SITUATING JUSTICE IN THE ENVIRONMENT - THE CASE OF BHP AT THE OK TEDICOPPER MINE

The rubric of sustainable development has now gained wide theoretical and political acceptance in the global community. However, after the R io Declaration, each nation must now confront the specific question of how to decide between those industries and activities that are sustai nable and those that are not when conflicting social and ecological in terests are at stake. Any fundamental change to resource allocation wi ll have social distributional consequences, and the issue of justice t herefore becomes a critical element of any sustainability formulation. This paper contributes to this debate by exploring the potential for a politically grounded theory of justice in and to the environment. Mo re specifically, we argue for a situated analysis that nevertheless re tains the postulate of a neo-Kantian universal ethic as the foundation for,global institutions that could integrate and safeguard the princi ples of justice and ecological responsibility underpinning most notion s of sustainability. We show this by locating the question of justice in a particular conflict of interest, that between the Australian mini ng giant Broken Hill Proprietary, Ltd., and the traditional landowners of an area on the Ok Tedi river in Papua New Guinea.