Ecosystem Services and Distributive Justice: Considering Access Rights to Ecosystem Services in Theories of Distributive Justice

Abstract:     
As the increasing loss of ecosystem services severely affects life perspectives of today’s poor and future persons, governing access to, and use of, ecosystem services in an intragenerational and intergenerational just way is an urgent issue. Therefore, I argue that theories of distributive justice should consider the distribution of access rights to ecosystem services. I work out three specific demands that a theory of distributive justice should fulfill to adequately cope with the distribution of access rights to ecosystem services, and show that Rawls’ “A Theory of Justice” (1971) can be consistently extended to meet the identified demands.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 26

Keywords: ecosystem services, distributive justice, environmental justice, global justice, intergenerational justice

JEL Classification: Q56, Q57, Q19

Accepted Paper Series