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- Convenors:
-
Julio Alejandro Caceda Adrianzen
(Goethe University)
Lukas Sparenborg (Goethe University Frankfurt)
Darrel Moellendorf
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- Chairs:
-
Julio Alejandro Caceda Adrianzen
(Goethe University)
Darrel Moellendorf
- Format:
- Thematic Panel
- Theme:
- Environment and sustainable development
Short Abstract:
The panel seeks to suggest ways to better understand sustainable human development: 1) must include Holocene stability and the need to use technologies; 2) the fight against climate change, as a commitment to sustainability, is against structural economic and political injustices; 3) implies different kinds of responsibilities to different beings, but not all are moral.
Long Abstract:
The international community through the United Nations has committed to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. At the heart of all the goals is the idea of sustainable human development, which, following the Brundtland Report, is defined as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (UN-SDGs). Despite these goals that delineate the components that are part of sustainable human development, there are still important debates about how we should understand or conceptualize them. For example, proposals from the Capability Approach, such as those of Sen, point out that instead of talking about needs, we should focus on people's capabilities or freedoms and thus understand sustainable human development "as development that enhances the capabilities of present people without compromising the capabilities of future generations" (Sen 2011, 13).
In this panel, we seek to contribute to these debates by presenting three conceptualizations that we believe are essential to discuss for an adequate understanding of what human development involves and requires: The first is about how we should understand the idea of sustainability in human development itself; the second concerns how we should understand climate change and its implications for human development; and the third regards how we should understand the duties we have to other nonhuman beings, which are also included as part of the idea of sustainable human development in the SDGs. We suggest that these conceptualizations allow us to set aside some misconceptions about what sustainable human development entails.
First, Darrel Moellendorf will argue against ideas that propose sustainable human development as the need to limit human development itself in order to preserve resources for future generations. Thus, starting from the framework of planetary boundaries (Dixson-Declève et al., 2022), he will propose that preserving Holocene stability is a compelling conception of sustainability. Although this would establish the need for constraints on certain kinds of human development activities, it does not necessarily limit human development itself. He will use this to argue against the idea that sustainability requires only nature-based solutions to the detriment of technological development, because despite the importance of nature-based solutions, technological development is essential to the project of advancing human development within planetary boundaries.
Lukas Sparenborg aims to displace the dominant conception of climate change as a perfect moral storm (Gardiner 2010), which fails to capture the intersecting structures of domination and oppression behind it. Thus, he proposes that climate change is best understood as a structural injustice that impedes human development, defined as an impediment to self-determination and self-development (Young 2002). This framing highlights both the distributive and political dimensions of human development. Utilizing this framework, he will argue against climate policies that focus only on a mere transition to renewable energy. He will also propose the need to include social and political justice, which implies policies that seek to transform the structures that alleviate the social positions that give rise to climate injustices.
Finally, Julio Caceda will argue against the ideas of sustainable development that establish the need to recognize moral responsibilities not only towards human beings all non-human beings, both living and non-living (Winter and Schlosberg 2023; Celermajer et al. 2021, 2023). He will argue that although there is a call for humans to act responsibly toward various beings, not all of these responsibilities are moral responsibilities. Thus, he will propose the need for a criterion to determine which beings we have moral responsibilities to and which we do not, based on a principle he calls the "principle of justification of moral responsibility". He will argue that this principle makes it possible to justify responsibilities to different non-human beings in a pluralistic way (either through the visions of different cultures or through theories such as those developed in the Capabilities Approach), while at the same time demarcating which responsibilities are morally demanding and therefore part of sustainable development as an agreement among all human beings. Otherwise, if every relationship with all beings were of a moral nature, human action and the possibilities of human development would be very limited.
Thus, the panel seeks to suggest ways to understand sustainable human development better. On the one hand, by pointing out that sustainability must include Holocene stability and the need to use technologies. On the other hand, it is important to understand that the fight against climate change, as a commitment to sustainability, is a fight against structural injustices in both economic and political dimensions. And finally, to point out that although sustainability implies the responsibility of human beings towards different beings, we must be clear that it implies different types of responsibility, a specific type of which is moral.
Key words: Sustainable Development, Human Development, sustainability, ecological justice, structural injustice
Accepted papers:
Paper short abstract:
The paper argues, first, that structural climate injustices arising from fossil fuel consumption & production impede human development. Second, it will provide a tentative normative framework for how we ought to engage in structural transformation out of fossil fuels to enable human development.
Paper long abstract:
The paper argues, first, that structural climate injustices arising from fossil fuel consumption & production impede human development. Second, it will provide a tentative normative framework for how we ought to engage in structural transformation out of fossil fuels to enable human development.
To achieve the first goal, I defend the argument that climate change is best understood as a structural injustice and that classical accounts of climate justice do not adequately reflect the complicated history of intersecting structures of domination and oppression. Centrally, I will argue that climate injustices are structural in the sense that they affect marginalized social groups as a result of historically unjust relations of power. In order to capture how climate injustices affect marginalized social groups, I will rely on Iris M. Young’s structural injustice account (2011). I argue that it has the advantage of highlighting both distributive and political facets of justice by focusing on self-determination and self-development. Referring to Amartya Sen, Young understands self-development in terms of capabilities, i.e., meeting the basic needs in a distributive sense, but also as an assessment of “the institutional organization of power, status, and communication in ways not reducible to distributions” (Young, 2002: 32). I contend that this can be assessed through the concept of human development. Enhancing human development includes both distributive and political measures that alleviate their impoverished social position of power.
In the second part, I will ask: How can we fight the climate crisis as a structural injustice in a way that enables human development? Understanding human development in terms of capabilities for self-development pushes us to focus on both (distributive) material progress and political empowerment. I argue that this latter point particularly puts an important critical qualifier on climate policies. It allows us to critically assess policy proposals like the Green New Deal in terms of whether they facilitate human development in both distributive and political facets. A line of critique that I will develop here is that achieving and enabling human development in light of intersecting climate injustices is to not merely transition towards renewable energy but rather transform the structures that alleviate the social positions that give rise to climate injustices. In short, we have to make sure that a Green New Deal is not just green but also just, that is, that it does not reproduce or perpetuate already existing unjust relations of power that impede human development.
Paper short abstract:
I will present the "Principle of the justification of moral responsibility" that allows us to establish to which different non-human beings we have moral responsibilities. It does not rely on any specific characteristic of the beings and allows for a shared moral attitude, for different reasons.
Paper long abstract:
Capability scholars have formulated various reasons for recognizing responsibilities to different beings. However, a criterion is needed to distinguish which of these responsibilities are moral (of higher stringency and for all human agents) and which are not. In this paper I will present a principle of practical reason, which will function as such a criterion, and which will allow us to navigate this diversity of reasons, establishing with which other-than-human beings we can recognize a moral responsibility.
In relation to other-than-human beings, certain human agents are able, for different reasons, to recognize the need to focus on what happens to these beings and to self-limit their actions on that basis. That is, they are capable of acting responsibly, assuming a commitment (Sen 1985, 2010). From this starting point, it is necessary to see whether this attitude can be extended to all human agents, becoming a moral responsibility.
For this purpose, I propose the Principle of the justification of moral responsibility: "Responsibilities of reason for all moral agents are those that cannot be rejected according to the criteria of generality, reasonable cost, reciprocity of reasons for a shareable attitude, feasibility, and reciprocity of burdens". Thus, the principle states that if we cannot find reasons to reasonably reject responsibility for a non-human being X (according to these components), then we say that all human agents have this responsibility and that it is therefore a moral responsibility.
This principle states that, unlike theoretical reason, practical reason does not seek agreement on reasons, but on actions to solve a problem or act in a certain way, not arbitrarily but responsibly. There may be different reasons, but what is essential is that they lead to the same need for a certain kind of action and attitude (which is the specificity of morality). This is a reformulation of Drydyk's (2011) proposal of the principle of responsible pluralism, which recognizes that there are different moral discourses that, while not necessarily in agreement, seek to support the same type of action (thus producing a pluralistic justification): In this case, taking moral responsibility. Therefore, what is sought here is to exclude reasons that do not support the same type of action or responsible attitude. This is also because the principle does not a priori, as do the other grounds proposed by capability scholars, presuppose a particular characteristic or relation as the basis for recognizing a moral duty.
Paper short abstract:
This paper defends the moral importance of human development progress within planetary boundaries. It argues that the pursuit of human development progress in the Anthropocene must be consistent with a moral demand of sustainability, understood as the preservation of Holocene stability.
Paper long abstract:
The philosopher Brian Barry argues that the core concept of sustainability is that there is some X that should be preserved indefinitely for future generations (Barry, 2007). Johan Rockström’s pioneering work on planetary boundaries argues for the importance of several earth systems in preserving Holocene stability (Rockström et al., 2009). These boundaries are defined as thresholds for the stable functioning several Earth systems relevant to the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, fresh water, nitrogen flows, and biodiversity among other things. The moral relevance of these boundaries is that they are the conditions of the possibility for the emergence, and likely the continuance, of human civilizations that allow for human development progress. This paper argues therefore that the preservation of Holocene stability is a compelling candidate for the X that should be preserved indefinitely for future generations.
Human commercial, military, and agricultural activity has now so affected the Earth that the Holocene has been replaced by the Anthropocene. Moreover, these human activities threaten to disrupt the Earth systems that preserve of Holocene stability. This paper argues that the preservation of this stability should constrain the activity of the present generation on behalf of the claims of future generations. This would allow for continued human development progress. Progress in human development is a valuable because human development consists of valuable elements, health, education, and income. Although income is only contingently and instrumentally valuable, health and education are valuable for their own sake as well as for what they permit humans to achieve. The planetary boundaries framework suggest the need for constraints on certain kinds of activities in pursuit of human development, but not on human development itself. Indeed the point of the framework is to preserve the conditions for human development. This paper also then defends the revision of the Human Development Index so that it is a measure of sustainability constrained human development. And, finally it argues that despite the importance of nature-based solutions, technological innovation is necessary to the project of advancing human development within planetary boundaries. Hence, while preserving Holocene stability is moral requirement for policy and institutions in the Anthropocene, the promotion of technological innovation is an important desiderata.