Meijers Climate Change and the Right to One Child (original) (raw)

In this chapter I ask whether the right to procreate may be limited for sustainability reasons. I argue that an unlimited right to procreate is not plausible, but I offer several arguments why a limited understanding of the right is. First, people have important interest in the renewal of generations. Therefore, at least sufficient procreation should be allowed for to guarantee the existence of society over time. Second, procreation is important because parent-child relationships involve important goods for many people. This points to a right to one child per couple. Taking these two considerations into account, a sustainability strategy that (morally) requires people to have only one child may be justified. However, taking into account global poverty, I argue that because having less children is often very costly for the global poor, there are good reasons to exempt them from limits on procreation.