CRITICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE INHABITING POSITION OF INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE IN GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS

Abstract

As the institutions and practices of global environmental politics evolve, the principles of international justice function as benchmarks, restraints, and assessment standards. These three roles will be examined in this paper concerning how they influence the political handling of global environmental challenges. To discover debates in the academic literature that challenge the definition of justice and its applicability to environmental issues, the concept of international justice will first be examined. This paper will provide an overview and brief analysis of three concepts of international justice: an earlier interpretation grounded in post-Westphalian norms of state sovereignty; a more recent, but less comprehensive, interpretation grounded in the notion of universal human rights and focused on ensuring that those rights receive all necessary protections or resources; and a more robust interpretation, centered on the global application of distributive justice principles and centered on ensuring fair access to important social and economic resources. After that, to highlight their breadth and investigate their ramifications, these notions of justice will be applied to several issues in global environmental politics, such as international fisheries management and global climate change. Lastly, some observations about the benefits and drawbacks of justice-based studies of environmental issues will be made.