Ecological Rights to Future Generations: A Capability Approach (original) (raw)
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Ecological Surety and Capabilities: Normative Issues
Does Sen's Capability Approach deal adequately with ecosystems and the services they provide? In this paper, we shall attempt to discuss some aspects of this question by examining human development from an ecosystems perspective, i.e. with an emphasis on how people's quality of life is determined by ecosystem services. In particular, we shall examine Sen's capability approach, interpreting it as an approach that recognizes the crucial role that ecosystems play in enabling people to pursue the kinds of life that they have reason to value,
Human impacts on large-scale ecological interactions effectively confer fundamental advantages of wealth and power to some members of society and not to others. As illustrated here by reference to a 1993 cholera outbreak resulting from degradation of aquatic ecosystems, these impacts can pose barriers to the normal channels through which one might pursue individual advantage, thereby raising tensions for liberal theories of justice that are committed both to basic liberties and to distributive fairness. I first illustrate these tensions by reference to John Rawls’s theory. I then argue that although Nussbaum’s theory, which emerged in dialogue with Rawls’s, improves upon it in this regard, it remains subject to the same basic tensions. Instituting ‘capability ceilings’ that impose a limit on the set of basic opportunities available to people would help resolve this tension. Thus, in addition to Nussbaum’s proposal for establishing capability thresholds, I defend capability ceilings as a friendly amendment to her theory.
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics
Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach is today one of the most influential theories of justice. In her earlier works on the capabilities approach, Nussbaum only applies it to humans, but in later works she extends the capabilities approach to include sentient animals. Contrary to Nussbaum’s own view, some scholars, for example, David Schlosberg, Teea Kortetmäki and Daniel L. Crescenzo, want to extend the capabilities approach even further to include collective entities, such as species and ecosystems. Though I think we have strong reasons for preserving ecosystems and species within the capabilities approach, there are several problems with ascribing capabilities to them, especially if we connect it with the view that species and ecosystems are subjects of justice. These problems are partly a consequence of the fact that an ascription of capabilities to species and ecosystems needs to be based on an overlapping consensus between different comprehensive doctrines, in accordance wit...
Towards an integration of the Ecological Space Paradigm and the Capabilities Approach
Peeters, W., Dirix, J., Sterckx, S., 2014
In order to develop a model of equitable and sustainable distribution, this paper advocates integrating the ecological space paradigm and the capabilities approach. As the currency of distribution, this account proposes a hybrid of capabilities and ecological space. Although the goal of distributive justice should be to secure and promote people’s capabilities now and in the future, doing so requires acknowledging that these capabilities are dependent on the biophysical preconditions as well as inculcating the ethos of restraint. Both issues have been highlighted from the perspective of the ecological space paradigm. Concerning the scope of distributive justice, the integration can combine the advantages of the ecological space paradigm regarding the allocation of the responsibilities involved in environmental sustainability with the strength of the capabilities approach regarding people’s entitlements. The pattern of distribution starts from a capability threshold. In order to achieve this threshold, ecological space should be provided sufficiently, and the remaining ecological space budget could then be distributed according to the equal per capita principle.
The main objective of this paper is to analyze the challenges in applying Nussbaum's capability approach to animals, as refracted through the lens of environmental justice (justice among humans on environmental issues and risks) and ecological justice (justice to non-human nature) in Schlosberg's sense. Comparing and contrasting intra-and intergenerational justice for animals within the environmental and ecological justice frameworks, I demonstrate why capabilities-based multispecies justice can provide some benefits in overcoming ecological vulnerability. In this context, I point out the methodological pitfalls that environmental and ecological justice face in their attempts at eradicating unequal vulnerabilities embedded into some either-or dilemmas by exploring how the vulnerabilities in question negatively affect animals' positive and negative rights.
Property Rights, Future Generations and the Destruction and Degradation of Natural Resources
The paper argues that members of future generations have an entitlement to natural resources equal to ours. Therefore, if a currently living individual destroys or degrades natural resources then he must pay compensation to members of future generations. This compensation takes the form of " primary goods " (in roughly Rawls' sense) which will be valued by members of future generations as equally useful for promoting the good life as the natural resources they have been deprived of. As a result of this policy, each generation inherits a " Commonwealth " of natural resources plus compensation (plus, perhaps , other things donated to the Commonwealth). It is this inherited " Commonwealth " which members of that generation must then pass on to members of the next generation. Once this picture is accepted, the standard bundle of property rights is problematic, for it takes the owner of a constituent of the Commonwealth (e.g. that gallon of oil) to have the right to " waste, destroy or modify " that item at will. This paper therefore presents a revised set of property rights which takes seriously the idea that each generation has an equal claim on the resources that nature has bequeathed us, whilst allowing certain effects on those natural resources by each generation, and a degree of exclusive use of those natural resources owned by an individual.
Combining the Capability Approach (CA) with Sustainable Development (SD) is a promising project that has gained much attention. Recently, scholars from both perspectives have worked on narrowing gaps between these development approaches, with a focus on the connection between the CA as a partial justice theory and SD as a concept embracing justice and ecological fragility and relative scarcity. We argue that to base an SD conception on the CA, the CA must be further developed. To provide the rationale for this claim, we begin by clarifying how we look upon the relation between SD and the CA and how we understand SD (1). We then argue for an integration of the natural dimension in the CA (2). By analyzing similarities of recent contributions integrating the natural dimension, we identify how the CA structure may be developed to include the recursive relation between the human and natural dimensions and especially to include the circumstances of justice relevant to SD (3). Finally, we argue that a new recursive and dynamic CA structure is related to the debate on criteria for ‘valuable’ in the term ‘valuable functionings’ and that this points to an expansion of the CA’s evaluative space (4).
TRACE ∴ Journal for Human-Animal Studies
The main objective of this paper is to analyze the challenges in applying Nussbaum’s capability approach to animals, as refracted through the lens of environmental justice (justice among humans on environmental issues and risks) and ecological justice (justice to non-human nature) in Schlosberg’s sense. Comparing and contrasting intra- and intergenerational justice for animals within the environmental and ecological justice frameworks, I demonstrate why capabilities-based multispecies justice can provide some benefits in overcoming ecological vulnerability. In this context, I point out the methodological pitfalls that environmental and ecological justice face in their attempts at eradicating unequal vulnerabilities embedded into some either-or dilemmas by exploring how the vulnerabilities in question negatively affect animals’ positive and negative rights.
What principles should guide how society distributes environmental benefits and burdens? Like many liberal theories of justice, Martha Nussbaum’s “capabilities approach” does not adequately address this question. The author argues that the capabilities approach should be extended to account for the environment’s instrumental value to human capa- bilities. Given this instrumental value, protecting capabilities requires establishing certain environmental conditions as an independent “meta-capability.” When combined with Nussbaum’s nonprocedural method of political justification, this extension provides the basis for adjudicating environmental justice claims. The author applies this extended capabilities approach to assess the distribution of benefits and burdens associated with climate change.