Interference with other beings’ responsibilities constitutes environmental injustice
Evidence
Deborah McGregor, in her work with Josephine Mandamin and Anishinaabe women’s water movements, discusses how to think systematically about the diff erent lives that water supports. Water supports “plants/medicines, animals, people, birds, etc.” and—reciprocally—there is “the life that supports water (e.g., the earth, the rain, the fi sh).” Th e system is based on responsibilities such that “water has a role and a responsibility to fulfi l, just as people do” (2009: 37–38). McGregor writes that “All beings have responsibilities to fulfi ll, and recognizing this contributes to a holistic understanding of justice. Our interference with other beings’ ability to fulfi l their responsibilities is an example of a great environmental injustice, an injustice to Creation” (40). — Kyle Whyte, Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and…, 22
Categorization
- XREF: Frames environmental injustice as disruption of others’ ability to fulfill responsibilities — a useful counter-definition to settler frameworks where injustice is rights-violation; ties to Legal Systems’ Indigenous law thread. — connects to: Settler colonialism is ecological domination that rebuilds Indigenous homelands into settler ecologies. — Kyle Whyte, Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and…, 65; Settler violence and dispossession are ecological harms when measured by relational resilience — Kyle Whyte, Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and…, 97; The climate crisis is indivisible yet unevenly felt as injustice — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 816 (+1 more)
- DEFINE: Introduces a systemic-responsibility conception of justice that underpins collective continuance.