ABSTRACT Reflecting on the North/south dialogue, I consider questions of global justice. I argue that questions of global justice are just as genuine as questions of domestic justice. A too narrow construal of the circumstances of justice leads to an arbitrary forestalling of questions of global justice. It isn't that we stand in conditions of reciprocal advantage that is crucial but that we stand in conditions of moral reciprocity. I first set out concerning the situation in the North and the (...) South and the relations between them something of the facts in the case coupled with some interpretative sociology. Such investigations show massive disparities of wealth and condition between North and South and further show that these disparities have been exacerbated by the interventionist policies of the West. I then, while remaining mindful of the strains of commitment, argue that justice requires extensive redistribution between North and South but that this can be done without at all impoverishing the North, though to do so would indeed involve a radical re‐ordering of the socio‐economic system of the North. (shrink)

Is there a necessary, in‐principle connection between ecocentric values and democracy or is the relationship merely contingent? Is it possible to incorporate the interests of the non‐human community into the ground rules of democracy? Through an immanent ecological critique of the regulative ideals and institutions of liberal democracy, it is suggested that ecocentric values and democracy can be connected to some extent ‐ at least in the same way that liberalism and democracy are connected ‐ through an extension of the (...) principle of autonomy and the rights discourse to include ecological interests. However, the move from autonomy, to rights, to an ecologically grounded democracy encounters a number of hazards, not all of which can be successfully negotiated owing to the individualistic premises of the rights discourse. While the rights discourse may be extended to include human environmental rights and animal rights in relation to captive and domesticated species, it becomes considerably strained and unworkable in relation to the remaining constituents of the biotic community. (shrink)