Lecture Notes on Sustainability and Justice

Flashcards to review key concepts from lecture notes on sustainability, justice, and environmental issues.

The planetary boundaries framework

Identifies nine Earth system processes that must remain within scientifically defined limits to ensure a stable Holocene-like state.

Nine Earth system processes identified in the planetary boundaries framework

Climate change, biosphere integrity, land system change, freshwater use, biogeochemical flows, ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol loading, stratospheric zone depletion and novel entities such as chemical pollutants.

O’Neill et al. (2018)

Integrate biophysical boundaries with social development indicators to conceptualise a ‘safe and just space for humanity’.

Raworth's Doughnut Economics (2017)

Visualises sustainability between an ecological ceiling that must not be overshot and a social foundation below which human needs are unmet.

Raworth’s Doughnut Economics model argues

Economic systems should be distributive and regenerative by design, rather than reliant on GDP growth.

Policies aligned with degrowth and post-growth scholarship

Prioritise sufficiency, social equity, and ecological resilience.

Blue foods

Vital but under-recognised component of global food systems that contribute key nutrients to over 3 billion people worldwide.

Nash et al. (2022) found that over 20% of …

Marine derived nutrients are exported from nations with high levels of undernutrition, as foreign fishing rights and export-driven policies prioritise profit over local food security.

Food justice

Demanding equitable access to healthy, culturally appropriate food, fair labour practices, and sustainable production methods.

Planetary Health Diet (PHD)

Attempts to align global nutrition with sustainability by recommending diets rich in plant-based foods and low in red meat and ultra-processed products.

Anthropocene

A proposed geological epoch defined by the planetary-scale influence of human activity on Earth’s systems.

Rob Nixon’s (2011) concept of “slow violence”

Environmental harm that is gradual, dispersed, and often invisible.

Sufficiency-based pathways

Prioritise human wellbeing over economic expansion.

Degrowth

Ecological sustainability and justice require a deliberate downscaling of material throughput.

Community resilience

Emphasise local agency and social capital in adapting to climate disruptions.

Arctic Indigenous communities

Are experiencing the fastest and most severe impacts of climate change globally, a phenomenon termed Arctic amplification.

The Inuit Research Strategy (2018)

Shifting climate adaptation from a top-down intervention to a rights-based, relational process.

Whyte (2017) stresses

Integrating IEK into climate policy requires structural change that centres Indigenous governance and sovereignty.

Procedural justice

Those most affected by climate risks play a central role in knowledge production and decision-making.

Rights of nature movement

Reject anthropocentric models of progress and foreground relational ontologies rooted in care, reciprocity and interdependence.

Just transition

The process of shifting towards a low-carbon economy in a way that is socially inclusive and equitable, ensuring that no communities are left behind in the transformation.

Cultural values and behavioural norms

Dominant ideologies of consumerism, anthropocentrism, and growth-based success hinder shifts toward sufficiency and ecological care.

Psychological barriers

Temporal discounting, optimism bias and cognitive dissonance all contribute to individual inaction.

Social norms

Pro-environmental behaviour spreads not through information alone, but through changing the social and material contexts in which people live.