No abstract

This essay seeks to open a conversation about multispecies justice in environmental politics. It sets out some of the theoretical approaches, key areas of exploration, and obvious challenges that come with rethinking a core plank of liberal theory and politics. First, we discuss some of the diverse scholarly fields that have influenced the emergence of multispecies justice. We then discuss core concerns at the centre of this reconfiguration of justice-including broadening conceptions of the subject of justice and the means and processes of recognition (and misrecognition). The importance of deconstructing and decolonising the hegemony of liberal political discourse is crucial, and is part of a larger project for multispecies justice to rework a politics of knowledge and practice of political communication. Finally, we begin to explore what a commitment to multispecies justice might demand of politics and policy. KEYWORDS Multispecies justice; environmental justice; environmental political theory Introduction: laying out the terrain of multispecies justice We began this in the midst of a fossil-fueled climate disaster. Bushfires raged across Australia laying waste to ecosystems and billions of the nonhuman beings and relationships that make up this place. This reality is neither a natural disaster nor a tragedy, but injustice-albeit injustice that cannot be contained by standard notions of that concept. The impacts of these and other ecological disasters generated by industrialization and capitalism demand an approach to idea and practice of justice that can encompass and respond to the destruction of multispecies lifeways. Here, we lay out an introduction to multispecies justice (MSJ), suggest theoretical approaches that contribute to it, key areas of exploration, and the challenges of rethinking justice.

Research is increasingly identifying the issues of ecological distress, eco-anxiety and climate grief. These painful experiences arise from heightened ecological knowledge and concern, which are commonly considered to be de facto aims of environmental education. Yet little research investigates the issues of climate change anxiety in educational spaces, nor how educators seek to respond to or prevent such emotional experiences. This study surveyed environmental educators in eastern Australia about their experiences and strategies for responding to their learners’ ecological distress. Educators reported that their students commonly experienced feeling overwhelmed, hopeless, anxious, angry, sad and frustrated when engaging with ecological crises. Educators’ strategies for responding to their learners’ needs included encouraging students to engage with their emotions, validating those emotions, supporting students to navigate and respond to those emotions and empowering them to take climate action. Educators felt that supporting their students to face and respond to ecological crises was an extremely challenging task, one which was hindered by time limitations, their own emotional distress, professional expectations, society-wide climate denial and a lack of guidance on what works.

No abstract

In 2019, the climate emergency entered mainstream debates. The normative frame of climate justice as conceived in academia, policy arenas, and grassroots action, although imperative and growing in popularity across climate movements, is no longer adequate to address this emergency. This is for two reasons: first, as a framing for the problem, current notions of climate justice are insufficient to overcome the persistent silencing of voices belonging to multiple “others”; and second, they do not question, and thus implicitly condone, human exceptionalism and the violence it enacts, historically and in this era of the Anthropocene. Therefore, we advocate for the concept of multispecies justice to enrich climate justice in order to more effectively confront the climate crisis. The advantage of reconceptualizing climate justice in this way is that it becomes more inclusive; it acknowledges the differential histories and practices of social, environmental, and ecological harm, while opening just pathways into uncertain futures. A multispecies justice lens expands climate justice by decentering the human and by recognizing the everyday interactions that bind individuals and societies to networks of close and distant others, including other people and more‐than‐human beings. Such a relational lens provides a vital scientific, practical, material, and ethical road map for navigating the complex responsibilities and politics in the climate crisis. Most importantly, it delineates what genuine flourishing could mean, what systemic transformations may involve (and with whom), how to live with inevitable and possibly intolerable losses, and how to prefigure and enact alternative and just futures. This article is categorized under: Climate, Nature, and Ethics > Climate Change and Global Justice