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T0115


Sustainability, climate change, and responsibility for other non-human beings in the context of sustainable human development 
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: