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Addendum: Operationalizing Life-Coherent Justice Under Conflict, Urgency and Institutional Capture

The Deep Dive, Debate and Critique generated from this paper exposed several important operational questions: how to adjudicate tragic conflicts between protected life claims, prevent ecological urgency from legitimizing sacrifice, resist bureaucratic and metric capture, and construct a realistic pathway from existing power structures toward life-coherent institutions.

This addendum responds by developing a Life-Coherent Tragic Conflict Protocol, clarifying subsidiarity within ecological limits, proposing risk-proportionate review procedures and anti-capture safeguards, and outlining a staged political and financial transition strategy.

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Life-Coherent Architecture (PPT) (PDF)

Life-Coherent Justice Architecture (PPT) (PDF)

Deep Dive | Wealth Caps and 20 Hour Work Weeks

Debate | Global Climate Math vs Local Survival

Critique | A Battle-Ready Global Life Commons Blueprint

Video Explainer | Beyond Global Justice

Cinematic Explainer | The Architecture of Provision: Designing a Life-Coherent Economy

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Click on Master Diagram to enlarge

Publication Note

This white paper offers a constructive engagement with the Global Justice Report: A Plan for Equality & Prosperity Within Planetary Boundaries published by the World Inequality Lab in 2026. It accepts the report’s central achievement: global equality, high well-being, sufficiency and planetary habitability can be analysed as dimensions of a single political-economic transformation rather than as separate policy fields. It then asks what deeper normative and institutional criterion should govern such a transformation.

The argument is developed through four linked principles: universal life necessities, non-sacrifice, regenerative provisioning and the enlargement of living capacities. These are not presented as replacements for income redistribution, decarbonization, public ownership or international monetary reform. They are proposed as the constitutional grammar through which those instruments can remain answerable to the persons, communities and ecosystems they affect.

Abstract

The 2026 Global Justice Report offers one of the most ambitious quantified programmes yet developed for reconciling global equality, material sufficiency and planetary habitability. It integrates income convergence, wealth compression, shorter working time, expanded public services, rapid decarbonization, global taxation, shared ownership and international monetary reform. This paper accepts that achievement while arguing that distributive equality and aggregate ecological compatibility remain necessary but insufficient conditions of justice.

A life-coherent extension is developed around four principles. Universal life necessities establish the conditions that every person must be able to access securely, shifting the objective from income convergence toward effective life-capacity convergence. Non-sacrifice rejects the systematic deprivation of less powerful populations, future generations or ecosystems for aggregate economic, geopolitical or environmental benefit. Regenerative provisioning reconceives the economy as the organized reproduction of bodily, social, institutional and ecological life rather than as an autonomous system for generating monetary value. The enlargement of living capacities defines prosperity through health, knowledge, care, relationship, participation, creative contribution, temporal autonomy, ecological integrity and adaptive agency.

These principles are translated into an institutional architecture comprising a universal civil-commons floor, ecological and power ceilings, life-capacity dividends, non-sacrifice review, regenerative public finance, shared stewardship of productive assets, multidimensional accounting and nested democratic governance. The Global Justice Report’s Global Justice Fund, World Sovereign Fund and proposed monetary institutions are reconstructed as organs of a life-coherent commonwealth. The paper concludes that global justice cannot be completed by distributing income, wealth and environmental burdens more equitably within an unchanged economic grammar. Justice requires institutions recursively answerable to their living consequences: securing universal necessities, preventing displaced harm, repairing damaged relations and enlarging present and future possibilities without treating any people or place as disposable.

Keywords: global justice, life-coherence, universal provisioning, civil commons, non-sacrifice, regenerative economy, capabilities, planetary boundaries, global taxation, democratic governance

Scope and Method

This is a conceptual and synthetic paper rather than an original empirical study. The Global Justice Report and its technical working papers are treated as the primary objects of analysis. Their quantitative claims are represented as modelled scenarios, not forecasts. The report is then placed in conversation with the capabilities and human-needs traditions, ecological economics, Earth-system justice, commons governance, peace research and life-value theory.

Four kinds of claims are distinguished throughout. Empirical and modelled claims describe reported data, estimates and scenarios. Interpretive claims explain the significance of the report’s architecture. Normative claims state the principles by which institutions should be judged. Constructive institutional proposals outline possible mechanisms that require further empirical testing and democratic development. The distinction is essential: a compelling normative direction does not validate every proposed administrative form. The report is then placed in conversation with the capabilities and human-needs traditions (Doyal & Gough, 1991; Gough, 2020; Nussbaum, 2011; Sen, 1999), ecological economics and sufficiency scholarship (Jackson, 2017; Kallis, 2019; O’Neill et al., 2018; Raworth, 2017; Schlesier et al., 2024; Wiedmann et al., 2020), living-systems and commons thought (Maturana & Varela, 1980, 1987; Ostrom, 1990; Polanyi, 2001), peace research (Galtung, 1969) and life-value theory (McMurtry, 2013).

Institutional Reconstruction of the Global Justice Platform

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Original Component	Life-Coherent Reconstruction	Primary Mandate	Accountability Safeguards	Target Outcome (Inferred)
Global Justice Fund	Global Life Commons	Securing universal necessities and regenerative transition through life-floor provision, capability equalization, reparatory repair, crisis solidarity, and knowledge/technology commons.	Reciprocal capability compacts requiring recipient reporting on distribution and affluent state reporting on emissions and financing obligations.	Ensures global funding results in sustained local provisioning capacity rather than temporary project-based relief.
World Sovereign Fund	World Life Stewardship Trust	Holding productive wealth in trust for present and future generations, civil commons, and ecosystems.	Investment hierarchy prioritizing universal necessities over portfolio return; democratization through worker representation and ecological duties.	Socializes the global asset base to prioritize life-sustaining investment over extractive financial yield.
Global taxes	Life-coherent tax constitution	Financing commons, limiting domination, and transferring ownership through contributions that include reparatory repair.	Tax design distinguishing necessary consumption from luxury emissions; coordinated enforcement through asset transparency and beneficial-ownership registries.	Redistributes economic power while ensuring that activities causing ecological harm fund their own restoration.
UN central bank / International currency	Democratic monetary commons	Coordinating claims on real resources to support universal provision and regenerative investment.	Issuance disciplined by productive capacity and ecological limits; protection of national life floors against creditor-imposed austerity.	Provides global liquidity and monetary stability without forcing vulnerable nations to sacrifice social safety nets.
Performance conditions	Reciprocal capability compacts	Jointly defined life-capacity outcomes based on mapping resource and institutional gaps.	Shifts from central targets to inclusive accountability involving affected communities; reports on administrative burden and investment contradictions.	Prevents the punitive nature of traditional aid conditionality by focusing on mutual responsibility for human capabilities.
Equal country dividends	Life-capacity dividends	Equalizing real provisioning capacity across diverse regions.	Formula adjustments for life-floor deficits, ecological vulnerability, historical repair, and institutional capacity.	Enables effective access to basic human needs regardless of a country's starting economic or environmental condition.