Towards a More Participative Definition of Food Justice

This paper argues that the definition of food justice must be defined in more participatory terms. Current accounts of food justice tend to emphasize distributional inequalities. However, there is broad recognition that these distributional inequalities are the result of participative inequalities and that the participation of marginalized groups in advocacy plays an important role in creating just food systems. In addition, thinking of food justice in more participative terms also suggests a more well-rounded and comprehensive approach to dealing with inequalities within the food system. One manner in which the concept of food justice can be redefined to better capture the importance of participative justice is by considering what is required for informed consent.     

GMOs and Global Justice: Applying Global Justice Theory to the Case of Genetically Modified Crops and Food

Proponents of using genetically modified (GM) crops and food in the developing world often claim that it is unjust not to use GMOs (genetically modified organisms) to alleviate hunger and malnutrition in developing countries. In reply, the critics of GMOs claim that while GMOs may be useful as a technological means to increase yields and crop quality, stable and efficient institutions are required in order to provide the benefits from GMO technology. In this debate, the GMO proponents tend to rely on a simple utilitarian type of calculus that highlights the benefits of GMOs to the poor, but that overlooks the complex institutional requirements necessary for GMO production. The critics, recognizing the importance of institutional conditions, focus primarily on the negative impacts of institutional deficiencies, thereby overlooking the basically Rawlsian claim that institutions per se may generate claims to justice. This article investigates how GMOs might generate claims to global justice and what type of justice is involved. The paper argues that the debate on GMOs and global justice can be categorized into three views, i.e., the cosmopolitan, the pluralist, and the sceptic. The cosmopolitan holds that GMOs can and should be used for alleviating global hunger, whereas the sceptic rejects this course of action. I will argue here for a moderately cosmopolitan approach, relying on the pluralist view of institutions and the need to exploit the benefits of GMOs. This argument rests on the premise that global cooperation on GMO production provides the relevant basis for assessing the use of GMOs by the standard of global distributive justice.     

From Food Justice to a Tool of the Status Quo: Three Sub-movements Within Local Food

The local food movement has been touted by some as a profoundly effective way to make our food system become more healthy, just, and sustainable. Others have criticized the movement as being less a challenge to the status quo and more an easily co-opted support offering just another set of choices for affluent consumers. In this paper, we analyze three distinct sub-movements within the local food movement, the individual-focused sub-movement, the systems-focused sub-movement, and the community-focused sub-movement. These movements can be combined within any particular campaign or within the goals of any particular organization or individual activist, but they are nevertheless quite different from each other, and come out of different conceptualizations of what food, people, and locality are. We argue that most of the critiques leveled against local food are actually directed against the individual-focused sub-movement, which is most compatible with the current industrial food system, and perhaps not surprisingly receives the most mainstream attention. Further, we argue that while each movement has its own strengths and weaknesses, it is the community-focused sub-movement that has the most potential to radically transform the global food system.     

Selective Patronage and Social Justice: Local Food Consumer Campaigns in Historical Context

In the early 2000s, the development of local food systems in advanced industrial countries has expanded beyond creation and support of farmers’ markets and community supported agriculture farms and projects to include targeted Buy Local Food campaigns. Non-governmental groups in many U.S. places and regions have launched such campaigns with the intent of motivating and directing consumers toward more local food purchasing in general. This article examines the current manifestations and possibilities for social justice concerns in Buy Local Food campaigns, by considering them within the more general category of “selective patronage“ campaigns. Historical campaign examples, such as Buy Union, Buy American, and Buy Black campaigns, offer instructive comparisons to contemporary consumer campaigns promoting local food. Through examining the construction of threats, intended beneficiaries, products to be avoided, and those to be preferentially selected, the paper demonstrates how selective patronage campaigns have emphasized social justice needs and concerns for designated groups in ways that have been potentially exclusionary of other disadvantaged groups and thus undermining of social justice more broadly. As a contemporary instance of “selective patronage,“ Buy Local Food campaigns exhibit similar contradictory impulses, which are intensified by the conceptual and practical pitfalls in designating “local.“ The article concludes by considering how the challenges and prospects for commitments to social justice in local food consumer campaigns reinforce the importance of emerging initiatives centered on domestic fair trade.     

Permanent Sovereignty Over Natural Resources

In the 1960s and 1970s, the principle of permanent sovereignty over natural resources was vigorously expressed by oil-producing developing countries, through a series of measures to increase revenue from, ownership of, and effective control over the petroleum sector. Such recent significant developments as OPEC's crude oil price reduction, favorable tax treatment of transnational oil companies in the industrialized countries, the entry of the World Bank onto the international pertroleum scene and increasing competition among developing countries for scarce company exploration funds have combined to create a new, more difficult environment, in which further progress toward full sovereignty over petroleum resources will be achieved more by countries' own efforts, and less in the context of host country-oil company negotiations. Le principe de souveraineté permanente en matière de ressources naturelles a été exprimé avec vigueur par les pays producteurs de pétrole en voie de développement au cours des decenics de 1960 et 1970 par une série de mesures visant à augmenter les revenus, les droits de proprieté et le contrôle effectif afférents au secteur pétrolier. Des éléments nouveux importants, tels que la baisse des prix du brut OPEP, les structures de l'ompót qui favorissent les sociétés pétrolieres transnationales des pays industrialisés, l'entrée en scène de la Banque mondiale en ce qui concerne le pétrole sur le plan international, et la concurrence croissante des pays en voie de développement pour les rares financements d'exploration par les sociétés privécs ont contribué à la création d'un milieu nouveau et plus ardu au sein duquel un nouveau progrès vers une souveraineté totale en matière de ressources pétrolieres se fera de plus en plus par les initiatives propres des pays et de moins en moins dans le contexte de négociacions entre les pays et les sociétés pétrolieres. En las décadas del 60 y 70, el principio de soberanía permanente sobre recursos naturales fue expresado vigorosamente por los países en desarrollo productores de petróleo, a través de diversas medidas con el objeto de aumentos el ingreso del sector petrolero y reafirmar el control y propriedad sobre éste. Nuevos hechos tales como la reducción del prccios acordados por la OPEP, impuestos favorables para las compañías transnacionales, la participatión del Banco Mundial en el sector del petróleo y la creciente competencia entre países en desarrollo por escasos fondos para exploración petrolera han creado un ambiente diffícil en el que la total soberanía sobre los recursos petroleros se obtendrán más por esfuerzo propio de los países y menos dentro del contexto de negociaciones entre país y las compañías de petróleo.     

New York City Environmental Justice Alliance Waterfront Justice Project

This paper reviews key challenges and opportunities addressed by the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance's (NYC-EJA) Waterfront Justice Project, a citywide campaign to promote climate resilience and sustainability in urban industrial waterfront communities of New York City. NYC-EJA is a non-profit membership-driven network linking grassroots organisations from low-income neighbourhoods and communities of colour in their struggle for environmental justice. The Waterfront Justice Project is documenting community vulnerability in the context of climate change impacts, sources of industrial pollution, and demographic and socio-economic trends. This campaign is enabling community-based organisations, environmental justice communities, city planners, local and state government agencies, local business-owners, and other stakeholders to work in partnership to achieve community resilience while advocating for local jobs and promoting best practices in pollution prevention. New York City's waterfront policies ease the siting and clustering of public infrastructure, water pollution control plants, waste transfer stations, energy facilities, and heavy manufacturing uses in six areas designated as Significant Maritime and Industrial Areas (SMIAs). The SMIAs are located in environmental justice communities, largely low-income communities and communities of colour, in the South Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. New York City's local waterfront land use and zoning policies create cumulative risk exposure not only to residents and workers in the host waterfront communities, but also, in the event of storm surge or sea-level rise, to neighbouring, upland communities.     

Health,Environmental and Social Justice

Health is a basic human right. Improving health requires social and environmental justice and sustainable development. The 'health for all' movement embraces principles shared by other social movements—in sustainable development, community safety and new economics. These principles include equity, democracy, empowerment of individuals and communities, underpinned by supportive environmental, economic and educational measures and multi-agency partnerships. Health promotion is green promotion and inequality in health is due to social and economic inequality. This paper shows how health, environmental and economic sustainability are inextricably linked and how professionals of different disciplines can work together with the communities they serve to improve local health and quality of life. It gives examples of how local policy and programme development for public health improvement can fit in with global and national policy-making to promote health, environmental and social justice.     

Health, Environmental and Social Justice

Health is a basic human right. Improving health requires social and environmental justice and sustainable development. The 'health for all' movement embraces principles shared by other social movements--in sustainable development, community safety and new economics. These principles include equity, democracy, empowerment of individuals and communities, underpinned by supportive environmental, economic and educational measures and multi-agency partnerships. Health promotion is green promotion and inequality in health is due to social and economic inequality. This paper shows how health, environmental and economic sustainability are inextricably linked and how professionals of different disciplines can work together with the communities they serve to improve local health and quality of life. It gives examples of how local policy and programme development for public health improvement can fit in with global and national policy-making to promote health, environmental and social justice.     

跨流域调水的公正问题——基于环境正义的分析视角

水资源时空分布不均造成的水资源短缺问题已成为阻碍区域发展的重要因素。为了应对区域间的水资源短缺问题,跨流域调水工程作为不同流域水资源优化配置的一种手段,被广泛用于解决水资源分配不均和区域需水不平衡问题。调水工程虽然短期内缓解了水资源压力,平衡了区域间用水需求,但其建设和运营过程对工程所涉区域的地方经济、地理环境、人文环境以及生态环境也造成不同程度的压力。本文通过对当前世界范围内跨流域调水工程的文献回顾,围绕跨流域调水工程所引发的社会公平正义层面的争议,借助环境正义理论的分析方法,通过对国内外调水案例的实践分析,追踪相关环境不公的现象和争议,剖析当前社会—生态冲突的产生机制。最后从我国水生态文明建设实际出发,提出以建立健全水权交易市场,构建"赋权—认同—合作"参与机制和树立"人类命运共同体"理念的解决对策,以期降低调水工程对环境和社会所造成的负面影响,推进水生态正义体系的建设。     

Taking Consumers Seriously: Two Concepts of Consumer Sovereignty

Governments, producers, and international free tradeorganizations like the World Trade Organization (WTO) areincreasingly confronted with consumers who not only buy (or don'tbuy) goods, but also demand that those goods are producedconforming to certain ethical (often diverse) standards. Not onlysafety and health belong to these ethical ideals, but animalwelfare, environmental concerns, labor circumstances, and fairtrade. However, this phantom haunts the dusty world of social andpolitical philosophy as well. The new concept ``consumersovereignty' bypasses the conceptual dichotomy of consumer andcitizen.According to the narrow liberal response to this newconstellation, with respect to food one should conceptualizeconsumer sovereignty as the right of the individual consumer toget information on food products and to make his or her ownchoice on the market of food products. In this conception, thereis a very strong emphasis on rules and principles with respect tothe autonomy of individuals.I argue that these narrow liberal concepts are not sufficient forappropriate public policy-making in democratic societies, andthat they only enable us to identify problems; they do not helpnon-experts (and experts, if it comes to that, as well) inweighing the different ethical claims. Besides, not onlyprinciples play a role in the outcome, but all kinds of ideals aswell, like roles, values, and norms. My principal argument isthat analysis or justification of norms or principles is notsufficient to get a synthesis or construction of ethicalsolutions: we need some value orientation to guide us inbalancing the different ethical claims by solving an ethicalproblem. Moreover, this balancing is something that requiressocial space and social time, i.e., public debates. With theconcept of public debates a whole new dimension enters ethicalanalysis, because the attention of ethicists shifts toformulating criteria of successful and rational public debates.However, in the broad liberal view these concepts aresupplemented with values, preferences, practices of care, andinvolvement. I argue firstly for a broadened perspective on foodas an integral part of life styles and not only as something thatpresents risks. That is the reason that food gets such intensiveattention from the public, which is summarized in the concept ofconsumer concerns. Secondly, I defend the argument that not only(rational) public debates, but intensive commitments of bothproducers and consumers in every link of the chain in so calledcare practices or consumer councils can enhance confidence in thefood production system and the way we extract our daily intakefrom nature.     

Environmental Justice in Canada

Lake Zapotlán is a small (1100 ha) lake in Jalisco state, western Mexico. Two communities are located within the basin (Ciudad Guzman, population ～93,000 and Gomez Farías, population ～12,000). The lake has a productive fishery (annual harvest between 200 and 570 tonnes) comprising tilapia and carp. Extensive beds of rooted and floating Typha latifolia are found in the lake and are used in local handicraft activities. The lake receives untreated sewage from both communities and, as a result, has elevated levels of nutrients and coliform bacteria. Local human health issues, as a possible consequence of this pollution, have been identified. This paper describes a process of identifying potential indicators of ecosystem health, to be used as a management tool in developing a sustainability plan for the lake and its basin.     

Gender analysis and international financial institutions

The following article is an attempt to reconcile the opinions of various activist-oriented non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on the use of gender analysis as a policy tool in the field of international development and macroeconomic policy. Of special concern to the author is the evolving relationship between international financial institutions (IFIs) and grassroots environmental NGOs seeking reform in macroeconomic policy initiation, implementation and evaluation. The ideas presented below are those of the author alone, and are solely intended to facilitate dialogue between the aforementioned parties as an alternative to the characteristic set of untenable demands and concomitant uncompromising resistance. Thus stated, the reader is challenged to remove his/her professional hat to accept or reject the validity of the propositions with an equal proportion of reason and intuition.     

Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources Recent Developments in the Mineral Sector

The United Nations has been concerned with the application of the principle of permanent sovereignty over natural resources and the exercise by developing countries of control over the exploitation of their natural resources for many years. Probably the most serious concern in recent years has been the impact of the world-wide recession on investment in mineral exploration and production facilities in developing countries. Growing difficulties in attracting investment funds have caused a re-examination of existing investment, mining and tax legislation. Recent mineral development agreements assign a higher priority to investment promotion; this reflects a change from earlier years—during the 1960s and 1970s—when many developing countries were in a stronger position because equity and loan capital for mineral projects was more readily available. Pendant de nombreuses années, les Nations Unies se sont préoccupées de la mise en oeuvre par les pays en développement du principe de leur souveraineté permanente sur leurs ressources naturelles ainsi que de l'exercice de leur droit de contrôle sur la mise en production de ces mêmes ressources. En toute vraisemblance, le problème le plus sérieux qui s'est posé au cours de ces dernières années a été le poids de la récession économique mondiale sur les investissements dans les domaines de l'exploration et de la production minières dans les pays en développement. Les difficultés grandissantes à obtenir des capitaux ont conduit à réexaminer les investissements existants ainsi que la législation minière et fiscale. De récents accords de développement minier réservent une priorité plus importante à la promotion des investissements. Ceci reflète un changement par rapport aux années précédentes—celles des décennies 60 et 70—au cours desquelles de nombreux pays en développement avaient une position beaucoup plus forte car il était plus facile de trouver des capitaux propres et des prêts financiers pour les projets miniers. Las Naciones Unidas ha estado interesado en la aplicación del principio de soveranía permanente de los recursos naturales y el ejercicio del control por parte de los países en desarrollo sobre su explotación. Probablemente la mayor preocupación en an?os recientes ha sido el impacto de la recesión mundial de las inversiones en la exploración y producción de minerales en los países en desarrollo. La dificultad creciente en atraer inversiones ha motivado el examen de la legislación existente sobre inversiones, minería e impuestos. Recientes acuerdos sobre desarrollo de minerales asigna mayor prioridad a la promoción de inversiones; esto representa un cambio con respecto a an?os anteriores—décadas del 60 y 70—cuando los países en desarrollo tenían una posición fuerte debido a que el capital de riesgo y préstamos para proyectos en minería eran abundante.