Doing the right thing: Ethics and justice in environmental politics

‘Environmental justice’ is a label long-applied to social movements which, at different scales and with different ideological orientations, seek to connect environmental protection with social justice. A similar case, on specific theoretical grounds, has been made by Marx-inspired, ‘political ecology’ movements and intellectuals. Yet in the last twenty years a tendency can be observed towards a weakening of this link. Environmental problems are increasingly depicted as something involving all and everybody on basically the same level. This generalization goes hand in hand with a growing individualization of responsibilities and actions. The depoliticization of environmental issues and struggles, on which no major divides can be found according to traditional left-right alignments, builds on four factors: globalization of threats, manufacturability of nature and uncertainty, technicization of policies and ethicization of behaviours. Taken together these tenets represent what Foucault would define a power/knowledge or truth regime that dramatically narrows the scope of ‘doing the right thing’, wide-ranging consequences of which are the securitization of life, the commodification of nature and the fundamental failure of policy action (as the likely demise of Kyoto testifies).

The pillars of this regime hold on each other, yet I will argue about the pivotal role of ethics; a role that can be observed at both individual and collective level. The growing relevance of ethics has been extensively elaborated by the governmentality scholarship, yet its emancipatory or subjecting implications remain contentious. Is ethics beneficial or detrimental to justice? To make a step forward I first elaborate on the differences between ancient and current ethics, as resulting especially from the Foucault-Hadot debate; second, I elaborate on the notion of power, at the intersection of three semantic fields; third, I apply these insights to the emergent lines of political division vis-à-vis the economic crisis and the degradation and appropriation of nature.