The Imperative of Redistribution in an Age of Ecological Overshoot: Human Rights and Global Inequality

Legal scholars worry that the human rights framework offers little leverage against the problem of economic inequality.  By contrast, I argue that Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the right to an adequate standard of living) does provide such leverage.  Given the realities of ecological overshoot, if we want to ratchet up the incomes of the poor in order to satisfy their rights under Article 25, we can no longer rely on the usual strategy of aggregate economic growth.  Instead, this objective requires shifting existing income from the global rich to the global poor.