What does environmental justice demand?

What is environmental justice? The question is already highly complex in legal terms; it doesn't get any simpler philosophically. This talk by Axel Gosseries, Senior Research Fellow and Professor Extraordinaire at the Catholic University of Louvain, to engineering students at the same university, looks at the different aspects of the question of environmental justice.

It all depends on the school of thought of those involved. Left-wing or right-wing libertarians will see it in a resource-based way, egalitarians will seek to ensure that everyone is entitled to a similar situation, and so on. Is one school better than the other? Not necessarily, but it shows a vision of the ecological question to others, who may or may not share it. The challenge then becomes one of bringing together diverse approaches and reflecting on the issue of environmental justice in this context.

This is a major challenge, all the more so as there is a danger of isolating certain variables by saying that they will be dealt with "later", when in fact they are an integral part of the problem.

For example, some people see the climate issue solely in terms of their own situation and responsibility. They overlook the fact that some regions of the world already had difficult climates, which are being exacerbated by current changes, without any one nation being singled out as solely responsible.

Running time: 48:26