News: “The Cultural Roots of Ecological Justice”

Did you know that the first person to use the term “ecological justice” was the American essayist E. B. White in 1966? Or that the first writer to use it in an academic context was Garrett Hardin? In “The Cultural Roots of Ecological Justice,” written for the EU-funded project Speak4Nature, my colleagues and I write about how the concept of ecological justice emerged, while providing a critical reflection on how it easily ends up in conflict with the notion of social justice. The result is an essay in the format of a report, which we at the Rachel Carson Center are planning on republishing later in a more accessible format.

The report can be downloaded here, and even though it is written for the Speak4Nature project, it should be of interest to anyone interested in the notion of ecological justice. The report moreover includes an elaboration of the ecological anthropocentrism I have argued for in my essay “The Inhuman Condition: Rethinking Anthropocentrism” (Springs, 2026).

I was the lead author on this project, but I am very grateful for the contributions of my two co-authors from the Rachel Carson Center, Pilar Peralta Ardila and Andreas Jünger—as well as for the previous work done by our colleagues in the Speak4Nature project.