Bringing Ecological and Socioeconomic Justice Together: A Law & Political Economy Approach to Planetary and Earth System Justice

Abstract

When addressing the global ecological poly-crisis, there is a tendency to focus predominantly on two of its components – climate change and biodiversity loss – and to ignore the other types of ecological degradations that put our lives, lifestyles and economies at risk. To holistically account for the entire spectrum of ecological crises and their complex interactions, Earth system science (ESS) emerged as an application of systems thinking to the global environment. However, these crises are deeply intertwined with economic systems and social demands, requiring an integrated legal approach to governance, taking account simultaneously of ecological and socioeconomic challenges and dynamics. On the front of human and social sciences, ESS has given rise to the interdisciplinary field of Earth system governance (ESG), which seeks to guide societies in preventing, mitigating, and adapting to global and local environmental changes. ESG places a particular emphasis on the “5 A’s”: architecture (of the international political and legal systems), agency, adaptiveness, accountability, and allocation & access (to resources). This framework not only addresses environmental sustainability but also economic equity and social welfare. Within this context, the legal dimension - particularly the establishment of binding and actionable norms – plays a pivotal role in operationalizing justice across global ecological-socioeconomic systems. Indeed, as the code of our contemporary globally integrated economies, law – public binding legislations and, increasingly, private non-binding norms – is in a unique position to allow for an ordered and inclusive encounter between ecological, economic and social interests. In particular, the question of justice is fundamental for the determination of priority between those interests. Curiously, research on justice in ESG has diverged into two distinct strands: Planetary justice (from the ESG Project) and Earth system justice (from the Earth Commission). Perhaps even more curiously, these strands have benefited from very scant contribution from legal expertise,even as Earth system law (ESL) has emerged as a critical field of inquiry. The absence of robust legal contributions to both Planetary and Earth system justice scholarships has limited their ability to create actionable frameworks that reconcile ecological goals with economic imperatives and social demands. This contribution’s objectives are threefold. First, it reviews and maps the split between Planetary justice and Earth system justice, analysing the variations, distinctions, and interconnections between these research agendas, including their implications for legal frameworks. Second, it identifies the legal shortcomings of the two approaches. Third, the paper proposes an ecological-socioeconomic justice framework that integrates insights from both strands, emphasizes the 5 A’s, and derives principles that are actionable within governance (including legal) systems, particularly with regards to the procedural, distributive, and corrective dimensions of justice. In addition to the two strands of research on justice in the Earth system, this framework builds in an interdisciplinary manner on the works of Amartya Sen and Maeve McKeown on justice, Peter S. Wenz on environmental justice, and Elinor Ostrom on polycentric governance. Recognizing the inherently political nature of refining such a framework, the contribution concludes with a reflection on its potential implications for the political economy of both States and the global system, highlighting existing initiatives – either political (like the French Convention citoyenne pour le climat) or already legal (e.g., due diligence legislations) – that align with the proposed approach and exploring their role in fostering equitable and sustainable ecological-economic governance