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- Convenor:
-
Shailaja Fennell
(University of Cambridge)
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- Location:
- F21(Richmond building)
- Start time:
- 6 September, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This panel looks at the ethics of sustainability and uses Rawlsian propositions of social justice as a lens to examine the 'claim' of paternalism in current sustainability models and the alternative emancipatory approaches that question current modes of sustainability analysis.
Long Abstract:
This panel proposes to look at the ethics of sustainability and proposes one line of enquiry based on a Rawlsian lens of social justice that allows us to raise questions from across a range of disciplines- those that would look at revisiting Social Choice theory in the light of Amartya's expanded Collective Choice and Social Welfare volume and to those who wish to have a more directly development/poverty angle on the paternalism of sustainability models that are regarded as impositions by high-income countries.
Another line of enquiry that emerges from the theme of the panel would be to engage with those who are interested in emancipatory approaches, who are driven by concerns about agro-ecology and the situatedness of development to raise concerns and questions about the current modes of economic growth responses to sustainability.
Our intention is to examine both the philosophical underpinnings of sustainability in the sphere of development studies, as well as an exploration of more innovative proposal of metrics of sustainability. We regard the proposed panel as being a good fit for the theme of the DSA 2017 conference, and we see it as an opportunity to bring together scholars from across the social sciences. This will facilitate a discussion that arches from evaluation of conventional economic growth models to the interrogation by radical critiques of growth using a social justice approach. We are keen to have scholarly and practitioner interactions that enrich our understanding of sustainability as a concept as well as bottom up experiences of sustainability.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Joel Matthews (Diablo Valley College)
Paper short abstract:
Exploitation and coercion harden indigenous West Africans against development interventions. To combat these impediments, agencies must craft new policies that mandate field-level corruption checks, guidelines detailing value change objectives, and preference for supporting indigenous innovations.
Paper long abstract:
As development planners have devised new means of introducing sustainable practices, many African communities have been unresponsive, or even hostile. Are these communities so steeped in tradition that they are unwilling to adopt new ideas and techniques?
I offer two alternate explanations for resistance among West African farmers: "Forced value change" involves development agencies pressuring project participants to adopt the values held by the development agency, and "systematic corruption" involves resource capture by locally-hired development facilitators.
Linking arguments in the literature with field observations, I suggest that constant pressure to change beliefs, values, and behavior forces West African farmers to drop out of project participation. In addition, farmers complain about corruption, claiming that they are being systematically cheated, exploited, and excluded from the development process, which often occurs without the knowledge of project directors.
Several strategies for overcoming these widespread problems are proposed. Forced value change is a problem primarily because it occurs surreptitiously. Thus, agencies must be transparent about value change objectives, both at the institutional level and local project level. Second, local-level corruption is primarily the result of heavy funding and project manager ignorance. Thus, mandated corruption checks and a shift in project emphasis to supporting indigenous innovation could help eliminate corruption. Mandating corruption checks will force managers into the field to verify that intended beneficiaries are receiving project deliverables. Focusing on indigenous initiatives will reduce involvement of exploitative development agents since these ventures tend to be small-scale and labor intensive rather than capital intensive.
Des Gasper (Erasmus University Rotterdam)
Paper short abstract:
Interests of vulnerable people are often marginalized in climate change assessment. The paper identifies how. It also explores two examples: debate on health impacts of climate change; and how far the latest IPCC Assessment Report considered specific types of persons with specific vulnerabilities.
Paper long abstract:
Interests of vulnerable low-income people are often marginalized in climate change assessments. Climate change research has been dominated by natural sciences and does not focus on human deaths or on particular vulnerable groups like small children. Some groups are excluded by insistence on a specific type of data or an established quantitative model. Deserving special mention are the downgrading of attention to: extreme weather events; hard-to-predict and low-probability(in any one year)-but-very-high-damage possible system-shifts; cross-sector effects, left out by research that separately estimates impacts within sectors to allow precise calculation. Priority is given to avoiding the 'risk' of not being confident in estimates, above the risk of major life-damage to weaker groups. Methods like aggregative monetized evaluations and discounting downgrade vulnerable groups and future generations. Last, 'conservatism' permeates each stage of estimation, not only those above. 'Conservative' here means low, often demonstrably too low, to reduce opposition from backers of fossil-fuelled economic growth. Two examples are explored in depth. Analysis of IPCC's latest Assessment Report shows that it neglects specific types of persons with specific risks, exposures and vulnerabilities. The implications of climate change for poor people remain obscured. Second, in the debate on impacts on human health from climate change arising from an affluent individual's consumption, the precautionary principle is applied to safeguard the interests of the already privileged, to avoid the 'risk' that emissions might be 'unnecessarily' reduced; risk of possible serious damage to the lives of vulnerable people is tolerated. The paper concludes with reflection on possible responses.
Adam Lerner (University of Cambridge)
Paper short abstract:
This paper argues that collective trauma exposes a fallacy of composition within Rawls' Theory of Justice. By employing the Bhopal gas leak disaster as an example, the paper outlines how a paradox inherent in collective trauma should check development policy's reliance on Rawlsian theory.
Paper long abstract:
Rawls' original position and veil of ignorance theoretically form an idealized basis for a social contract and, in turn, good governance. But beyond frequent libertarian critiques, Rawls' theory also encounters a fallacy of composition to the extent that it assumes hyper-rationality among its subjects can lead to a hyper-rational social system. This becomes especially apparent in the case of state disaster response to collectively traumatic events. Behind the veil of ignorance, one would assume that, should misfortune strike one faction of society, rational individuals would expect the collective to take on this trauma as its own and enact policies to address the injustice. But, while somewhat logical, this assumption belies the very nature of collective trauma, which erodes trust in institutions and defies communicability. In this paper, I will examine this paradox as manifested in the debate over the 1985 Bhopal Act following the 1984 Bhopal gas leak disaster. The act effectively nationalized disaster management, transferring responsibility for legal action and compensation distribution from survivors to the Indian central government, effectively paving the way for an unjust outcome in Indian courts years later. Yet, at the time of its passage and even today, many Bhopal survivors and their advocates support the law as a rational legal strategy, though they vehemently with the Indian government's execution of it. I argue that this paradox exposes a key limitation of Rawls' theory, vital for consideration by development policymakers who frequently encounter collective trauma and debate the merits of national versus grassroots responses.
Shachi Amdekar (University of Cambridge)
Paper short abstract:
The following paper considers the ethical discussions that arise with radical proposals for a sustainable economics, such as that of Marglin (2013). It examines their theoretical — arguably Malthusian — foundations, and proposes using an actor-centric evolutionary lens to resolve variations.
Paper long abstract:
The Malthusian question appears to have over-delivered; the resolute emphasis in neoclassical growth models on unbridled production is arguably testament to its solution. However, the theoretical and ethical underpinnings of that problem — for example, the acceptance of human imperfectability, of disparate rules to counter regional variances, and of the notion of satisficing — remain highly relevant in understanding equitable global sustainability today.
Radical proposals to address sustainability warrant the complete reorientation of economic rules; in Marglin's model (2013), the aim is to lower collective productive capacity. In a discursive response article, Amdekar and Singh (2014) rather focus on capacity for green technology and extrapolate Marglin's ideas to the extent of a fully accountable, circular model of the economy, based on the naturalist or evolutionary principles (Singer, 1993).
Various ethical systems of thought are considered in the following paper, each of which may expound upon this type of expanded vision of Marglin's. To this end, the paper first reflects on the sustainability problem from its theoretical, arithmetical origins in the pursuit of Malthusian optimality, and then examining how inconsistencies in those ethical ideas may be resolved by using an actor-centric evolutionary lens.
Ga Young So (Korea Institute of Public Administration)
Paper short abstract:
This paper introduces Saemaul Undong, Korea's rural development model, which is now exported as an ODA. It is an innovative ODA model which encourages and respects autonomy of ODA recipients by leavng the decision-making up to villages completely.
Paper long abstract:
This research investigates Saemaul Undong, Korea's rural development movement during the mid-late twentieth century. It consists of three parts: firstly, description of Saemaul Undong in Korea; secondly, illustration of Saemaul Undong as an ODA; finally, aligning the key element of Saemaul Undong, respecting autonomy and responsibility of villagers, with the ethical principles from Rawls' social justice and Sen's collective choice.
Korea's central government initiated Saemaul Undong in order to save the rural area from the war-ridden situation. It focused on small scale villages with the minimal involvement of the government. The government's involvement was to provide parcels of cement to each village. Then, it was completely up to villagers for decision-making and implementation. This interaction between the government and villagers is the crucial element for its success, resulting in seeding autonomy and responsibility of villagers for their village's development.
Saemaul Undong has been exported to rural areas in low-income countries and certified as the UNESCO's best practice for rural development. A case of Uganda's Saemaul Undong proves how the decision-making process was up to villagers. Its encouragement and respect for villagers' autonomy is a crucial element that complements the ethical gaps of sustainability by enlarging choices of individuals in low income countries.
In conclusion, this paper establishes that Saemaul Undong is an innovative ODA which breaks the dichotomist separation between recipients and providers of ODA.
Aneta Tyc (University of Lodz)
Paper short abstract:
Taking into account the Rawlsian theory, the author presents the linkage between the global trade and labour standards, and identifies opportunities to improve the regulation of global processes towards providing economic growth and social justice.
Paper long abstract:
Exploitative working conditions within the global labour market form what Rawls named "conditions of background injustice". The author refers the Rawlsian definition of "social practice" to institutions and rules regulating labour relations on national and supranational levels. She employs an interpretation of the social practice of labour that justifies extending the scope of justice worldwide.
Supporters of the linkage between labour and trade argue that countries which do not respect the ILO core labour standards gain competitive advantage what can result in a "race to the bottom". Critics claim that protectionism and "false humanitarianism" is hidden behind this concept. Despite a long debate, there is still a need to respond to the plight of many workers, and to identify opportunities to improve the regulation of global processes towards providing not only economic growth, but also social justice and the effectiveness of fundamental labour rights. Thus, the author focuses on some attempts to do so, mainly: whether labour standards should be left to the ILO, included in the WTO agenda or both forces should be combined; whether the inclusion of a social clause in trade agreements could improve the situation of workers; whether the imposition of trade sanctions on countries which do not adhere to the core labour standards could ensure the extension of fundamental rights of workers on their citizens; whether the concept of a global labour and trade framework agreement (GLTFA), i.e. the proposal based on international framework agreements and ILO tripartite system, may solve the problem.
Shailaja Fennell (University of Cambridge) Rekha Bhangaonkar (University of Cambridge)
Paper short abstract:
The paper examines the interactions between human and natural resource ecologies in adopt successful agricultural innovations. We propose an bottom up approach that locates ethics in the everyday interactions of local households, using examples from the sphere of watershed management.
Paper long abstract:
The inability of mainstream economic methodologies to explain the many different responses to introduced innovations into rural development (often portrayed as irrational behaviour) has led to alternative theories of innovation that focus on innovative that arises out of local and repeated agricultural practice. For example, innovation is a central element in the development of livelihoods, underlining the dynamic and multi-dimensional aspects of rural development (Ellis, 2000). The broadening of the livelihoods framework by interlinking human and natural resource ecologies to understand the dynamics of livelihood systems and decisions to adopt new technologies has more recently been adopted in the natural resource management (NRM) literature (Vermuellen et. al. 2010)
This paper takes the literature of bottom up rural development forward by drawing on the recent work on energy justice and its relationship to Kantian ethics, which regards each person as an end (Sovacool and Dworkin, 2016). We take up their argument that it is important to identify realistic utopias (Rawls, 1999) to understand the goals of development as set out by participants in the development process. The rationale for devising our project is that vulnerability should not be located at the level of a single household but rather within a socio-cultural-political context of the rural community (Fennell, 2010). We use primary data collected on from rural households to examine the role of water users associations management, a local institutional form, to examine whether farmers regard bottom up sharing mechanisms as ethical practices for increasing the capability of small farmers and increasing the sustainability of rural development.
Rekha Bhangaonkar (University of Cambridge)
Paper short abstract:
The overarching framework in analysis of adaptive capacity (AC), defines links between exposure, sensitivity, AC and vulnerability. Process of building up AC to tackle the effects of climate variability on agricultural income, with focus on contribution of land and water resources is addressed here.
Paper long abstract:
The overarching framework in analysis of adaptive capacity (AC), defines the links between exposure, sensitivity, AC and vulnerability. Broadly, exposure is defined with respect to change in climatic conditions (gradual as well as sporadic changes), sensitivity is the probability of such variations in climatic conditions, and AC engages with the ability of a system to cope with climatic change. While impact of climatic change has many manifestations, this study in particular looks at the effect of climate change on rainfed agricultural communities located in the semi-arid regions of tropical India. Nearly half of the population of India depends on agriculture as the primary means of livelihood and two-thirds of them depend on seasonal rainfall to grow their crops. Climate variability and change in average climatic conditions have caused agricultural income here to be more vulnerable. This paper aims to understand the process of building up AC to tackle the effects of climate variability on agricultural income. Focus is placed on the contribution of land and water resources in this regard. Two sites where watershed development projects were implemented in the 1990s and are referred to as successful watershed development projects in the secondary literature are studied. Notably, this successful intervention in both the sites were brought about by two different development agencies, however, both were major stakeholders in state level decisions on policies and planning. Primary data collected along with secondary data analysis is resorted to for this purpose.