The need to reassess the discourse of sustainable development in terms of equity and justice has grown rapidly in the last decade. This book explores renewed and distinctive approaches to the sustainability and justice debate, integrating a range of perspectives that include moral philosophy, sociology and law. By bringing together young and senior scholars from the field of global environmental law and governance from around the world, this work is divided into three sections, covering sustainable development and justice, sustainable development in context, and sustainable development and judiciaries. This book will appeal to academics, law practitioners and policy-makers interested in shaping future socio-legal research on global environmental law and governance.

A multidisciplinary examination of alternative framings of environmental problems, with using examples from forest, water, energy, and urban sectors. Does being an environmentalist mean caring about wild nature? Or is environmentalism synonymous with concern for future human well-being, or about a fair apportionment of access to the earth's resources and a fair sharing of pollution burdens? Environmental problems are undoubtedly one of the most salient public issues of our time, yet environmental scholarship and action is marked by a fragmentation of ideas and approaches because of the multiple ways in which these environmental problems are “framed.” Diverse framings prioritize different values and explain problems in various ways, thereby suggesting different solutions. Are more inclusive framings possible? Will this enable more socially relevant, impactful research and more concerted action and practice? This book takes a multidisciplinary look at these questions using examples from forest, water, energy, and urban sectors. It explores how different forms of environmentalism are shaped by different normative and theoretical positions, and attempts to bridge these divides. Individual perspectives are complemented by comprehensive syntheses of the differing framings in each sector. By self-reflectively exploring how researchers study and mobilize evidence about environmental problems, the book opens up the possibility of alternative framings to advance collaborative and integrated understanding of environmental problems and sustainability challenges.

Sustainable urbanization has moved to the forefront of political debate and policy agendas for numerous reasons. Among the most important are a growing appreciation both of the implications of rapid urbanization now occurring in China, India, and many other low and middle income countries with historically low urbanization levels and of the related challenges posed to urban areas worldwide by climate and environmental change. Conceptualizing urban sustainability for this new era, this compact book makes a clear contribution to the sustainable urbanization agenda through authoritative interventions that contextualize, assess, and explain the importance of three central characteristics of sustainable towns and cities everywhere: that they should be fair, green, and accessible.

Drawing on a broad transdisciplinary background, this book compares distributive justice systems and related socioeconomic institutions within the liberal and sustainable development traditions. Confronting the capitalist worldview of prominent Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman, the book offers a theoretical framework for sustainable development: a new paradigm of economics grounded in environmental and social issues. The analysis takes as its starting point that the development and evolution of human beings is codetermined by socioeconomic institutions. These institutions facilitate models of society, morality and human behaviour: they are all social constructs. This matters because the liberal system of justice uses the claim that ‘life is unfair’ as the justification of socioeconomic inequalities, and it is these institutions which determine the concepts of fairness and justice. Therefore, the liberal system’s favouring of entrepreneurs should require advance measures to safeguard the interests of the losers—instead, it seeks to justify their misfortunes. It is argued that this liberal notion of fairness can only be fairly executed in conditions of perfect market competition, which have never existed. In contrast, the principles of sustainable development pay attention to the problems generated by the unjust and unfair distribution of resources and postulate wider use of the fairness formula ‘to each according to their needs’. It is thus more focused on fair ends than on fair procedures. This book is addressed to scholars and advanced students in ecological economics, environmental economics, economics of sustainable development and political science.

Can—and should—participation be a means of achieving sustainability? The concepts of sustainability and participation are both in vogue, and many international, supranational and national legal texts and standards refer to these two concepts. However, there are still several unanswered questions that invite legal inquiry: which sustainability? Which kinds of participation? Participation by whom? How are the two concepts of sustainability and participation effectively interlinked in legal provisions? This book approaches the interconnection between sustainability and participation inductively and precisely in areas of law which are commonly associated with sustainability and sustainable development: national, European and international environmental and economic law.

Advancing sustainable development and democracy are the underlying purposes linking the landmark Escazú Agreement with the American Convention on Human Rights. Exploring both these treaties and the relevant regional jurisprudence, this monograph provides the first analysis of the ground-breaking environmental human rights law being developed in Latin America and the Caribbean. The key feature of the regional law is the priority it gives to equality and non-discrimination for vulnerable persons and groups, environmental defenders, local communities and indigenous peoples. This book brings practitioners and academics up to date with the legal tools for protecting people and planet.

"This book investigates the role of urban, regional and infrastructure planning in achieving sustainable urban and infrastructure development, providing insights into overcoming the consequences of unsustainable development"--Provided by publisher.