Should Justice for People Come Before Justice for the Environment? Examining Students’ Reflections on Environmental Ethics

Abstract

This chapter will discuss Bachelor level students’ perceptions of social (environmental) and ecological justice. Social justice concerns the fairness of distribution procedures, based on individual moral convictions of fairness and the willingness to obey the demands of authorities (Hegtvedt in Justice. Advances in group processes. Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Bingley, p. 371, 2008: ix-x). Social justice focuses on equalizing power relationship and access to natural resources among different social groups. While in some definitions environmental justice may encompass ecological justice (Schlosberg in Defining environmental justice: theories, movements, and nature. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007), most commonly it is associated with fairness in the distribution of environmental risks and benefits among human groups (Kopnina in Earth Perspectives 1: 8, 2014a).