ABSTRACT

The capabilities approach was developed as a way of conceptualizing and assessing social and economic development. Its well-known founders are Indian economist Amartya Sen, and American philosopher Martha Nussbaum. Their main aim was to change the terms in which we think about human wellbeing and in which we assess deprivation, equality, and ultimately claims of justice and injustice. Although the capability approach has been hugely influential in development thinking and wider social policy for nearly three decades, its impact on environmental justice work has been fairly modest to date. The chapter provides a potentially constructive and helpful framework that lends itself well to thinking about how environmental matters become matters of justice and injustice. It has resonances with other distributional and procedural formulations of justice as well as justice as recognition, but is distinct in its core focus.