Toward eco-justice for all - Environmental Harm: An Eco-justice Perspective - page 163

2009: 1186). Hence, the importance of 'thresholds' vis-à-vis the level
of environmental harm acceptable or allowable.
What we need to weigh up, therefore, is not only the type and
degree of harm as this pertains to humans, eco-systems and animals.
We also need to assess the type and degree of harm, in particular places
(including global spaces), and how these harms have an impact on
humans, eco-systems and animals over time. To not kill the seal at point
A, is to ensure the demise of fish at point B, and the desolation of human
communities at point C. To kills seals may be 'wrong' in absolutist terms,
but what if the failure to cull seal herds compounds the suffering of
human and nonhuman alike into the future, including members of the
seal colony itself? Justice demands answers to such questions. The four
propositions outlined above provide some indication of the principles
by which this might be achieved.
Conclusion: where to from here?
This topic has explored the topic of environmental harm by examining
three interrelated but different approaches to justice. Environmental
justice is primarily concerned with humans and issues of social justice
in regards to healthy environments. Ecological justice is oriented
toward eco-systems and biospheres, and the health of the biotic and
abiotic in particular geographical and ecological spaces. Species justice
is driven by considerations of animal welfare and animal rights. Each
justice-based approach has much to offer to our understanding of the
moral and ethical issues surrounding human practices that do harm.
We began by noting a major moral fissure as identified by Piers
Beirne (2011). This is that, namely, different writers within the broad
green criminology camp view their projects in distinctive ways, and
in ways that inevitably conflict with each other. Specifically, it can
be seen that the natural resource management focus of conservation
criminology presents environmental issues in instrumental terms that
belie the rights focus of those concerned with species justice and the
welfare of animals. This is a divide that at the very least needs to be
explicitly acknowledged rather than steadfastly ignored as appears to
some to presently be the case (see Beirne, 2011).
Tensions also exist within and across the justice approaches examined
in this topic. This is illustrated by disputes between animal welfare and
animal rights activists. It is also apparent in discussions of ecological
justice, in which there are disagreements over whether humans are part
of nature or apart from nature and, concretely, whether it is sensible
or not to talk of a 'pristine nature'. Some of these debates are based