And Justice for All? Energy Justice in International Law

As the World Bank Inspection Panel has pertinently observed, energy activities can bring significant benefits, including bolstering economic development and, ultimately, standards of living, but they can also have ‘adverse effects on the livelihood and environment of communities living in the production areas and near the pipelines’ with social and political conflict rooted in the ‘inequitable social relations that underlie the production and distribution of profits’ and ‘adverse impact on … fragile ecosystem[s]’. (West African Gas Pipeline Project, 2008). More recently, the increasing vogue for privatization of essential services such as energy—and increasing use of Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs)—has been linked with the systematic elimination of human rights protections and further marginalization of the interests of low-income earners and those living in poverty (Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, 2018). The Sustainable Development Goals reflect a potentially uneasy compromise between conceptions of the state as provider—and guarantor of social and economic justice—and ‘mere private sector facilitator’. The purpose of this chapter is to assess the extent to which (and what) notions of energy justice permeate attempts internationally to achieve ‘ecologically sustainable development’ of energy resources.