What's law got to do with it? Why environmental justice is essential to ecosystem service valuation

The purpose of this paper is to show that bringing together legal science and other sciences in integrated valuation of ecosystem services can contribute for environmental justice and ensure fair and acceptable answers to complex real life questions. Legal science provides the teleological framework necessary to prevent ethical deadlocks.To this end, different forms of environmental justice are addressed. Distributive justice, commutative justice, retributive justice, restorative justice and procedural justice are five types of environmental justice, the content of which is explained using illustrative examples of environmental “injustices”.Next, these justice forms are applied to fourteen wicked legal questions, covering both public and private law, both international and national law, is presented. The questions demonstrate how Integrated Ecosystem Services valuation can be used to address societal challenges related to humanitarian protection, State responsibility, ecological damage, access to natural resources, use of economic instruments for environmental protection, effective environmental sanctioning, access to information, etc.This paper confirms the potential uses of integrated valuation of ecosystem services in the pursuit of social and environmental goals when legal science and other natural and social sciences are brought together to operationalize ecosystem services.