Life Sciences Commons^™

Just Conservation: What Is It And Should We Pursue It?, John Vucetich, Dawn Burnham, Ewan A. Macdonald, Jeremy T. Bruskotter, Silvio Marchini, Alexandra Zimmermann, David W. Macdonald

Michigan Tech Publications

Efforts to realize conservation are often met with stakeholders contending that particular conservation actions are unfair for conflicting with their basic interests. A useful lens through which to view such conflict is social justice, which may be considered the fair treatment of others judged according three principles: equality, need, and desert (noun form of deserve). We formally demonstrate that (i) the subject of social justice (others) includes many non-human elements of nature and (ii) realizing conservation that is also socially just requires being guided by a non-anthropocentrism principle, whereby no human should infringe on the well-being of others any more …