Environmental Sustainability and Environmental Justice at the International Level: Traces of Tension and Traces of Synergy

Abstract

"This Symposium Issue exemplifies the attention increasingly given to environmental sustainability and environmental justice: its value is to focus attention on the relationships between the two. In this essay, I make two points about this interrelationship by drawing on evidence from transnational and international environmental problems. First, there may be considerable tension between the substantive ends toward which each of these concepts points. For example, when sustainability is interpreted as emphasizing notions of sustained yields and carrying capacities, it can lead to results at odds with the ethical notions of intrinsic value and moral inclusion which are often described as core notions of environmental justice."