Environmental Challenges: Justice in Natural Resource Management

Understand the way that thought experiments can be used to generate fundamental principles

Have knowledge of the two principles of justice used in the Theory of Justice

Be introduced to the approach of John Rawls, often regarded as the greatest moral philosopher of the 20th Century

Understand the difference between economic approaches based on the ‘hidden hand’ of a free market, and institutional economics, in which transaction costs are considered to be important

Appreciate the factors that reduce transaction costs

Be introduced to Douglass North, who is often regarded as the father of modern institutional economics

Understand the practical difficulties of applying the principle of equality to decision-making

Be able to perform a simple test to show how collective modes of choice can be logically inconsistent

Be introduced to Ken Arrow, who demonstrated the difficulty of rational choice in social welfare

Be able to recognise the application of Rawls’ principles of justice to policy

Understand the violation of the second principle of justice when applied to saving for future generations

Appreciate that the solution to intergenerational justice is to have fairness in the present generation