We live in a severely unequal world. Pressing questions are, then, what changes the global advantaged should bring about to improve the situation of the global disadvantaged, and why they should do so in the first place. Chapters 1, 2 and 3 answer the latter question whereas chapters 4 and 5 answer the former. Chapter 1 considers Peter Singer’s ‘non-relationist’ and Thomas Pogge’s ‘relationist’ approaches to global justice. The chapter argues that Pogge’s argument is more compelling than Singer’s, but that it is incomplete. To make a relationist argument more plausible, the chapter draws on two critical social theorists: Alf Hornborg and David Harvey. Based on their analyses, and employing the perspectives of ‘human time’ and ‘ecological space’, the chapter concludes that the advantaged are in violation of a stringent negative duty by being complicit in the harmful global system. The chapter also introduces two kinds of debt – ‘temporal debt’ and ‘ecological debt’ – that the advantaged may owe the disadvantaged. Chapter 2 argues that the global system is not only harmful but severely harmful: it is likely to reproduce ‘absolute harm’ (a harm that infringes upon minimum human well-being). Chapter 3 discusses what positive action the advantaged ought to take because of the negative-duty violation and the problem-solving ability they have. Focusing on two kinds of action – reparation and remedy – the chapter argues that achieving reparation may face practical problems, but that the advantaged should act immediately to provide remedy – in particular, institutional remedy – for the disadvantaged. In doing so, the chapter commends the ‘advantaged remedy’ principle. Chapters 4 and 5 consider remedial institutions which the advantaged should strive to create and uphold. Chapter 4 focuses on one which we already have: the UN Global Compact. The chapter argues that this institution is necessary in the light of present global circumstances and also advances a set of principles appropriate to protect minimum human well-being. But it concludes that this reformist institution may turn out to be insufficient. Based on this conclusion, chapter 5 supports a more radical proposal: a market-socialist proposal offered by Leslie Sklair. Sklair’s account, however, does not explain why it is market socialism, rather than a non-market alternative, that should be pursued. Neither does it show how market-socialist institutions would remedy the global-systemic problems that are likely to afflict the disadvantaged. The chapter offers answers to these questions by drawing on David Miller (for the first question) and David Schweickart (for the second question). The chapter then argues that market socialism, if accompanied by an appropriate ethos, would serve to remedy the situation of the global disadvantaged. Meanwhile, the shift to market socialism would, and should, take time. So, this project concludes by considering a supplementary institution that may need to be implemented in the meantime: an ecological space tax.

Le traitement des inégalités environnementales globales doit se faire en tenant compte de la différence d’impact des pays dans l’avènement de la crise environnementale. Ces inégalités n'impliquent pas seulement des injustices de redistribution liées au partage du fardeau environnemental ou des injustices historiques liées aux passifs écologiques coloniaux et aux émissions historiques de gaz à effet de serre du Nord. Elles impliquent également des injustices de participation et de reconnaissance. L’approche distributive et l’approche corrective des injustices environnementales ne permettent pas de réparer l’ensemble de ces injustices. Pour surmonter leurs limites et leurs défauts, nous proposons de recourir au paradigme de la justice restauratrice. L'approche restauratrice comporte deux avantages principaux. Le premier est qu’elle permet de prendre en compte la nature multidimensionnelle des injustices environnementales et de se recentrer sur un large éventail de besoins de justice des victimes étatiques et non étatiques : besoin de réparation des injustices historiques, besoin de reconnaissance, besoin de participation, besoin de redistribution et besoin d'assistance. Le second est qu’elle inscrit le processus de justice dans une logique transformatrice qui permet de prévenir les injustices futures. Dans cette optique, nous proposons l'institutionnalisation d'une « démocratie écologique mondiale » par le biais de la transformation du Programme des Nations Unies pour l'environnement (PNUE) en une institution écologique, démocratique, et dotée d'une souveraineté supranationale. / The treatment of global environmental inequalities must take into account the difference in the impact of countries in the advent of the environmental crisis. These inequalities do not emphasize only redistribution injustices related to the sharing of environmental burdens or historical injustices related to colonial ecological liabilities and historic greenhouse gas emissions from the Northern countries They also imply injustices of participation and recognition. The distributive approach and the corrective approach to environmental injustices do not make it possible to repair all these injustices. The use of the paradigm of restorative justice could allow to overcome their limitations and defects. The restorative approach has two main benefits. The first one is to consider the multidimensional nature of environmental injustices and to refocus on a wide range of justice needs of state and non-state victims : need for redressing historical injustices, need for recognition, need for participation, need for redistribution and need for assistance. The second advantage is the consideration of the process of justice into a transformative logic for the prevention of environmental injustices. With this aim in mind, we propose the institutionalization of a "global ecological democracy » through the transformation of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) into an ecological and democratic institution with supranational sovereignty.

This thesis examines the discourses surrounding the subject of climate change, with particular emphasis on the discourse(s) of the emerging social movement for climate justice. Positioned within the social constructivist and critical research paradigms, the methodology involves a Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis in which discourse is defined as a historically-situated, materially-embodied, and power-imbued set of statements and rules that comprise a unique and coherent representation of the world. A review of the climate change-related literature reveals four primary discourses on the phenomenon of rising greenhouse gas emissions: early scientific, climate modernization, climate change denial, and climate justice. The statements and rules of these four discourses, as well as the theoretical trends and sociopolitical, economic, and ecological factors affecting their historical development are described. A deeper analysis using 26 primary documents representing every major climate justice organization reveals that rather than a single coherent discourse, the climate justice movement encompasses four individual sub-discourses: global, peasant-oriented, Indigenous, and civil rights. Focussed on climate-related inequities in developing countries of the Southern Hemisphere, the global discourse constructs climate change as a problem of the structures and logic of the globalized capitalist economy. The peasant-oriented discourse emphasizes inequities to peasant farmers, and represents climate change as largely the result of industrialized agriculture and food systems. With specific concern for the wellbeing of Indigenous communities, the Indigenous discourse locates the cause of climate change in the “violation of the sacred” and the loss of harmony with Mother Earth. The United States-based civil rights discourse primarily emphasizes the rights and interests of African American communities and constructs climate change as a problem of externalized ecological costs and failure to incent a “green” economy. The relations of power between the four climate justice sub-discourses and the prevailing climate modernization discourse are tentatively explored on the basis of three indicators of strength (internal coherence, material foundations, and adaptive capacity), on which basis several questions related to discursive resistance are proposed as possible avenues of future research. / Thesis (Master, Environmental Studies) -- Queen's University, 2012-10-11 09:45:29.397

La dette écologique est un discours politique qui s'est développé au début des années 90 pour lutter contre le fardeau des dettes financières qui grevait les budgets des États en développement. États et société civile se sont alors appropriés les acquis théoriques et pratiques des sciences économiques et sociales pour contester un ordre du monde inégalitaire et conduisant à la dégradation continue de l'environnement, caractéristique d'un "échange écologiquement inégal". Mais dans la bouche des différents acteurs, la dette écologique a pris des sens différents, si bien que l'on peut dissocier quatre discours de la dette écologique. À chacun de ces discours correspondent un ou plusieurs outils juridiques, outils qui, après analyse, s'avèrent souvent inaptes à valider les prétentions des partisans de la dette écologique. Il apparaît que seule la version communautaire de la dette écologique offre un cadre d'analyse qui soit efficient sans être contre-productif. L'analyse spécifiquement dédiée au régime climatique en droit international confirme ce résultat puisque les normes allant dans le sens d'un accroissement des capacités des populations locales semblent plus à même de réduire la dette climatique. / The ecological debt is a concept which was developed at the beginning of the 90s in order to fight against the burden of financial debts which crippled the budgets of developing States. States and the civil society used the theoretical and practical knowledge developed by researchers in social and economic sciences to criticize an unequal worldorder, leading to continuous environmental degradation and as such, a characteristic of an unequal ecological exchange. For the different actors, the concept of ecological debt took on various meanings so that we can now dissociate four different discourses. For each discourse, we have identified one or more legal mechanism, but most of them often turn out to be unfit to meet the claims of ecological debt advocates. It appears that only the community version of ecological debt is efficient without being counter-productive. Our analysis of the climate regime in international law confirms this result since norms that empower local communities seem more efficient to reduce climate debt.

Though heavily criticized, the Kyoto Protocol has stood out as the key political tool in addressing climate change. However the only of its instruments (IET, JI, CDM) that allows industrialized and developing countries to cooperate towards mitigation of GHGs is CDM. The underlying assumption of forestry CDM is that forest plantations (afforestation/ reforestation) might help to remove carbon dioxide (the most representative GHG) emissions. This assumption takes for granted that forest plantations might compensate for the loss of natural forests. Therefore this alleged trade-off constitutes the very focus of this study. Due to high monetary price instability in brand new markets, like the carbon offset one, the analysis abstracts out money variables. Additionally, this engine helps overcome the trap set up by monetary prices as scarcity indicators. Thus, to go along with the bioeconomic analysis, a Gordon-Schaefer fishery-like model is applied to carbon forest sequestration in Rio Grande do Sul. This state is thought of bringing an interesting picture to the analysis of the claimed trade-off between natural and planted forests. This owes both to Rio Grande do Sul s unworthy deforestation rates and to its high natural-to-planted forest ratio. This land use assortment is thought of as if there were two countries or regions: a forest-rich one, where natural forests still remain, and a forest-poor one, where afforestation and/or reforestation takes place. Only physical units (MtC) are used to calculate exchange and interest rates as well as non-monetary prices. Next, a function that assigns the land use to natural and planted forests is arrived at. As such, it works as the emission removal demand. On the other hand, the emission supply function depends on the economic growth rates. The results show that, eventually, the sustainability of economic growth hinges on a region s or country s ecological situation namely, equilibrium, credit or debt. The economic and environmental advantages of each mitigation strategy CDM and natural forest conservation are crosschecked. A nearly 40-year long overshoot rate is, after all, estimated for the forest sector in Rio Grande do Sul. The estimates suggest that CDM might help relieve environmental stress only where ecological credit is reported. Where ecological debt is already on, CDM was found unable to compensate for conservation disregard. / Apesar das críticas que tem sofrido, o Protocolo de Kyoto tem-se constituído na principal ferramenta política para enfrentar a mudança climática. No entanto o único de seus instrumentos (comércio internacional de emissões, implementação conjunta e MDL) que prevê a cooperação entre países industrializados e em desenvolvimento para mitigar as emissões de GEE é o MDL. A modalidade florestal do MDL pressupõe que as plantações florestais (florestamento/reflorestamento) podem ajudar na remoção das emissões de dióxido de carbono (o GEE mais representativo). Esse pressuposto aceita que as plantações florestais podem compensar a perda de florestas naturais. Por isso esse proclamado trade-off constitui o foco principal deste estudo. Devido à grande instabilidade dos preços monetários em mercados incipientes como o do carbono, a análise abstém-se de utilizar variáveis monetárias. De resto, esse artifício ajuda a contornar certas dificuldades decorrentes da utilização dos preços monetários como indicadores de escassez. Assim, a análise bioeconômica prossegue com a aplicação, ao seqüestro florestal de carbono no Rio Grande do Sul, de um modelo similar ao de Gordon-Schaefer, tradicionalmente empregado na gestão da pesca. Por duas razões principais, o caso do Rio Grande do Sul contribui para a análise do suposto trade-off entre florestas naturais e plantadas. Em primeiro lugar, por não se registrarem taxas de desmatamento pronunciadas no estado. Em segundo lugar, pela elevada proporção de florestas naturais em relação às florestas plantadas em seu território. A repartição do uso do solo entre as florestas é utilizada para estudá-las como se representassem nações ou regiões diferentes: uma, rica em florestas, onde as formações florestais nativas permanecem em pé; outra, pobre em florestas, onde as plantações florestais se estabelecem através de florestamento e/ou reflorestamento. Apenas unidades físicas (MtC) são utilizadas para calcular taxas de câmbio, taxas de juro e preços não-monetários. A seguir, deduz-se uma função que reparte o uso da terra entre florestas naturais e plantadas. Essa função equivale à demanda por remoção de emissões. Sua contraparte é a função oferta de emissões, que depende das taxas de crescimento econômico. Os resultados mostram como, em última análise, a sustentação do crescimento econômico está condicionada à situação ecológica (dívida, crédito ou equilíbrio) de um país ou região. Em cada cenário, confrontam-se as vantagens econômicas e ambientais das estratégias do MDL e da conservação de florestas naturais. Além disso, estima-se uma taxa de overshoot para a atividade florestal no Rio Grande do Sul ao longo dos últimos 40 anos aproximadamente. As estimativas sugerem que o MDL pode aliviar pressões ambientais somente onde se registre crédito ecológico. Onde o endividamento ecológico já esteja em curso, o MDL não substitui a conservação.