Ben Saul (University of Sydney - Faculty of Law) has posted Climate Change, Resource Scarcity and Distributive Justice in International Law (REVELING IN THE WILDS OF CLIMATE LAW, R. Lyster, ed., Australian Academic Press, 2009) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
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This article considers how international law responds, fails to respond, and ought to respond, to the special global problems (including conflict) posed by increasing resource scarcity, particularly shortages of food, water and energy. It demonstrates that international law has been historically poor at articulating and realizing any aspiration of global distributive justice, despite some promising developments in specialised branches of law such as international environmental law and the law of the sea. It argues that distributive justice is an important global ethical principle which ought to animate and underpin the international legal order, and that there is sufficient global political solidarity and community to enable such a principle to be pursued. Distributive justice can assist in addressing poverty and defusing resource conflicts. Embedding a principle of distributive justice is ultimately likely to enhance the legitimacy of the international legal order which, in the long run, will help to establish the conditions for human dignity, shared prosperity and global peace.
