Making [climate] justice for plants

A place for plant life in virtue ethics

Abstract

This article aims to broaden the concept of climate justice so as to include plant life, understanding it not merely as a response to the unequal distribution of environmental harms among human beings, but as a possible response within the broader horizon of multispecies justice. Drawing on virtue ethics, we seek to show that the climate emergency involves not only distributive and corrective injustices, but also injustices of omission, since the devastation of the vegetal world results not only from direct actions but also from passivity in the face of deforestation, monoculture, genetic manipulation, and ecosystem degradation. Building on the work of Hans Jonas, we argue that plants cannot be treated as mere resources, since they possess intrinsic value, their own teleology, and a decisive role in maintaining the conditions of life on Earth. In critical dialogue with Martha Nussbaum—methodologically drawing on her arguments in order to expose the limits of her position—and grounded in the ontological and ethical framework of Hans Jonas, we defend the view that the notion of justice should be extended to plants, understood as living beings whose flourishing must be protected. Finally, we propose that admiration and indignation function as virtues of a vegetal ethics, capable of breaking with anthropocentric indifference and of sustaining a phytocentric ethics and politics oriented toward responsibility, care, and the preservation of biodiversity.