Abstract
According to various climate justice coalitions, the ideas of justice that support the current international climate regime are not sufficiently grounded in procedures of democratic justification to qualify as fair to all interests concerned. In the absence of truly equitable international climate justice conditions, the Anthropocene enters a qualitatively new phase, one of radical inequality. Major asymmetries emerge between those who shape the nature of the global risks associated with ongoing climate destruction (i.e., decision-makers) and those who pay the ultimate price for those decisions without ever having the opportunity to prevent major catastrophes from occurring (e.g., the peoples of the Philippines, Nepal, Senegal, or Sri Lanka). The fragile nature of our dependence on the environment is such that acts of extreme resource depletion not only represent forms of ecological destruction, they also seriously delimit the capacity of humanity to secure its collective survival. Global capitalism’s insatiable appetite for natural resources promotes capability failure, that is, a restriction of the capacities of growing numbers to withstand the shocks of global climate change and prevent ‘various ills from happening to them’ (Pettit 1999: 67). The relationship between exposure to climate risk and domination could not be more explicit today. It follows a clear line with those inhabiting poorer, more underdeveloped regions exercising least control over their ecological fate and abilities to adapt. Newer generations, born into climate conditions shaped by forces over which they have little, if no authority, are severely disadvantaged through no specific fault of their own, yet their future continues to be represented in international political discourse as largely determined by the internal structures of ‘closed state systems’ (Rawls 1971: 8). In this setting, justice is seen as governed by the distribution of mutual advantages among ‘rough equals’ (Rawls 1971), not by factors beyond the immediate control of any one state community.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Access Capital. 2010. The Ethiopia Macroeconomic Handbook 2010. Addis Ababa: Access Capital.
ActionAid. 2012b. Into Unknown Territory: The Limits to Adaptation and Reality of Loss and Damage from Climate Impacts (May 2012). See: http://www.actionaid.org/sites/files/actionaid/into_unknown_territory_-_may_2012.pdf. Accessed 7 Nov 2013.
American Petroleum Institute. 2013. The State of American Energy. See: http://www.api.org/~/media/Files/Policy/SOAE-2013/SOAE-Report-2013.pdf. Accessed 29 May 2015.
African Union/Economic Commission for Africa. 2009. Land Policy in Africa: A Framework to Strengthen Land Rights, Enhance Productivity, and Secure Livelihoods, Revised Version, March 2009.
Annan, K. 2000. We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21 Century. Executive Summary. United Nations (2000). See: http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/wethepeople.pdf. Accessed 2 June 2015.
Araghi, F. 2000. The Great Global Enclosure of Our Times: Peasants and the Agrarian Question at the End of the Twentieth Century. In Hungry for Profit: Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food and Environment, eds. F. Magdoff, J.B. Foster, and F.H. Buttel, 145–160. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Ball, J., and N. Davies. 2015. Where there is Oil and Gas there is Schlumberger. The Guardian, May 18. See: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/18/where-there-is-oil-and-gas-there-is-schlumberger. Accessed 19 May 2015.
Barry, B. 2011 [1991]. Liberty and Justice. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Beck, U. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.
———. 2015. Emancipatory Catastrophism: What Does it Mean to Climate Change and Risk Society? Current Sociology 63(1): 75–88.
Beck, U., and J. Van Loon. 2011. Until the Last Ton of Fossil Fuel Has Burnt to Ashes: Climate Change, Global Inequalities and the Dilemma of Green Politics. In The Governance of Climate Change, ed. D. Held, 111–134. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bohman,. 2011. ‘Is Hegel a Republican? Pippin, Recognition and Domination in the Philosophy of Right’, Inquiry 53(5): 435–449.
Bourg-Meyer, V. 2015. A Retrospective Look at the Fracking Ban in New York, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (April 2015). See: http://envirocenter.yale.edu/uploads/A%20Retrospective%20Look%20at%20the%20Fracking%20Ban%20Campaign%20in%20NY%20-%20Vero%20Bourg-Meyer.pdf. Accessed 13 June 2015.
Burke, E. 2005. The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, Volume VI. London: Thomas McLean.
Carbon Brief. 2014. ‘Updated: The Science of Fracking and Earthquakes’. July 4 2014. See: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2TbqzoIR_GcJ:https://www.carbonbrief.org/updatedthe- science-of-fracking-and-earthquakes+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=pg (Accessed October 3, 2016).
Chwaszcza, C. 2008. Beyond Cosmopolitanism: Towards a Non-Ideal Account of Transnational Justice. Ethics & Global Politics 1(3): 115–138.
Climate Justice Now. 2009. Climate Justice Assembly Declaration (1 February 2009). See: http://www.climate-justice-now.org/category/reports_and_publications/climate-justice-at-the-world-social-forum/. Accessed 13 Aug 2015.
Cotula, L. 2011. Land Deals in Africa: What is in the Contracts? (March 2011). London: International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).
Cotula, L., S. Vermeulen, R. Leonard, and J. Keeley. 2009. Land Grab or Development Opportunity: Agricultural Investment and International Land Deals in Africa. See: http://www.ifad.org/pub/land/land_grab.pdf. Accessed 2 October 2016.
Daes, E.A. 2005. Indigenous Peoples’ Rights to Land and Natural Resources. In Minorities, Peoples and Self-Determination: Essays in Honor of Patrick Thornberry, eds. N. Ghanea, and A. Xanthaki. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff.
Deininger, K. 2003. Land Policies for Growth and Poverty Reduction. A World Bank Policy Research Report. Washington, DC and Oxford: World Bank and Oxford University Press.
Earthjustice. 2014. Unfractured Communities. See: http://earthjustice.org/features/unfracktured-communities. Accessed 17 Nov 2015.
Earthworksaction. 2015. Hydraulic Fracking 101. See: https://www.earthworksaction.org/issues/detail/hydraulic_fracturing_101#.Vku51xYbhlI. Accessed 17 Nov 2015.
European Commission. 2009. Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on Minimum Standards for the Qualification and Status of Third Country Nationals or Stateless Persons as Beneficiaries of International Protection and the Context of the Protection Granted, Brussels (21 October 2009) COM, 551 final. Available: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2009:0551:FIN:EN:PDF
Feinberg, J. 1974. The Rights of Animals and Future Generations. In Philosophy and Environmental Crisis, ed. W. Blackstone, 43–68. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Fraser, N. 2010. Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World. New York: Columbia University Press.
Geisler, C. 2003. A New Kind of Trouble: Evictions in Eden. International Social Science Journal 175: 30–42.
———. 2012. New Terra Nullius Narratives and the Gentrification of Africa’s ‘Empty Lands’. Journal of World Systems Research XVIII(1): 15–29.
Global Carbon Project Report. 2013. See: http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/archive.htm#CB2013. Accessed 29 May 2015.
Goldin, I., H. Rogers, and N. Stern. 2002. The Role and Effectiveness of Development Assistance: Lessons from the World Bank Experience. Research Paper. The Development Economics Vice Presidency of the World Bank. See: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DEC/Resources/roleofdevelopment.pdf. Accessed 17 Nov 2015.
Goodin, R.E., and F. Jackson. 2007. Freedom from Fear. Philosophy & Public Affairs 35(3): 249–265.
Greenpeace. 2013. Roadmap Towards a Successful Climate Agreement 2015. See: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/briefings/climate/COP19/Greenpeace-Road-to-Paris.pdf. Accessed 22 Sept 2015.
Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth Health & Environment Alliance & Food & Water Europe. 2012. Position Statement on Shale Gas, Shale Oil, Coal Bed Methane and ‘Fracking’ (24 April 2012). See: http://www.greenpeace.org/eu-unit/Global/eu-unit/reports-briefings/2012%20pubs/Pubs%202%20Apr-Jun/Joint%20statement%20on%20fracking.pdf. Accessed 3 Dec 2015.
Greenpeace UK. 2015. See: https://secure.greenpeace.org.uk/page/s/fracking-signup. Accessed 31 May 2015.
Greenpeace USA. 2015. Fracking. See: http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/issues/fracking/
Hakim, D. 2012. Cuomo Proposal Would Restrict Gas Drilling to a Struggling Area. New York Times, June 2012.
Hayward, T. 2006. Global Justice and the Distribution of Natural Resources. Political Studies, 54: 349–369.
Heede, R. 2014. Tracing Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide and Methane Emissions to Fossil Fuels and Cement Producers, 1854–2010. Climate Change 122(1–2): 229–241.
Held, D. 2006. Reframing Global Governance: Apocalypse Soon or Reform. New Political Economy 11(2): 157–177.
Hesse, C., and B. Thébaud. 2006. Will Pastoral Legislation Disempower Pastoralists in the Sahel? Indigenous Affairs 1/06 IWGIA.
High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE). 2011. Land Tenure and International Investments in Agriculture: A Report by the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security ad Nutrition, Rome. Committee on World Food Security (July 2011).
House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee (2010). See: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmenergy/1065/1065.pdf. Accessed 2 Oct 2016.
House of Commons Library. 2015. Shale Gas and Fracking, SN/SC/6073, Science and Environment Section (5 February 2015).
Hubert, B., M.A. Rosegrant, J.S.M. van Boekel, and O. Rodomiro. 2010. The Future of Food: Scenarios for 2050. Crop Science 50(1): 33–50.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change. 2007a. Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Working Group II Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report, of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter Nineteen on Africa. See: https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg2/ar4_wg2_full_report.pdf. Accessed 2 June 2015.
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 1966. See: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/ProfessionalInterest/ccpr.pdf
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. 1966. Available: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CESCR.aspx. Accessed 4 Aug 2013.
International Food Policy Research Institute. 2010. Climate Change Impacts on Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa. See: http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ifpridp01042.pdf
International Land Coalition (ILC). 2011. Tirana Declaration: Securing Land Access for the Poor in Times of Intensified Natural Resource Competition. See: http://dev.landcoalition.org/en/tirana-declaration. Accessed 2 June 2015.
Kachika, T. 2010. Land Grabbing in Africa: A Review of the Impacts and the Possible Policy Responses. Oxford: Oxfam International Pan African Progamme. See: http://www.oxfamblogs.org/eastafrica/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Land-Grabbing-in-Africa.-Final.pdf. Accessed 29 May 2015.
Kaplan, T. 2011. Millions Spent in Albany Fight to Drill for Gas. New York Times, November.
Kyung-wha K., Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. 2007. Address at the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol (14 December 2007). See: http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=200&LangID=E. Accessed 2 June 2015.
Land Matrix Partnership. 2011. See: http://www.landmatrix.org/en/about/. Accessed 2 Oct 2016.
Laslett, P. 1988. Locke’s Two Treatises of Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Leigh Day. 2015. International Claims ‘Ivory Coast’. See: https://www.leighday.co.uk/International-and-group-claims/Ivory-Coast. Accessed 17 Nov 2015.
Maxwell, D., and K. Wiebe. 1999. Land Tenure and Food Security: Exploring Dynamic Linkages. Development and Change 30(4): 825–849.
Miller, D. 2005. Immigration: The Case for Limits. In Contemporary Debated in Applied Ethics, eds. A.I. Cohen, and C.H. Wellman, 207–220. Oxford: Blackwell.
Monbiot, G. 2007. Leave It in the Ground. The Guardian, December 11. See: http://www.monbiot.com/2007/12/11/rigged/. Accessed 2 June 2015.
Naidoo, K. 2013. Independent Research Exposes Who is Responsible for Climate Change: Gazprom and Shell Star. Greenpeace International (22 November 2013). See: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/releases/Independent-research-exposes-who-is-responsible-for-climate-change-Gazprom-and-Shell-star/. Accessed 31 May 2015.
Nhantumbo, I., and A. Salomão, 2009. Biofuels, Land Access and Rural livelihoods in Mozambique. IIED. See:http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search? q=cache:PhB11jD6zoQJ:pubs.iied.org/12563IIED/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=pg . Accessed 2 Oct 2016.
Northcott, H.A. 2012. Realisation of the Right of Indigenous Peoples to Natural Resources Under International Law Through the Emerging Right to Autonomy. International Journal of Human Rights 16(1): 73–99.
OECD. 2009. Global Forum on International Investment. ‘Foreign Investment in Developing Country Agriculture—Issues, Policy and International Response’. Hallam, D. (7–8 December 2009). See: http://www.oecd.org/investment/globalforum/44231828.pdf. Accessed 31 May 2015.
Oxfam. 2011. Land and Power: The Growing Scandal Surrounding the New Wave of Investments in Land (September 2011). Oxford: Oxfam International.
Paehlke, R. 2011. Cosmopolitanism and Hegemony: The United States and Climate Change. In Ethics and Global Environmental Policy, ed. P.G. Harris, 128–149. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Pettit, P. 1999. Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pettit, P. 2006. ‘Rawls’s Peoples’ in Rex Martin and David Reidy, eds, Rawls’s Law of Peoples: A realistic utopia, Blackwell, Oxford, 38–56.
Rawls, J. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Rice, A. 2009. Is There Such a Thing as Agro-Imperialism? The New York Times Magazine, November 16. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/magazine/22land-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. Accessed 2 June 2015.
Rio Declaration on Environment and Development. 1992. United Nations. See: http://www.jus.uio.no/lm/environmental.development.rio.declaration.1992/portrait.a4.pdf. Accessed 8 Oct 2013.
Ruggie, J. 2008. Special Representative on Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises. Protect, Respect and Remedy. A Framework for Business and Human Rights (7 April 2008). UN OHCHR, Para 3. http://www.business-humanrights.org/Documents/RuggieHRC2008
Selin, S., and S.D. VanDeveer. 2010. Global Climate Change: Kyoto and Beyond. In Environmental Policy: New Directions in the Twenty-First Century, eds. Norman J. Vig, and Michael E. Kraft, 265–285. Washington, DC: CQ Press.
Sulle, E., and F. Nelson. 2009. Biofuels, Land Access and Rural Livelihoods in Tanzania. See: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search? q=cache:5KRVf5m_x08J:pubs.iied.org/pdfs/12560IIED.pdf+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=pg. Accessed 2 October 2, 2016.
The Climate Council Australia. 2015. Unburnable Carbon: Why We Need to Leave Fossil Fuels in the Ground. See: https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/unburnable-carbon-why-we-need-to-leave-fossil-fuels-in-the-ground. Accessed 2 June 2015.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and Earthscan. 2011. The States of the World’s Land and Water Resources For Food and Agriculture. New York: Earthscan.
The Global Convergence of Land and Water Struggles. March 2015. See: http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/main-issues-mainmenu-27/agrarian-reform-mainmenu-36/1775-declaration-of-the-global-convergence-of-land-and-water-struggles. Accessed 2 June 2015.
The Guardian. 2015a. Leave It in the Ground Campaign. See: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/series/keep-it-in-the-ground. Accessed 22 Sept 2015.
UK Department of Energy & Climate Change. 2014. Fracking UK Shale: Understanding Earthquake Risk. See: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/283837/Seismic_v3.pdf. Accessed 21 May 2015.
UK Department of Trade and Industry. 2005. North Sea Licenses Surge To All Time (6 September 2005). See: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-of-trade-and-industry. Accessed 2 June 2015.
———. 2006. Shake-up Of Unused Blocks Keeps Pressure On North Sea Exploration. http://www.gnn.gov.uk/environment/fullDetail.asp?ReleaseID=191617&NewsAreaID=2&NavigatedFromDepartment=False.
———. 2007. Meeting the Energy Challenge: A White Paper on Energy. Para 4.07, page 107 (May 2007). See: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-of-trade-and-industry. Accessed 2 June 2015.
UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979). See: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/ProfessionalInterest/cedaw.pdf. Accessed 3 Oct 2016.
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). See: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/ProfessionalInterest/crc.pdf. Accessed 3 Oct 2016.
United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development. 1986. See: http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/41/a41r128.htm. Accessed 2 June 2015.
United Nations Department of Public Information. 2007. General Assembly Adopts Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples (13 September 2007). Available: http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2007/ga10612.doc.htm. Accessed 4 Aug 2013.
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. 1972. See: http://legal.un.org/avl/ha/ccpwcnh/ccpwcnh.html. Accessed 4 May 2015.
United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. 2009. UNDP, ‘Risk and Poverty in a Changing Climate’, Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction. See: http://www.preventionweb.net/english/hyogo/gar/report/documents/GAR_Prelims_2009_eng.pdf. Accessed 5 July 2015.
United Nations Women. 2015. Facts and Figures: Economic Empowerment. See: http://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/economic-empowerment/facts-and-figures. Accessed 29 May 2015.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 1948. See: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
US Environmental Protection Agency. 2015. ‘Assessment of the Potential Impact of Hydraulic Fracturing of Oil and Gas on Drinking Water Resources’. See: https://www.epa.gov/hfstudy. Accessed 3 Oct 2016.
Wallerstein, I. 2010. Land, Space and People: Constraints of the Capitalist World Economy. Journal of World Systems Research XVIII(1): 6–14.
Walzer, M. 1983. Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality. New York: Basic Books.
Woertz, E. 2010. The Gulf Food Import Dependence and Trade Restrictions of Agro Exporters in 2008. In Will Stabilisation Limit Protectionism? ed. J.E. Simon, 43–56. London: Center for Economic Policy Research.
World Bank. 1995. Agriculture, Poverty and Policy Reform in Sub-Saharan Africa. Discussion Paper. Washington, DC: The World Bank.
World Bank. 2008. Rising Food and Fuel Prices: Addressing the Risks to Human Capital. Human Development Network (HDN), Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM) Network.
World Bank. 2010a. The Costs to Developing Countries of Adapting to Climate Change. New Methods and Estimates. Global Report of the Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change Study. Washington, DC:World Bank. Available: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTCC/Resources/EACCReport0928Final.pdf. Accessed 11 Nov 2014.
———. 2009. Awakening Africa’s Sleeping Giant: Prospects for Commercial Agriculture in the Guinea Savannah Zone and Beyond. Washington, DC: The World Bank.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Skillington, T. (2017). Resource Inequalities, Domination, and the Struggle to Reclaim Democratic Freedoms. In: Climate Justice and Human Rights. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-02281-3_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-02281-3_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-02280-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-02281-3
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)