Multispecies Justice
Multispecies Justice (‘MSJ’) is a theory of justice that looks beyond the human to include the interests and claims of Earth others, including other animals, plants, forests, rivers and ecological systems. A multispecies theory of justice in an invitation to expand the core concepts uses to describe and respond to injustice, such as agency, freedom, flourishing, rights, harm, and repair, - to respond to the interests and realities of Earth others and more-than-human communities. It means taking seriously the functioning and flourishing of more-than-human worlds in decisions about how resources and risks are distributed across society, in whose interests are recognised and how, and in matters of institutional and policy design. Ultimately, MSJ is a framework for transforming dominant social, political, legal, and economic systems so as to support the flourishing of all biotic and abiotic Nature, not just that of humankind.
At SEI, the MSJ research collective was conceived in 2018, and became a vital force during and in the wake of the 2019–20 Australian bushfires, the catastrophic impacts of which are still being felt. Our initial insights into the importance of transforming justice so that it is attentive to the realities of the relationships that support all life became compelling as we encountered the damage to human and more-than-human lives and livelihoods caused by the bushfire emergency, together with multiple and intensifying climate-related disasters worldwide and the ravages of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers working across the environmental humanities, Indigenous studies, critical animal studies, history, philosophy, politics, sociology, anthropology, law and more joined together to develop scholarly, creative and multimedia projects addressing, the most urgent justice challenges of the present moment. Moving beyond theoretical transformation, this work has considered what it means to apply a MSJ lens to different dimensions of the planetary crisis, industrial agriculture, and colonial violence, among other precipitants of injustice.
Since its inception, the MSJ research collective has grown and evolved under the stewardship of Professor Danielle Celermajer and Professor David Schlosberg. As the first of its kind to engage with multispecies-informed visions of justice in a deliberate and sustained way, the research collective has shaped MSJ as an field, generating several leading works and contributing to MSJ’s conceptual development and uptake across the world. It has played host to diverse collaborations that cross disciplines and extend beyond the academy to other sites of knowledge production and practice, including the creative arts, activism, government, and industry. Importantly, it has served as a space for dialogue between researchers and other thinkers and actors about conceptions and applications of justice beyond the human, including recognition and representation of Earth others within our legal and political processes, institutions and communities. Collaborative approaches are at the core of our multispecies justice work.
Importantly, we see the collaboration that has been the source of transforming justice through a multispecies lens as one in which Earth others have been active participants. As the humans involved in this project, we recognise the relationships we have with Earth others, including other animals, forest, rivers and more broadly the complex ecologies that form the places where we work as active agents in co-creating new ways of thinking and acting.
Featured research project
Research outputs
COVID-19 catalysed a renewed focus on the interconnected nature of human health. Together with the climate crisis, it highlighted the entanglement of human health with the health of non-human animals, plants, and ecological systems.
In this article published in the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry in 2023, Professor Danielle Celermajer and Philip McKibbin challenge the notion that humans are distinct from the rest of nature and the ethics that flow from this understanding.
To launch the Special Issue of the journal Cultural Politics on Multispecies Justice in 2023, the editors and four contributing authors explored the capitalist and colonial roots of injustices that occur at the sites where they work – in the worlds of First Nations Peoples, in Oceans, in the sites of industrialised animal slaughter, and even in contemporary artworks seeking to resist the erasure of more-than-human lives.
They speculated on how anti- or post-capitalist and anti- or post-colonial forms of life, meanings, and institutional arrangements might create the conditions for justice for all earth beings.
Sydney Environment Institute Deputy Director Danielle Celermajer wrote "Intergenerational Multispecies Justice: No Longer a Leap Elsewhere" for the Australian Humanities Review in 2023.
In June 2022, a panel of SEI experts called for institutionalising justice for all species through key areas of innovation such as international laws on ecocide and the expansion of personhood beyond humans.
Confronting another climate change summer of extreme, it’s obvious the future of humans and the health of the environment are inextricably linked. New theories of justice must respond to this ecological entanglement.
In this issue Professor David Schlosberg and Professor Danielle Celermajer look at a new approach to a growing environmental threat, political economist Beck Pearse discusses economic justice and the future of coal in Australia, we reflect on our series of four symposia with the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences about what justice means in a multispecies context – and more.
The SEI magazine was curated by Michelle St Anne and edited by Liberty Lawson.
Issue 4: The Multispecies Justice Collection (2020) (pdf, 5.2MB)
In June 2019, the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney hosted a series of four symposia featuring University of Sydney and international academics and experts to work in a focused and exploratory way on the question of what justice means in a multispecies context.