Employing Methods of Reflective Equilibrium to Operationalise Ideal–Typical Principles of Justice in the Context of Climate and Environmental Crises

The climate and environmental crises are expected to have heterogeneous impacts within and between human societies. While this has led philosophers and political scientists alike to explore the principles of justice that can structure and guide policymakers’ responses to such crises, less research has been advanced on how to pragmatically implement such normative principles in policymaking praxis. This chapter paper begins by underlining the similarities between climate, energy, and environmental justice, in order to stress the need for integrated approaches to interwoven crises. After outlining wide reflective equilibrium as a tried and tested method for fine-tuning ideal–typical justice principles, it goes a step further by proposing “applied wide reflective equilibrium” for the cogent implementation of justice principles in non-ideal circumstances. In doing so, the chapter paper seeks to reconcile an originally Rawlsian method with Sen’s perspective on situations of injustice.