42. Intensive animal agriculture, land-use and biological conservation: converging demands of justice

Intensive animal agriculture’s high social-ecological footprint is relevant to debates such as on biological conservation and ecological sustainability. However, it does not feature prominently in the (small but growing) conservation sub-literature on ‘just’ land-use that considers different aims of biological conservation as well as intra-human justice concerns. For instance, the difference in visions of biodiversity conservation, which are often themselves based on diverging value commitments such as having ecocentric or anthropocentric foundations, can be illustrated by the controversy about the so-called Half Earth proposal. In this context, we would like to stress that these differences should not be overstated. For one, different value commitments can – in some cases – still compromise on similar practical implications such as shrinking intensive animal agriculture. Secondly, whilst it is certainly possible to take either a purely anthropocentric perspective, which only finds instrumental value outside of humanity, or, in contrast, a rather misanthropic perspective which reduces humans to the role of ‘ecological sinners’, we would like to illustrate that less polarising middle ground positions are also available that acknowledge the importance of intra-human and interspecies justice. In other words, taking a planetary justice perspective which is the primary focus of this paper. Here again the reduction of intensive animal agriculture is presented as a possible route of addressing some forms of the respective injustices.