Justice and the Environment

Last week, we announced the launch of a new entity at Georgetown, the Environmental Justice Program, to be led by Fr. Gaël Giraud SJ, soon to join us from France.

The encyclical Laudato Si’, which has the additional title of “Care for our Common Home” frames the environmental issues facing the world through a moral lens. For example, it notes “The destruction of the human environment is extremely serious, not only because God has entrusted the world to us men and women, but because human life is itself a gift which must be defended from various forms of debasement.” And “Authentic human development has a moral character. It presumes full respect for the human person, but it must also be concerned for the world around us and “take into account the nature of each being and of its mutual connection in an ordered system”. Accordingly, our human ability to transform reality must proceed in line with God’s original gift of all that is.”

Environmental degradation is not evenly distributed across the world. The poor and disadvantaged, both among persons and among nation states, disproportionately suffer from extreme weather events, destruction of natural habitats, biodiversity erosion, effects of warming on agricultural production, and disease impacts of environmental damage. It is true that systems of human activity and systems of earth activity are inextricably intertwined. All of us are linked together, but the harms to the environment are not equally shared by all of us.

While there are active advocacy initiatives on all continents concerning environmental damage, there are unique contributions that a university can offer the world regarding environmental justice. The field needs more development of key concepts, principles, theories, and links to applications. No one discipline can fully inform the academic field of environmental ethics. The field can draw upon sociology, urban studies, and political science to identify new governance ideas promoting sustainability (e.g., eco-villages in different countries of the world). The natural sciences, especially parts of biology and chemistry, provide key insights into causes of problems and point to potential solutions. Mathematics will offer ways to forecast the distribution of harm to the well-being of populations from climate change. Representation of environmental crises in the arts, including insights from fights from colonized people for their independence, are key tools to widen public understanding. Within economics, the classical dichotomy of fairness and efficiency is challenged by a perspective that inequality itself may impair efficiency of economies with regard to sustainability challenges. From a finance perspective, a focus on sustainability forces a rethinking of an organization’s assets and liabilities. Ethics and law come together when one contemplates how to conceptualize local and nation-state obligations to the safety of the planet, avoidance of ecocide, and future generations. It’s clear that multiple perspectives are necessary for advancing the field. Hence, the Georgetown Environmental Justice Program is designed to be multi-disciplinary.

Environmental justice inherently must have a global perspective. For example, much of the work is likely to require new dialogue and alliances between northern and southern populations. For example, if the Mekong delta will be covered by sea water in this century, what will replace it as the source of rice production for the population? Just as no one discipline can fully inform the field of environmental justice, no one country will solve their environmental problems by themselves. Hence, the Program must study ways to stimulate new forms of global cooperation.

There is an urgency to the work in the environment and sustainability. Our Georgetown Environment Initiative is evolving to meet this urgency, by proposing new programs and new research activities. The university’s commitment to building a sustainable institution is evolving rapidly.

So, too, there is an urgency to widen Georgetown’s impact in practical ethics that can guide policy and practices. We have an unrivaled legacy in the development of the field of bioethics. Identifying key ethical concepts that can guide policymakers and individuals towards a sustainable world is a perfect new role for Georgetown, with its deep history in practical ethics.

The new Environmental Justice Program will form a key bridge between Georgetown work in ethics and its work on the environment and sustainability. It will become an active player in both of these domains and, hopefully, place a uniquely Georgetown stamp on its contributions.