Towards an ecological space paradigm: fair and sustainable distribution of environmental resources

摘要

Humanity's current consumption patterns threaten the lives of current as well as future people. This provides a strong moral imperative to take the material constraints of the environment as the point of departure for an account of sustainable distributive justice. This ecological space paradigm should focus on a multidimensional, non-aggregative conception of carrying capacity. However, because resources are merely instrumental in pursuing various ends, we suggest combining capabilities and ecological space as the currency of distributive justice. As regards scope, this integrative account has the major advantage of combining the strength of the capabilities approach regarding global justice with the focus of the ecological space paradigm on intertemporal justice. The pattern of distribution should then take the form of distributing material resources so as to enable everyone to reach the capability threshold, while the leftover ecological space should be distributed on an equal per capita basis.