Sustainable Development and the Agenda of Global Social Justice

This chapter explores the concept of “just sustainability”. The notions of “sustainability” and “social justice” share the common agenda of conservation of nature. As per the Brundtland report, sustainability is conceived as a test of humanity’s ability to meet “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. However, there are different paradigms of sustainability in the literature, namely the “green” or environmental agenda and the “social justice” focused “brown” or poverty reduction agenda. While the more immediate focus of social justice and/or environmental justice (both social justice and environmental justice focus on distributive conceptions of justice: human security issues related to justice, equity, human rights, and poverty reduction, and so on) is intragenerational, the more pressing focus of sustainability is intergenerational. The agendas of “social justice” and “sustainability” thus seem to be conflicting. In this chapter, I focus on the interdependency of social justice/environmental justice and “sustainability” even when sustainability is framed as green environment and social justice focuses on the brown social agenda of poverty reduction. The paper builds on the argument that unless global social justice (intragenerational access) is ensured under a fair social and institutional arrangement, the relationship of economic growth with sustainable development will always remain contentious and sustainable development will remain a mere ideal. I conclude that organisations and institutions must explore the common ground between justice and sustainability.