Global environmental architectures have the potential to reduce inequalities, however, legal, and political procedures and structures may also increase injustices and disempowerment. Multilateral environmental agreements create large regimes over some of the most expansive planetary systems. Contracting states list the purposes, motivations and considerations that led them to conclude legally binding agreements in treaty preambles that are an interpretive tool, a declaration of context, motivation, and intent of the contracting states or parties. This study produces an environmental justice conceptual framework that references the scholarship on environmental justice and environmental governance, outlines the elements required to introduce environmental justice debates into treaty preambles, and gives an example of its application to determine whether the preambles include justice concepts. The preambles selected are from treaties with broad geographic and subject matter scope: they regulate oceans, climate, and biodiversity, the transport of waste, mercury pollution, migratory and endangered species, and wetlands. Using the environmental justice conceptual framework, the study found a justice gap between how justice is addressed in justice debates and literatures and the stated intent of the contracting parties in the preambles. The conclusions support the literature that argues that multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) are ahistorical as regards the moral responsibility that lies at the heart of the definitions of justice.

中文翻译：

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条约序言和环境正义差距

全球环境架构具有减少不平等的潜力，然而，法律和政治程序和结构也可能增加不公正和权力丧失。多边环境协议为一些最广阔的行星系统建立了庞大的制度。缔约国在条约序言中列出了导致它们达成具有法律约束力的协议的目的、动机和考虑因素，这些协议是缔约国或缔约方的解释工具、背景声明、动机和意图。本研究产生了一个环境正义概念框架该文献引用了环境正义和环境治理奖学金，概述了将环境正义辩论引入条约序言所需的要素，并举例说明其应用以确定序言是否包含正义概念。选定的序言来自具有广泛地理和主题范围的条约：它们规范海洋、气候和生物多样性、废物运输、汞污染、迁徙和濒危物种以及湿地。使用环境正义概念框架，该研究发现在正义辩论和文献中如何解决正义与缔约方在序言中陈述的意图之间存在正义差距。结论支持文献认为多边环境协定 (MEA) 就位于正义定义核心的道德责任而言是非历史性的。