An interdisciplinary group of scholars at Cornell University and Carleton University, Canada, has initiated a joint project on "Global Environmental Change and Social Justice." The Social Science Research Council is co-sponsoring the project, and it is administered by the Peace Studies Program at Cornell. In a series of three workshops and a final conference scheduled for September 1993, participants will examine in depth the ethical issues posed by global environmental change and national and international policy choices. Issues to be covered include the moral standing of the environment, the role of science in framing environmental issues, the competing claims of different levels of community, and the ethical problems posed by environmental refugees and resettlement policies. These issues have been relatively neglected in the general discourse on environmental change. This project will begin to elucidate a framework for making practical ethical judgments about environmental issues and to link that framework to discussions of the politics of global environmental change. Selected papers from the workshops and conference will be published in an edited book.
