The problem of social justice in environmental peacebuilding: Between thin and thick justice in Liberia

Abstract

Recent research on environmental peacebuilding has encouraged scholars to move away from technocratic definitions of peace and to pay greater attention to how peacebuilding policies interact with pre-existing relations of power, domination and capital accumulation. This article builds on this work to examine a rarely explored dimension of environmental peacebuilding: social justice. Using the case of Liberia, we argue that environmental peacebuilding policies offer a context for the expression of diverse claims and expectations framed in terms of social justice. Our analytical framework argues that these competing conceptions of justice can be categorised along a continuum ranging from ‘thin’ to ‘thick’ approaches. Empirically, we examine how thick and thin conceptions of justice are elaborated by multiple actors, including aid agencies, NGOs, advocacy organisations and ordinary people. As we move from the analysis of policy design to the study of forestry at the local level, we show how a thin conception of social justice is adopted by governments and the development industry, and what the implications of this choice are. We conclude that thin conceptions can contribute to the consolidation of exploitative and unequal power relations.