In the context of a multitude of environmental crises and in regard to considerations about distributive justice in particular, it has become apparent that the circumstance of scarcity plays an important role for the articulation of appropriate principles of justice. Based on the assumption that ecological space is (to a degree) finite, considering different scarcity scenarios becomes highly relevant in order for considerations of distributive justice to be able to make recommendations for a world shaped by scarcity, which in turn is where distributive justice becomes most salient. This issue is the focus of this chapter.

Despite the preparatory reflections in the previous chapters, there is still a lot of ground to cover. I begin by looking more closely at the character of scarcity of ecological space in the first section and then turn to the demands of environmental and ecological justice in moderate scarcity scenarios. Based on this, I will introduce a grid of different principles of justice that follow from different, more demanding, scarcity scenarios in section three. Finally, in section four, I will sketch some of the theoretical space surrounding this distributive justice framework by highlighting, among other things, its links with environmental virtue ethics.

Scarcity of ecological space

As discussed in Chapter 3, there is an influential paradigm in political theorising according to which distributive justice is only considered in circumstances of moderate scarcity where all needs could theoretically be met. Yet we also want a theory of justice to account for situations where scarcity is more severe. As argued by Donald Hubin, moderate scarcity is not even an accurate description of the circumstance of moderate scarcity underlying most theories of distributive justice because ‘while goods are assumed to be scarce relative to desire for them, they are abundant relative to our minimal needs’ (Hubin 1989, p. 185). Thus, Hubin concludes that moderate scarcity ‘might as well be called “moderate abundance” ‘ (1989, p. 185). Thus, the concept of moderate scarcity is actually not really about actual scarcity at all. This is troublesome insofar as material scarcity is one of the main complications of distributive justice in particular and, in general, a major obstacle to achieving some kind of sustainability, an important feature of which is the acknowledgment of limits.