Normative Challenges: Justice, Obligations and Rights

Abstract

The third dimension of environmental governance explored here is the normative framework. A framework of norms and principles provides ethical as well as legal and practical guidance (should they choose to follow it) for actors involved directly or indirectly in making, implementing and enforcing decisions about how best to respond to the globalized challenges of environmental change. As earlier chapters have shown, the global politics of the environment has become characterized by fundamental inequities and injustices. At the same time, there is some confusion about the range of rights and responsibilities which attend upon states and other actors in dealing with environmental challenges in a way which takes account of and seeks to overcome those inequities.