The capabilities approach to justice and human development, as outlined by Sen and Nussbaum, focuses on understanding the conditions required for human flourishing and enabling individuals to pursue the kind of life they value. The capabilities approach was influential in shaping the UN’s Millennium and Sustainable Development Goals. The goals, and international conservation regimes, however, have been criticised for imposing a Western conception of the biosphere that ignores justice due to nonhumans and enables environmental degradation and the destruction of Indigenous peoples, cultures and relationships with Traditional Owner Estates.
We present findings from empirical research on justice in the governance and management of protected areas (PAs) in Tasmania, Australia. Using a version of the capabilities approach that embraces nonhumans, we examine how well Tasmania provides for the flourishing of all resident beings with respect to tourism and recreation in the State’s PAs.
We critically examine how dominant discourses about environmental governance, nature-culture dichotomies and neoliberal capitalism in a settler colonial context have shaped the PA governance and management regime in Tasmania. Using the capabilities approach we explore how the regime fails to recognise the moral considerability of nonhumans and their needs; aims to disrupt, control and dictate the critical relationships between Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples and their country; and fails to recognise the importance of natural areas for the wellbeing of many Tasmanian human residents. We propose some changes to the regulatory regime that could improve the delivery of capabilities justice for all beings.