Ecological thought and concern for social inequalities: indifference, opposition or convergence?

Edwin Zaccaï ()
Additional contact information
Edwin Zaccaï: Université Libre de Bruxelles, IGEAT

No 32.2008, Environmental Economy and Policy Research Working Papers from University of Cambridge, Department of Land Economics

Abstract: This paper is an attempt to assess key relations between ecological thought and concern for social inequalities. Building on the fact that these relations may be controversial, the analysis will proceed as a fictional trial, introducing two opposite thesis, one after the other. In the first section, arguments that tend to see ecological thought as indifferent or detrimental to social equity are presented. The second part, after the prosecution, will conduct the case for the defence: arguments that sustain the idea that ecological objectives reinforce the search for a social equity will be outlined. In both parts, authors belonging to five different clusters of discourse are considered: deep ecology, environmentalism and sustainable development, ecological modernisation, risk and technology management, and finally radical criticism of development (including political ecology). While the situation differs within these different groups of discourses, it appears that the aims of environmental protection and social equity on the whole do not necessarily converge nor diverge, one of the reasons being their disconnected histories. We conclude with a plea and a few propositions towards increased convergence between ecology and social equity.

Keywords: Equity; Justice; Distribution; Social inequalities; Ecology; Green Thought (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008, Revised 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env and nep-res
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.landecon.cam.ac.uk/RePEc/pdf/200832.pdf
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.landecon.cam.ac.uk/RePEc/pdf/200832.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.landecon.cam.ac.uk/RePEc/pdf/200832.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lnd:wpaper:200832

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Environmental Economy and Policy Research Working Papers from University of Cambridge, Department of Land Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Unai Pascual ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).