This thesis lies in the overlap of environmental political theory and environmental ethics. More specifically, it focuses on the intersection between distributive ecological justice (justice to nature), and environmental justice (distributing environmental goods between humans). Against the backdrop of the current sixth extinction crisis, I address the question of what constitutes a just usage of ecological space. I define ecological space as encompassing environmental resources, benefits provided by ecosystems and physical spaces and when considering its just usage I not only take into account claims to ecological space held by other humans but also the demands of justice with regards to nonhuman living beings such as animals and plants. In order to address my overall research question, I look at three areas of inquiry in particular. My first area of concern is questions around how environmental justice can be made compatible with a theory of ecological justice. Here I defend a specific definition of ecological space and provide a critique of theories of justice that are based on the view that humanity has an original ownership of the Earth. Secondly, I defend a biocentric approach to distributive ecological justice based on all living beings constituting together a community of fate, and I additionally clarify the relationship between justice and biodiversity loss. Lastly, considering that the current situation of life on Earth does not resemble the circumstance of moderate scarcity where all needs could theoretically be met (as usually assumed by the most influential theories of justice), I inquire into how demands of environmental and ecological justice differ in different circumstances of scarcity, and what could be considered a just compromise between these two domains of justice. I then apply these last considerations to the Half-Earth proposal for creating large protected areas for nonhuman species, which has been advocated by E. O. Wilson and other ecologists as a means to slow the current rate of anthropogenic species extinctions. In essence, the Half-Earth proposal might be ambitious, but I argue there are good reasons to consider it as one building block of a (distributively) just future for life on Earth.

This dissertation provides a substantive study of the faith-based Mondragón Cooperative Movement in Spain and the Indra’s Net Life Community in Korea, analyzing and critically comparing the ethical values of Catholic Social Teaching and Socially Engaged Asian Buddhism. By evaluating the extent of their success in dealing with socioecological concerns, the importance of religio-ethical values and principles to the disciplines of social and environmental ethics is stressed, offering a new, religiously sensitive approach to ecological wellbeing. As this dissertation argues, the thought and work of Mondragón and Indra’s Net offer important resources for conceptualizing ecological ethics and social justice in and among human communities. This comparison considers two questions: First, what alternative economic system might engage, in context, socioecological religious values and be implemented as an alternative to neoclassical economics? Second, what socioecological ethical principles provide effective intellectual resources to critically assess today’s global economic and ecological crises, and suggest a way to resolve them? These questions are addressed by a study of the ethical and social implications of modern economic systems, as compared to a worker-owned cooperative movement and a socially engaged Asian Buddhist liberation movement, both of which offer an alternative to current economic configurations. Inspired by the communitarian personalist thought of Mondragón’s priest-founder, José María Arizmendiarrieta, and the ecological thought of the Venerable Tobŏp, based on Huayan Buddhism’s philosophy of "interdependent co-arising" (pratītyasamupāda), these grassroots socio-ecological movements provide relevant, religion-based social and ecological teachings that present concrete proposals for economic and social practice. Social Catholicism and socially engaged Buddhism, as evidenced by these two movements, apply a dynamic social-spiritual ideology consonant with their traditions' developing social-ecological consciousness, thereby striving to promote the wellbeing of Earth, humanity, and all life.

This thesis aims to develop a workbook to assess social-ecological justice (SEJ) in projects, plans and processes. Social-ecological justice bridges many sustainability discourses in order to create a more inclusive and wider sustainability concept than previous ones (Gunnarsson Östling & Svenfelt, (Submitted Book Chapter)).  In order to fill the gap between SEJ theory and practically assessing SEJ in projects, plans and processes there is a need for a tool that can help and guide practitioners in their work. This thesis aims to fill the existing gap by developing the SEJ workbook. A lot of the developed SEJ methodology is based on an already existing workbook developed by the Resilience Alliance (2010) called: Assessing resilience in social-ecological systems: Workbook for practitioners. This workbook and SEJ have the same definition of what a social-ecological system is, and share a lot of similar theoretical aspects. The methodology of this thesis is a combination of a theoretical study of the SEJ concept, an analytic comparative study between a Resilience Assessment and the SEJ concept, and semi-structured interviews with practitioners that in different ways works with sustainable development today. The result is a five steps workbook that consists of the parts: 1) Identifying issues, defining the area and actor analysis, 2) History of the issues, 3) Dynamics of the issues and cross-scale interactions, 4) Governance and 5) Acting on the assessment. Each step has questions that aim to help the analyst complete the SEJ assessment. This entire process creates an inclusive and broad understanding of SEJ issues in projects, plans and processes. The complete SEJ assessment can help decision makers and actors in the area make well informed decisions for future sustainable development. It can also serve as a first step in an EIA (environmental impact assessment) with connections to social, ecological and socioeconomic aspects.

Teacher, Detective, Witness, Activist: On Pedagogy and Social Justice in Asian Canadian Literature undertakes a critical consideration of the relationship between pedagogy, social justice, and Asian Canadian literature. The project argues for a recognition of Asian Canadian literature as a creative site concerned with social justice that also productively and problematically becomes a tool in the pursuit of justice in literature classrooms of Canadian universities. The dissertation engages with the politics of reading and, by extension, of teaching social justice in the literature classroom through analyses of six high-profile, canonical works of Asian Canadian literature: Joy Kogawa’s Obasan (1981), SKY Lee’s Disappearing Moon Café (1990), Kerri Sakamoto’s The Electrical Field (1998), Madeleine Thien’s Certainty (2006), Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being (2013), and Rita Wong’s forage (2007). These texts are in many ways about the reproduction of national, colonial, and neo-colonial pedagogies, a reproduction of teachings informing subject formation and citizenship from which higher education is not exempt. The dissertation analyzes the texts’ treatment of familial and national reproduction, and the narrative temporalities this treatment invokes, in order to think through the political and social reproduction that occurs in classrooms of Canadian post-secondary education. This project raises a number of questions: Do literature instructors engage their students as investigators in the pursuit of justice? And, if so, what type of justice do we seek to reproduce in doing so? What happens when instructors engage students in the work of witnessing fictional testaments of historical trauma, albeit indirectly, as readers? How might we acknowledge and work through the resistance to learning that traumatic testimony can invoke? And finally, might it be productive to think of the work that literature instructors do as a form of activism? Can social justice be conceived of as a pedagogical project that unfolds in the literature classroom? / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This dissertationt turns to the literature of Asian Canada to think through how we learn and are resistant to learning from historical injustice and about social justice. Chapter One argues that Joy Kogawa's Obasan, Kerri Sakamoto's The Electrical Field, and SKY Lee's Disappearing Moon Cafe each play with the detective fiction genre in their treatments of anti-Japanese and -Chinese racism in Canada to upset a definition of justice as stable and finite. Chapter Two examines Madeleine Thien's Certainty and Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being as works of trauma fiction that can tell us a lot about the resistance difficult knowledge can provoke. Chapter Three turns to a book of poetry, Rita Wong's forage, to contemplate the temporal and emotional dimensions of everyday, anti-racist and ecological activism; this chapter highlights the limits of discourses of social justice predicated on risk and anxiety.

This thesis seeks to forge a conversation between two schools of contemporary political-economic thought - degrowth and modern monetary theory. With today's urgent, multiple, and interlinked socio-ecological crises, the degrowth school of thought has become increasingly relevant. While the degrowth movement has proposed a range of policies and visions for a post-capitalist future, the structural growth imperatives of capitalist states make degrowth visions politically and economically challenging to realize. Thus far, degrowth policies that aim to weaken society's growth imperative and start building a post-capitalist society have largely been raised from the assumption that governments are limited in budgetary terms, implicitly informed by the hegemonic neoclassical economics lens. However, modern monetary theory (MMT) has recently permeated the public debate, offering an alternative take on public spending, deficits, and the government’s fiscal policy space. MMT argues that monetary sovereign states are not fiscally constrained in the same way that households and non-sovereign entities are - instead, the actual limitations to spending are the resources available to a given nation. Yet, MMT theorists give insufficient attention to ecological considerations, exemplified by their tendency to take continued economic growth for granted and overlook ecological limits, particularly from a global justice perspective. Using an Ecological Political Economy lens, this thesis initiates a conversation between the degrowth and MMT scholarship, finding that while there are both distinct tensions between the two schools, there are also many synergies and possibilities for further cross-fertilization between them within the normative goal of socio-ecological sustainability and justice.

The confinement of animals is today a widespread, widely accepted practice, regardless of the intention behind it. The confinement of animals for entertainment purposes, however, poses ethical questions that transgress the body of the animal itself and onto the boundaries of the human. What happens when a captured animal behaves differently from what we expect of it? Different from what we’ve trained it to? SeaWorld and Kolmården are two parks that both display animals in different ways. Both advertise themselves as offering unique experiences; close up encounters with animals that would most likely not happen in the wild. Both parks have also been subject to predatory animals behaving in unexpected ways. Furthermore, the artificial relationships established between humans and nonhumans in captivity have in the cases of SeaWorld and Kolmården proven to create a dangerous environment for both humans and animals. The ethical dilemmas that arises in correlations with the deadly-outcome incidents that have occurred in the parks, takes the form of questions regarding if confining animals such as wolves and orcas are ethically defensible in the first place

Abstract: This research seeks to investigate the possibilities and inadequacies of including wild animals within the justice realm. It bases this research on the reasons and rationales of representatives within environmental non- governmental organizations (ENGOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and public agency working with animal- rights and welfare or environmental protection. These representatives reason from a personal and organizational perspective concerning justice, ethics and morals to wild animals. Environmental Justice (EJ) and Ecological Justice (EcJ) serves as the main theories for this research where EJ is often perceived as anthropocentric and EcJ as a non- anthropocentric amelioration of the former. The results indicate that Animal Rights (AR) and World Animal Protection (WAP) think more of animals in terms of individualism, whilst World Wide Foundation (WWF), Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) and Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC) think in terms of consideration for species and ecosystems holistically. Some respondents perceived justice exclusively as a human term, however with regard to altered paths of reasoning later in the interview as most respondents continuously struggled, to various degrees, to make sense of justice in relation to wild animals. There were occasional uncertainties concerning ethics and morals, however less alien than the justice term and more relevant in relation to other NGOs, i.e. animal- rights and welfare organizations and less outspoken, though not entirely dismissed, within ENGOs and public agency. However, although some respondents occasionally argued that they do not reflect on ethics, morals and justice, these interviews are testament that they do, but with other terms and concepts that could be argued to be synonymous to ethics, morals and justice and perhaps used consciously and/or unconsciously at work. In other words, one can say that a different kind of rhetoric was applied i.e. justice in form of rights, respect. Another finding of the research was a structuration concern: specifically, on whether morals and ethics are reflected in law, or whether the law becomes what constitutes our morals and ethics, given as a majority of the respondents often refer to laws as general guidelines. In other words, does the law reflect reality, or does the law constitute reality? What is the dialectic here? In conclusion, wild animals might never receive full justice, where the researcher analyses it as a sequence of animals not holding moral capacities enough to be moral agents, though with the exception of having rights. As shown in the results, some wild animals can already be said to receive justice, e.g. wild animals as state property and hunting legislation, whilst other wild animals are excluded altogether, e.g. wild animals not being considered in welfare law. In this way, many future challenges include expanding the legal stance of wild animals. Human precedence barricades the opportunities for extending justice which are shown in this study and can be said to link to relational-, aesthetical-, contextual factors and deep cultural values and associations, aspects which overshadow human flourishing, wild animals not having a counterpart, animals as objects and so forth. Though, by giving e.g. wild animals a heightened status in legislation, extending the moral circle to include wild animals the utility of justice may prove helpful in furthering the rights and welfare of animals. Additionally, properties as recognition through, e.g. agency and capabilities could also guide us in giving justice to the natural world, as highlighted by Schlosberg (2007), but also the idea of intrinsic value as highlighted by many respondents. Future research may consider the holistic and individualistic tendencies held within ENGOs, NGOs and public agency to see how it could be mutually considered to a larger extent. As highlighted by one of the respondents, perhaps laws and legislation are not enough and that one could investigate more in how one perceive animals culturally, in other words human dimensions socially and culturally.

Last century witnessed an unprecedented growth of cities which has led to the consolidation of an eminently urbanised world population. Meanwhile, agriculture has adopted industrial methods of production in the shape of large-scale, chemical-laden crops in the countryside, which, together with the liberalisation of global trade, have undermined the livelihood of small-scale peasants throughout the world, forcing many of them out of business. The food industry has responded to the high rates of hunger and malnutrition with an extraordinary increase in production that has not solved food security problems, as these have turned out to be more a question of unequal access to food rather than insufficient supply. Furthermore, the activity of large agri-food corporations has resulted in the degradation of natural ecosystems and an increasing pressure over already overburdened critical resources for food production. Consequently, facing the imminent threat of climate change, more and more voices are questioning the sustainability of the current food system and rising against the burgeoning hunger and escalating inequalities resulting from it. Hence, several alternatives to the neoliberal food system are emerging these days with the aim of reducing social inequalities and curbing environmental degradation, being urban agriculture one of them. Precisely, this thesis explores, from a social-ecological justice perspective, whether urban agriculture can address issues of environmental stewardship and disparities in food distribution. Although the many virtues of urban farming might not be enough to subvert the structures of power that are deeply rooted in the foundations of the present food regime, it could still play a significant role in alleviating the gaps in food needs. However, food security comes only after the core reasons of poverty have been addressed and social justice is achieved in the larger society. The pathway towards a greater social and ecological justice seems to require not only to re-examine how to feed the urban population, but also a significant transformation that goes beyond aspects from the whole food supply chain and embraces societal systemic change.

The world faces major challenges in terms of sustainable development. Sustainable development is a guiding principle for the United Nations and the international community and it is also a recurrent concept in everyday life. The aim of this study was to compile and analyze studies in social work that includes sustainability and/or sustainable development. We have conducted a literature review where 13 studies were compiled, analyzed and compared based on the global definition of social work. The result shows that social work should play a significant role in the work for sustainable development, and this requires a holistic approach in order to include the natural environment. According to result issues regarding environment and sustainable development should also be incorporated in the curriculum of social work education. The dimensions primarily addressed in the chosen studies are social sustainability and ecological sustainability, as well as social justice and ecological justice. Our interpretation is that social work has begun a shift towards sustainable development. Social work can, and should be, a part of the work for sustainable development. / Världen står inför stora utmaningar när det gäller hållbar utveckling. Hållbar utveckling är idag en vägledande princip för Förenta Nationerna och världssamfundet, och det är även ett återkommande begrepp i vardagen. Studiens syfte var att sammanställa och analysera studier i socialt arbete som inkluderar hållbarhet och/eller hållbar utveckling. Således har vi genomfört en forskningsöversikt som resulterade i 13 sammanställda studier, som analyserades och jämfördes utifrån den globala definitionen av socialt arbete. Resultatet visar att socialt arbete bör vara en viktig aktör i arbetet för en hållbar utveckling, vilket kräver att socialt arbete antar ett helhetsperspektiv som inkluderar den naturliga miljön. Resultatet visar även att frågor om den naturliga miljön och hållbar utveckling bör införas i läroplanen i utbildning för socialt arbete. De dimensioner som främst behandlas i studierna är social hållbarhet och ekologisk hållbarhet, likväl social rättvisa och ekologisk rättvisa. Vår tolkning är att socialt arbete har påbörjat ett skifte mot arbetet för en hållbar utveckling. Socialt arbete kan, och bör, vara med i arbetet för en hållbar utveckling.

This thesis investigates challenges to promoting socially just, locally focused agriculture faced by the organic certification program that now regulates organic farming in British Columbia. This inquiry into how organic certification works is conducted as an institutional ethnography. Institutional ethnography is the methodological foundation of Dorothy Smith’s feminist sociology for people. For the institutional ethnographer, ordinary daily activity is the site for investigation of social organization. Small scale organic farmers who are committed to sustainable, socially and ecologically just agriculture offer a critical standpoint from which to explicate extra-local text mediated ruling relations. This inquiry draws on data from open-ended interviews with farmers and an independent organic certification inspector. From these accounts I begin to address how it is that BC’s organic farming certification program actually enters into and reconstitutes the everyday work of farmers and inspectors. From my findings I argue that corporate interests and a focus on global free trade in organic produce and products increasingly guide the institutional structure of organic certification programs. This in turn moves organic farming out of local, farmer control.