Although ethical and justice arguments operate in two distinct levels in that justice is a more specific concept, these two domains have been usually conflated within the ecological justice literature. This is because moral standing has often been equated with holding membership in the community of justice even though these two are not necessarily the same. For example, just because one convincingly argues that it is wrong to keep farm animals in small cages because it makes them suffer does not automatically lead to the claim that these animals are entitled to a certain amount of space, food and treatment in order for their situation to be (distributively) just. Hence, a justification of ecological justice (i.e. including animals, plants etc. into the justice community) requires starting at the roots of justice and not merely giving an argument for why certain non-human beings have moral standing of some kind. Thus a theory of ecological justice requires a four step justification for including non-human beings into the community of justice and in this paper I will argue that all living beings should be included. In the first step we need to go back to David Hume’s ‘circumstances of justice’ as a foundation for analysing whether the human-nonhuman relationship actually falls within these circumstances or not. The second step is then to define what justice is itself and here I will argue that it is about enabling flourishing. Then, in the third step, one can ask who or what is part of the community of justice, which is constituted of all living beings in the sphere of ecological justice. I will argue in the final step for an amended Lockean sufficiency proviso -- to leave enough so that other beings can flourish -- as an appropriate principle of justice within the context of a finite planet.
