Justice, neoliberal natures, and Australia's water reforms

Scholars studying the neoliberalisation of nature (and political ecologists more broadly) have been notably concerned with justice, but have underspecified their own conceptions of justice and have failed to seriously question or investigate what kind (or kinds) of justice is actually being pursued in the context of neoliberalism. In this paper, I argue that a more robust treatment of justice is required, building on recent calls for a more reflexive approach to normativity in critical human geography. I make this argument by drawing on a study examining how justice has been mobilised in Australia's neoliberal water reforms, and particularly through a series of semistructured interviews with water policymakers and industry professionals. I show that the justice being pursued through these reforms is multivalent, but coalesces around an allocative framework I call the 'basic needs plus market' framework. This framework ultimately finds its moral compass in a utilitarian conception of distributive justice, and this utilitarianism both facilitates neoliberalisation and tempers its expression. Understanding neoliberalisation as a means to broader normative ends, I suggest, has considerable potential for both explaining the contradictions and contestations scholars have argued are intrinsic to 'actually existing neoliberalism' and opening up opportunities for productive critique and engagement.