ABSTRACT
In this chapter I confront the core ideas of the two dominant notions of justice (established in Chapter 7) with the ethical prescriptions of sustainable development based on the 1987 Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. The main objective is to show that these two notions of justice do not offer a promising base for the pursuit of global sustainability in general and North-South environmental equity in particular. This claim is elaborated by KLJKOLJKWLQJDWOHDVWIRXUNH\DUHDVRIµPLVPDWFK¶RUIDXOWOLQHVEHWZHHQWKHFRUH assumptions of the two ideas of justice and the ethical content of the version of sustainable development articulated in the Brundtland Report (Our Common Future). These fault lines are concerned with: (i) the degree of elasticity permissible in the conceptualization of the good life; (ii) the role of states in the facilitation of social justice and the promotion of sustainability; (iii) the interdependence of the earth system and its implications for the arguments between subsistence and property rights; and (iv) the notion of limits and the defensibility or indefensibility of certain aspects of enclosure.
