: Holmes Rolston III has argued that in some situations where the needs of starving people come into conflict with the protection of natural values, "we" ought to prioritize the latter. Focusing on the threat to pristine ecosystems and endangered species posed by overpopulation in developing countries, Rolston advocates the exclusion of human settlement and activity from the most fragile and valuable wild areas—a strategy sometimes termed "fortress conservation." This approach suffers from at least three serious faults. First, fortress conservation (...) is regarded as an illegitimate imposition by many of the local people on whose cooperation the success of conservation initiatives depends, often leading to failure in terms of conservation objectives. Second, the assumption that conservation and the satisfaction of basic human needs are largely incompatible ignores evidence of widespread environmentally sustainable patterns of resource use. Finally, Rolston's appeal to "us," referring variously to concerned North Americans and to humanity as a whole, implicitly universalizes the preservationist value system of a Northern minority while excluding the values and voices of the people directly affected by the proposed conservation measures. (shrink)

This book defends an account of justice to nonhuman beings – i.e., to animals, plants etc. – also known as ecological or interspecies justice, and which lies in the intersection of environmental political theory and environmental ethics. More specifically, against the background of the current extinction crisis this book defends a global non-ranking biocentric theory of distributive ecological/interspecies justice to wild nonhuman beings, because the extinction crisis does not only need practical solutions, but also an account of how it is (...) the outcome of large-scale injustice. This book not only provides a novel theoretical framework that supports such a claim, but it also develops the theoretical tools to find just compromises between the entitlements of intraspecies and intra-human global distributive justice to ecological space for the purpose of working towards a vision of just conservation. -/- Content: 1. Introducing Ecological Justice 2. Political Non-Ranking Biocentrism 3. The Community of Justice 4. The Currency of Distributive Justice 5. The Principles of Distributive Justice 6. Ecological Justice and the Capabilities Approach 7. Biodiversity Loss: An Injustice? 8. Who Owns the Earth? 9. Visions of Just Conservation 10. Outlook for Implementation . (shrink)