Is it reasonable to understand justice (or some such similar concept) as a more reasonable goal than bodily betterment (cf. Socrates on the good life)20. Cf. the idea of "machines for justice"

War on Animals

On the idea of peace law, see Saskia Stucki, also 'One Rights'

Deep Equity

Laws, policies, and values promoting acting in synergy to promote sustainability and maximize the health and potential (cf. Capabilities of all individuals, communities, and ecosystems.

Similarities in the legal principles of:

Common but Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR)
prevention/polluter-pays
and intra- and intergenerational equity

Rich should pay for the externalities but can also win via deeply shared benefits in a healthy, functioning, biodiverse planet.

Takacs, David. ‘Deep Equity, Nonzero-Sum Environmentalism, and a Sustainable Planet’. In Beyond Zero-Sum Environmentalism, edited by Sarah Krakoff, Melissa Powers, and Jonathan D. Rosenbloom, 111–31. Washington: Environmental Law Institute, 2019.

Design Justice

Whatever this might mean...

The book on design justice are very widely cited, mostly by the people writing about ethics of AI.

Costanza-Chock, Sasha. Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2020.

Friedman, Batya, and David G. Hendry. 2019. Value Sensitive Design: Shaping Technology with Moral Imagination. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Tunstall, Elizabeth. 2023. Decolonizing Design: A Cultural Justice Guidebook. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Processual Justice

Justice as a dynamic activity, not a final state to be achieved but an ongoing activity that unfolds over time. It involves continuous negotiation, adaptation, and transformation in response to changing relationships and contexts.

Processual justice emphasises the interdependence of human and nonhuman beings as well as the situatedness of justice claims within ecological, cultural, and historical contexts.

Justice models often rely on substance ontology, treating individuals or entities as fixed units. Processual justice challenges this by recognising that beings are constituted through relationships and change.

Justice is pluralistic, allowing for multiple, sometimes conflicting, perspectives and experiences. This is especially relevant in multispecies and ecological justice frameworks, where different beings have different lifeworlds and needs.

Processual justice calls for humble, exploratory knowledge practices that acknowledge the limits of human understanding and avoid imposing rigid categories or hierarchies.

Implications:

Multispecies justice.
Ecological restoration and transitional justice with the focus on processes of becoming and reparative relationships.
Planning beyond technocratic fixes through understanding of justice as practices of care, representation, and sharing.

Approaches:

Designing systems that evolve with their constituents and contexts.
Engaging with Indigenous knowledge systems that emphasise relationality and process.
Addressing justice in urban planning and ecological restoration in ways that are inclusive and adaptive.

References

Risse, Mathias. On Justice: Philosophy, History, Foundations. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Subnotes

Oppression

Footnotes

Biermann, Frank, and Agni Kalfagianni. “Planetary Justice: A Research Framework.” Earth System Governance 6 (2020): 100049. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esg.2020.100049.˄
Houart, Carlota, Jaime Hoogesteger, and Rutgerd Boelens. “Power and Politics across Species Boundaries: Towards Multispecies Justice in Riverine Hydrosocial Territories.” Environmental Politics 34, no. 1 (2025): 49–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2024.2345561.˄
Nelson, Valerie, and Scottish Government. Environment Strategy for Scotland: Transformative Changes for Sustainability. Independent Report No. 978-1-83691-438-9. Edinburgh: Scottish Government, 2025.˄
Celermajer, Danielle, Anthony Burke, Stefanie Fishel, Erin Fitz-Henry, Nicole Rogers, David Schlosberg, and Christine Winter. Institutionalising Multispecies Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025.˄
Tomateo, Claudia, and Zbigniew Grabowski. “Indigenous Justice Frameworks for Relational Ethics in Land-Based Design.” Ecosystems and People 20, no. 1 (2024): 2409165. https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2024.2409165.˄
Rockström, Johan, Louis Kotzé, Svetlana Milutinović, Frank Biermann, Victor Brovkin, Jonathan Donges, Jonas Ebbesson, et al. “The Planetary Commons: A New Paradigm for Safeguarding Earth-Regulating Systems in the Anthropocene.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121, no. 5 (2024): e2301531121. https://doi.org/10/gtfk3h.˄
Kalfagianni, Agni, Stefan Pedersen, and Dimitris and Stevis. “Planetary Justice: A Systematic Analysis of an Emerging Discourse.” Environmental Politics 33, no. 7 (2024): 1146–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2024.2374155.˄
Kurki, Milja. “Planetary Justice Reconsidered: Developing Response-Abilities in Planetary Relations.” Environmental Politics 33, no. 7 (2024): 1185–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2024.2336869.˄
Pedersen, Stefan, Dimitris Stevis, and Agni and Kalfagianni. “What Is Planetary Justice?” Environmental Politics 33, no. 7 (2024): 1137–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2024.2418222.˄
Gupta, Joyeeta, Diana Liverman, Klaudia Prodani, Paulina Aldunce, Xuemei Bai, Wendy Broadgate, Daniel Ciobanu, et al. “Earth System Justice Needed to Identify and Live within Earth System Boundaries.” Nature Sustainability 6, no. 6 (2023): 630–38. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01064-1.˄
Pedersen, Stefan, Dimitris Stevis, and Agni Kalfagianni, eds. “Special Issue on Planetary Justice.” Environmental Politics 33, no. 7 (2024). Special issue.˄
Escobar, Arturo. Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020.˄
Hutchings, Kimberly. “Decolonizing Global Ethics: Thinking with the Pluriverse.” Ethics & International Affairs 33, no. 2 (2019): 115–25. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0892679419000169.˄
Leitão, Renata M. “Pluriversal Worlding: Design, Narratives, and Metaphors for Societal Transformation.” AM Journal of Art and Media Studies, no. 30 (2023): 17–35. https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i29.551.˄
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