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Book ChapterDOI

Sustainable Development and the Agenda of Global Social Justice

01 Jan 2017-pp 19-31
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the interdependency of social justice/environmental justice and sustainability even when sustainability is framed as green environment and social justice focuses on the brown social agenda of poverty reduction.
Abstract: This chapter explores the concept of “just sustainability”. The notions of “sustainability” and “social justice” share the common agenda of conservation of nature. As per the Brundtland report, sustainability is conceived as a test of humanity’s ability to meet “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. However, there are different paradigms of sustainability in the literature, namely the “green” or environmental agenda and the “social justice” focused “brown” or poverty reduction agenda. While the more immediate focus of social justice and/or environmental justice (both social justice and environmental justice focus on distributive conceptions of justice: human security issues related to justice, equity, human rights, and poverty reduction, and so on) is intragenerational, the more pressing focus of sustainability is intergenerational. The agendas of “social justice” and “sustainability” thus seem to be conflicting. In this chapter, I focus on the interdependency of social justice/environmental justice and “sustainability” even when sustainability is framed as green environment and social justice focuses on the brown social agenda of poverty reduction. The paper builds on the argument that unless global social justice (intragenerational access) is ensured under a fair social and institutional arrangement, the relationship of economic growth with sustainable development will always remain contentious and sustainable development will remain a mere ideal. I conclude that organisations and institutions must explore the common ground between justice and sustainability.
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: For example, during the mid- and late 1990s in North Korea, a period marked by the "Arduous March", discourse shifted from "conquering" the natural environment to "rationally using and protecting" it.
Abstract: During the mid- and late 1990s in North Korea, a period marked by the “Arduous March”, discourse shifted from “conquering” the natural environment to “rationally using and protecting” it. It is arg...

3 citations


Cites background from "Sustainable Development and the Age..."

  • ...…relevant to sustainable development – stressing the balancing of efforts to meet human needs without degrading nature and pursuing social justice further (Bhuyan, 2017) –may have emerged in North Korea as they have in many other countries, including neighbouring South Korea, China and Russia....

    [...]

References
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Book
01 Jan 1999
TL;DR: In this paper, Amartya Sen quotes the eighteenth century poet William Cowper on freedom: Freedom has a thousand charms to show, That slaves howe'er contented, never know.
Abstract: In Development as Freedom Amartya Sen quotes the eighteenth century poet William Cowper on freedom: Freedom has a thousand charms to show, That slaves howe'er contented, never know. Sen explains how in a world of unprecedented increase in overall opulence, millions of people living in rich and poor countries are still unfree. Even if they are not technically slaves, they are denied elementary freedom and remain imprisoned in one way or another by economic poverty, social deprivation, political tyranny or cultural authoritarianism. The main purpose of development is to spread freedom and its 'thousand charms' to the unfree citizens. Freedom, Sen persuasively argues, is at once the ultimate goal of social and economic arrangements and the most efficient means of realizing general welfare. Social institutions like markets, political parties, legislatures, the judiciary, and the media contribute to development by enhancing individual freedom and are in turn sustained by social values. Values, institutions, development, and freedom are all closely interrelated, and Sen links them together in an elegant analytical framework. By asking "What is the relation between our collective economic wealth and our individual ability to live as we would like?" and by incorporating individual freedom as a social commitment into his analysis, Sen allows economics once again, as it did in the time of Adam Smith, to address the social basis of individual well-being and freedom.

19,080 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 1987

13,141 citations

Book
Thomas Pogge1
01 Jan 2002
TL;DR: Despite a high and growing global average income, billions of human beings are still condemned to life long severe poverty, with all its attendant evils of low life expectancy, social exclusion, ill health, illiteracy, dependency, and effective enslavement.
Abstract: Despite a high and growing global average income, billions of human beings are still condemned to life long severe poverty, with all its attendant evils of low life expectancy, social exclusion, ill health, illiteracy, dependency, and effective enslavement. The annual death toll from poverty-related causes is around 18 million, or one-third of all human deaths, which adds up to approximately 270 million deaths since the end of the Cold War.

1,561 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a more equitable distribution of power is proposed to enhance the influence on policy of those who bear the costs of pollution, relative to those who benefit from pollution-generating activities.

1,202 citations