So,
on to the principles of a sustainability ethics. To preface this discussion I need to thank several
of my University of Florida colleagues for participating in a 5 year long collaboration
that developed these ideas to the point where they could be considered ready
for prime time. These include Martha
Monroe (Forestry), Anna Peterson and
Richard Plate (Religion), and Les Thiele (Political Science). We actually wrote a book (Working
toward Sustainability, Ethical Decision Making in a Technological World) on
this subject and it is available for those who would like to dive deeper and
longer into a sustainability oriented ethics.
Let me give you the short version of our thoughts on an ethics of
sustainability. We identified nine core
ethical principles that support sustainability:
Intergenerational
Justice and the Chain of Obligation
Distributional Equity
The Precautionary
Principle
The Reversibility
Principle
The Polluter Pays
Principle
Protecting the Vulnerable
The Rights of the
Non-Human World
Respect for Nature and the Land Ethic
Sustainable Decision Making
Sustainable Decision Making
A brief description of each of these principles is provided below.
Intergenerational
Justice and the Chain of Obligation
The
choices of today’s generations will directly affect the quality and quantity of
resources remaining for future inhabitants of Earth, and will affect
environmental quality. This concept of
obligation that crosses temporal boundaries is referred to as intergenerational justice. Furthermore, the concept of intergenerational
justice implies a chain of obligation between generations that extends from
today into the distant future. Richard
Howarth (1992) expresses this obligation by stating,”…unless we ensure conditions favorable to the welfare of
future generations, we wrong existing children in the sense that they will be
unable to fulfill their obligation to their children while enjoying a favourable
way of life themselves.” Howarth also
suggests that the actions and decisions of the present generation not only
affect the welfare but also the composition of future generations. He argues that by creating conditions that
change resource availability or that alter the environment, future populations
will be compositionally different than if the resource base and environmental
conditions had been passed on, from one generation to future generations,
unchanged. For instance one can envision
that mutations caused by excessive ultraviolet radiation through an ozone layer
depleted by human activities, or by synthetic, toxic chemicals used without
adequate safeguards, will certainly result in different people and
conditions. Howarth summarizes the
principle of intergenerational justice and chain of obligation by observing, “A
chain of obligation is thus defined that stretches from the present into the
definite future, and unless we ensure conditions favourable to the welfare of
future generations, we wrong our existing children in the sense that they will
be unable to fulfill their obligation to their children while enjoying a
favourable way of life themselves.” Consequently the chain of obligation that
underpins the key sustainability concept of intergenerational justice includes
parental responsibility for enabling their offspring to meet their moral
obligations to their children and beyond.
Clearly this would include educating the offspring about these
obligations and the basis for them.
Distributional
Equity
There is
an obligation to insure the fair distribution of resources among present people
so that the life prospects of all people are addressed. This obligation can be referred as distributional equity or distributive justice and refers to the
rights of all people to an equal share of resources, including goods and
services, such as materials, land, energy, water, and environmental
quality. Distributional equity is based
on principles of justice and the reasonable assumption that all individuals in
a given generation are equal and a uniform distribution of resources must be a
consequence of intragenerational equity. The principle of distributional equity can be
extended to relationships between generations because a given generation has
moral responsibility for providing for their offspring, that is, intergenerational equity. Thus Distributional Equity also underpins the
Chain of Obligation concept. Distributional equity is a complex concept and
there are a number of principles that underpin and are related to it: (1) The
Difference Principle. (2) Resource-Based Principles, (3) Welfare-Based
Principles, (4) Desert-Based Principles, (5) Libertarian Principles, and (6)
Feminist Principles.
The
Precautionary Principle
The Precautionary Principle requires the
exercise of caution when making decisions that may adversely affect nature,
natural ecosystems, and global, bio-geochemical cycles. The Precautionary
Principle states that “When an activity raises threats of harm to human health
or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause
and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.” Global climate change is an excellent example
of the need to act with caution. Notwithstanding debate about the effects of
man-made carbon emissions on future planetary temperature regimes, the
potentially catastrophic outcome should motivate humankind to behave cautiously
and attempt to limit the emission of carbon containing gases such as methane
and carbon dioxide. The Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice
lists the four tenets of the Precautionary Principle:
- People have a duty to take anticipatory action to prevent harm.
- The burden of the proof of harmlessness of a new technology, process, activity or chemical lies with the proponents, not the general public.
- Before using a new technology, process, or chemical or staring a new activity, people have an obligation to examine a full range of alternatives including the alternative of not doing it.
- Decisions applying the Precautionary Principle must be open, informed, and democratic and must include the affected parties.
The
Reversibility Principle
Making
decisions that are able to be undone by future generations is the foundation of
the Reversibility Principle. Renowned
science fiction author, Arthur C. Clarke, suggested a rule that well describes
this principle,”Do not commit the irrevocable.”(Goodin 1983). At its core this Principle calls for a wider
range of options to be considered in decision making. Addressing the issue of energy choices is an
excellent example because a rapidly growing global economy is faced with
looming energy shortages, exacerbated by depletion of finite oil supplies. In the U.S. a shift is underway to reconsider
nuclear plants as a major source of energy because they can probably generate
electricity at an acceptable cost and also be a source of thermal energy for
producing hydrogen from water for use in fuel cells. The Reversibility Principle would force
today’s society to confront the issue of whether or not the choice of nuclear
energy as an option is reversible by a future society. Two questions would immediately emerge from
this consideration. First, is the
technology safe enough for widespread use?
Nuclear industry suggests that over the past two decades of a national
hiatus from building new plants, the technology has advanced to the point where
a Chernobyl or Three Mile Island incident has been eliminated. The second question is: How would a future
society cope with the nuclear waste from these plants? Converting the waste to harmless materials
via a new technology is highly unlikely and the power plants built today would
force future generations to store and be put at risk by the radionuclides in
the spent fuel rods. The Reversibility
Principle is related to the Precautionary Principle because it lays out
criteria that must be observed prior to the adoption of a new technology. It is less stringent than the Precautionary
Principle in some respects because it suggests reversibility as the primary
criterion for making a decision to employ the technology whereas the
Precautionary Principle requires that a technology not be implemented if the
effects of it are not fully understood and the risks are unacceptable.
The
Polluter Pays Principle
The
fundamental premise of the Precautionary and Reversibility Principles is that
those who are responsible for implementing technologies must be prepared to
address the consequences of their implementation. The Polluter Pays Principle
(PPP) suggests that a company that causes pollution
should pay for the cost of removing it, or provide compensation to those who
have been affected by it. It was first recommended as a course of action
for dealing with some of the environmental impacts of production by the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 1972. PPP is described in the OECD’s Recommendation
on Guiding Principles concerning International Economic Aspects of
Environmental Policies (1972) as follows:
The principle to be
used for allocating costs of pollution prevention and control measures to encourage
rational use of scarce environmental resources and to avoid distortions in
international trade and investment is the so-called ‘Polluter-Pays Principle’.
This principle means that the polluter should bear the expenses of carrying out
the above-mentioned measures decided by public authorities to ensure that the
environment is in an acceptable state. In other words, the cost of these
measures should be reflected in the cost of goods and services which cause
pollution in production and/or consumption. Such measures should not be
accompanied by subsidies that would create significant distortions in
international trade and investment.”
The
Precautionary Principle suggests that technologists should demonstrate the
efficacy of their products and processes prior to allowing them to impact the
biosphere. The Reversibility Principle
permits implementation in the face of some level of risk as long as any
negative effects can be undone. PPP
addresses existing technologies that have not been subject to these other
principles and places the onus for mitigating damage and consequences on the
individuals causing the impacts.
Protecting
the Vulnerable
Because
there are portions of the human population that are especially vulnerable to
the actions of the more powerful, the ethical principle, Protecting of the Vulnerable, addresses the rights of the more at
risk populations as well as the obligations of the powerful to protect and not
exploit them. It also addresses the damages caused by the more
powerful to the less powerful. A wide
range of vulnerable populations can be identified: children, the elderly, the
physically and mentally disabled, the sick, indigenous people, people caught in
conflicts, the impoverished, and future generations. Poor people are especially vulnerable and
with the forecasted bird flu pandemic a catastrophe of unprecedented scale
could result. The last severe flu
pandemic in 1918 resulted in 50 million casualties, most of them in developing
countries and among the poor in developed countries.
Many
populations, including the animal world, are vulnerable to the actions of the
more powerful in the human species. The
destruction of ecosystems under the guise of development, introduction of
technology (including toxic substances, endocrine disruptors, and genetically
modified organisms), and general patterns of conduct (war, deforestation, soil
erosion, eutrophication, desertification, and acid rain, to name a few) are
some of these actions. People who are
essentially powerless due to governing and economic structures are vulnerable
to the decisions of those who are powerful because of their wealth or
influence. This asymmetrical power
arrangement is governed by moral obligation.
Those in power have a special obligation to protect the vulnerable,
those dependent on them. In a family, a
child’s dependence on its parents gives them rights against their parents. Future generations are also vulnerable
because they are subject to the effects of decisions we make today.
Protecting
the Rights of the Non-Human World
For
sustainability to be realized, society must protect nature and the systems that
support it, meaning that biotic and abiotic components must be considered. The biotic components are referred to here as
the living, non-human world while the
abiotic components are termed the non-living
world.
In
the context of this principle, the living, non-human world refers to plants and
animals. In some discussion it could be
extended to bacteria, viruses, mold, and other living organisms. This principle is an extension of the
principle of Protecting the Vulnerable to animals but also to plants that are
in danger of extinction. Clearly animal
rights fall under this principle.
The
non-living portion of the earth is essential to supporting life and a set of
sustainability principles should address the requirements for protecting this
key element of the life support system.
Some would argue that ethics should require the character of beautiful
places such as the Grand Canyon be protected in perpetuity.
In
short, protection of the nonhuman world, like anything else, requires respect
and a connection to it. And according to
Thomas Berry, this lack of connection, especially a spiritual connection, is a
major ailment of modern society.
Respect
for Nature and The Land Ethic
An ethics
of respect for nature is based on the fundamental concepts that (1) humans are
members of the earth’s community of life, (2) all species are interconnected in
a web of life, (3) each species is a teleological center of life pursuing good
in its own way, and (4) human beings are not superior to other species. This last concept is based on the other three
and shifts the focus from a anthropocentric to a biocentric outlook (Taylor
1981).
Humans
are part of precisely the same evolutionary process as all other species. All other species that exist today faced the
same survival challenges as the humans.
The same biological laws that govern other species, for example the laws
of genetics, natural selection, and adaptation apply to all living creatures. Earth does not depend on humans for its
existence. On the contrary humans are
the only species that have ever threatened the existence of Earth itself. As relative latecomers, humans appeared on a
planet that had had life on it for 600 million years and not only have to share
Earth with other species, but are totally dependent on them for survival. Human beings threaten the soundness and
health of the Earth’s ecosystems by their behavior. Technology results in the release of toxic
chemicals, radioactive materials and endocrine disruptors. Forestry and agriculture destroy biologically
dense and diverse forests. Emissions
pollute land, water, and air. Unlike
natural extinctions of the past from which the Earth recovered, the present
human induced extinction is causing disruption, destruction, and alteration at
such a high rate that, even with the self-extinction of the human species, the
planet may never recover. An ethics
based on biocentrism would result in humans realizing that the integrity of the
entire biosphere would benefit all communities of life, including
non-humans. It is debatable whether this
concept is merely an ethical one because it is also a biological fact that
humans cannot survive without the ecosystems upon which they depend. However human beings have the capability to
act and change behavior based on knowledge, in this case being aware of the
causal relationship of behavior on the survival of other species. An ethics of respect for nature consists of
not only realizing this causal relationship, but also in adopting behaviors
that respect the rights of non-human species to both exist and thrive (Taylor
1981).
Published
in 1949 as the finale to A
Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold’s ‘Land Ethic’ defined a new
relationship between people and nature and sets the stage for the modern
conservation movement. Leopold understood that ethics directs individuals to
cooperate with each other for the mutual benefit of all. One of his
philosophical achievements was the idea that this ‘community’ should be
enlarged to include non-human elements such as soils, waters, plants, and
animals, or collectively, the land.
Aldo Leopold suggests the there should be an ethical
relationship to the land and that this relationship should and must be based on
love, respect, and admiration for the land.
Furthermore this ethical relationship should not just be due to economic
value but also be based on value in the philosophical sense. Central to Leopold’s philosophy is the
assertion to “quit thinking
about decent land use as solely an economic problem.” While
recognizing the influence economics has on decisions, Leopold understood that,
ultimately, our economic well-being cannot be separated from the well-being of
our environment. Therefore, he believed it was critical that people have a
close personal connection to the land.
Sustainable Decision Making
One of
the hallmarks of sustainability is its emphasis on long range thinking. It implicitly calls for considering the
impacts of contemporary society decision making that could possibly have
negative consequences for future peoples.
The antithesis of sustainable decision making is what might be called
‘once-off decision making’ in which the participants consider the decision in
limited terms and do not address what the long range effects may be. Even green projects that supposedly result in
lower environmental impacts provide only short range benefits without
consideration of the quality of life of future generations. For example, the U.S. Green Building Council
has developed a building rating system know as Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design (LEED), with one aspect being the reduction in heat island
effects by employing light colored materials for roofing, which reduces
internal and external building temperatures by reflecting the incident
radiation back to space. Current practice often results in the selection of
thermoplastic materials for this purpose, that while effective in reflecting
energy, must be replaced every 20 years with no prospect for recycling. The immediate result is a significant waste
disposal problem. The long term result
is depleted resources and large quantities of waste that will impact the
quality of life of the world’s future populations. This same basic ‘once off’ thinking applies
to a vast array of building products such as carpeting, ceiling tiles, and
drywall. They may have immediate benefits but create future problems. A principle of sustainable decision making
would provide a rationale for reconsidering the tendency toward short range
thinking, replacing it with an approach that will provide the maximum in both
short and long term benefits.
So that
wraps up the third part of this series on Sustainabiility2. Look out for at least one more, on the
subject of risk.
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