A Puzzle for Sustainability

Benjamin HaleAssociate ProfessorEnvironmental Studies and PhilosophyCenter for Science and Technology Policy ResearchUniversity of Colorado, Boulder

Introduce and address a puzzle for sustainability – a puzzle that is more than “just a puzzle” – without contradiction.

Challenge

Redirect the focus of sustainability positions from thicker, monistic approaches sustainability toward thinner, pluralistic conceptions of sustainability.

Objective

The Specificity Puzzle can be addressed without mental gymnastics by accepting a discursive, pragmatic approach to sustainability.

Thesis

1. Introduction2. Background: Previous Work3. Specificity Puzzle4. Possible Solutions5. All Affected Parties6. Conclusion

Outline

II.Recent Work

• Two main objectives:• Address theoretical concerns within the

environmental ethics community – by way of defending a more deontological account

• Address practical concerns within the wider environmental community.

• Vehicles: Remediation, restoration, geoengineering, environmental health, and so on.

Recent Work

The “harms” view is insufficient to explain the moral wrong of environmental wrongdoing.

Earlier Claim

Env wrongs are better understood as moral trespass.

Failure to justify actions within the space of reasons.

Justificatory Trespass

Re-evaluate environmental terrain in terms of moral jurisdiction: the physical space over which I take responsibility through endorsement of reasons.

• Harm vs Trespass – “Remediation and Respect” – “Can We Remediate Wrongs?”– “Polluting and Unpolluting”– “Doctor Feelgood”

• Arguments for and against:– “The World that Would Have Been: Moral Hazards” – “The Problem of Permissible Pollution” – “Getting the Bad Out” – “Remediation vs. Steering: Geoengineering Research”

• Justificatory Trespass:– “Fixing the Wrong Wrong”– “Undoing and Disallowing”– “Moral Friction”

Dialing Down

1. Pragmatist2. Non-Naturalist3. Pluralist4. Fallibilist5. Adaptive

Management1. Experimentation?

Sustainability

Scientific Model: aims at new discoveries.

Humanistic Model: aims at insight and clarity.

Say It Again, Sam

III.Specificity Puzzle

• There are lots of them.• Everyone mentions them.• I won’t.• Indication that Sustainability is a

contested notion.

Definitions

• For every renewable resource there are particularized aspects of that resource—regarding identity, size, shape, appearance, date of consumption, relation to other resources, etc.—that are non-renewable.

• For every non-renewable resource there are generalized aspects of that resource—regarding substitutability, reproducibility, fungibility, instrumental value, etc.—that are renewable.

Specificity Puzzle

• Pick any forest (f) at time (t).

• Cut down the trees in the forest.

• Sustainable for the trees.

• Not sustainable for Sherwood Forest.

Sherwood Forest

• 1945 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild Jeroboam

• $115,000• Unsustainable to

drink it.• But drinking wine

is not unsustainable.

‘spensive Wine

• The distinction between renewable and nonrenewable resources isn’t “fixed.”– Oil is a nonrenewable resource, but energy

isn’t.– Fish are a renewable resource, but tuna

stocks aren’t.

• Contingent on a suite of assumptions about what is and what is valuable.

Renewables

Impacts

•

Millennium Development Goals

1. To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger2. To achieve universal primary education3. To promote gender equality4. To reduce child mortality5. To improve maternal health6. To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and

other diseases7. To ensure environmental sustainability8. To develop a global partnership for

development

Sustainable Development Goals

Sustainable Development Goals

Goal 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere1.1 by 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day1.2 by 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions1.3 implement nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, including floors, and by 2030 achieve substantial coverage of the poor and the vulnerable1.4 by 2030 ensure that all men and women, particularly the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to basic services, ownership, and control over land and other forms of property, inheritance, natural resources, appropriate new technology, and financial services including microfinance1.5 by 2030 build the resilience of the poor and those in vulnerable situations, and reduce their exposure and vulnerability to climate-related extreme events and other economic, social and environmental shocks and disasters1.a. ensure significant mobilization of resources from a variety of sources, including through enhanced development cooperation to provide adequate and predictable means for developing countries, in particular LDCs, to implement programmes and policies to end poverty in all its dimensions1.b create sound policy frameworks, at national, regional and international levels, based on pro-poor and gender-sensitive development strategies to support accelerated investments in poverty eradication actions

Sustainable Development Goals

Goal 6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all6.1 by 2030, achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all6.2 by 2030, achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all, and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations6.3 by 2030, improve water quality by reducing pollution, eliminating dumping and minimizing release of hazardous chemicals and materials, halving the proportion of untreated wastewater, and increasing recycling and safe reuse by x% globally6.4 by 2030, substantially increase water-use efficiency across all sectors and ensure sustainable withdrawals and supply of freshwater to address water scarcity, and substantially reduce the number of people suffering from water scarcity6.5 by 2030 implement integrated water resources management at all levels, including through transboundary cooperation as appropriate6.6 by 2020 protect and restore water-related ecosystems, including mountains, forests, wetlands, rivers, aquifers and lakes6.a by 2030, expand international cooperation and capacity-building support to developing countries in water and sanitation related activities and programmes, including water harvesting, desalination, water efficiency, wastewater treatment, recycling and reuse technologies6.b support and strengthen the participation of local communities for improving water and sanitation management

Sustainable Development Goals

Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all8.1 sustain per capita economic growth in accordance with national circumstances, and in particular at least 7% per annum GDP growth in the least-developed countries8.2 achieve higher levels of productivity of economies through diversification, technological upgrading and innovation, including through a focus on high value added and labour-intensive sectors8.3 promote development-oriented policies that support productive activities, decent job creation, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, and encourage formalization and growth of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises including through access to financial services8.4 improve progressively through 2030 global resource efficiency in consumption and production, and endeavour to decouple economic growth from environmental degradation in accordance with the 10-year framework of programmes on sustainable consumption and production with developed countries taking the lead8.5 by 2030 achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value8.6 by 2020 substantially reduce the proportion of youth not in employment, education or training8.7 take immediate and effective measures to secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, eradicate forced labour, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms including recruitment and use of child soldiers…

It goes on…

IV.Possible Solutions

Thick: tells us what, specifically, to sustain

Thin: lays out guidelines to help us determine what to sustain

Thick and Thin

– Species, then not Individuals– Ecosystems, then not Species– The Economy, then not Resources– Farms, then not Produce– Education, then not Knowledge– Climate, then not Weather– Water, then not Wetlands – Wealth, then not Natural Capital– Way of Life, then not Development

Units of Analysis

• Many try to resolve the Specificity Puzzle by appeal to Value Monism– If we can specify a good, then we know how

to solve for specificity.• Health• Welfare• Utility

– Maybe this is all the puzzle tells us: find a single good; solve for it.

• Pluralists reject this approach (for many reasons)

Monism vs Pluralism

• Poses a problem for non-consequentialist theories.– Nonconsequentialist theories appear to

offer no specificity whatsoever.– Consequentialist theories can advance a

thin theory and elide the puzzle of specificity.

• IMHO: Consequentialism is ridiculous• So we should probably find a way to

address this puzzle of specificity.

Specificity Puzzle

• If ‘sustainability’ is to be meaningful, it must set out to conserve something.

• Without this ‘something’ it takes the shape of an ‘empty formalism.’

• Just a rule without content:– “meet the needs of future generations,”– “promote the welfare of future

generations,”– “provide opportunities for future

generations…”

Empty Formalism

A non-question-begging account of sustainability robust enough to allow for the use of resources now, but also to protect resources for the future.

But also we need a principle of universalization that can be applied in all instances, alongside a mechanism for gaining clarity on what principles to apply in those circumstances.

What we need

In other words: it probably should not consider the objectives of sustainability to be fixed, but instead must be responsive to changing needs, diverse conceptions of welfare, the opening up of new opportunities.

What we need

V.All Affected Parties

• Somehow the term ‘sustainability’ does seem meaningful.

• Better to construe ‘sustainability’ as ‘justifiability’.– So long as some action can be justified to a

community of reasonable and rational evaluators, it should be understood as sustainable.

• Requires rethinking sustainability as a set of actions or activities that could be agreed to by a hypothetical or real community of affected parties.

• Introduces a “reasonableness criterion”

Solution

Sustainable actions must be those that meet with the wide scrutiny of reasonable and rational individuals:

• Sometimes we will have to cut our forests or extract or minerals or destroy our natural areas.

• Sometimes we will have to forgo such actions.• We cannot know this simply by identifying a

set of values or goals to pursue… and in fact will be thrown off if we identify the goals first.

Application

“(U) All affected can accept the consequences and the side effects [of a norm’s] general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone’s interests (and these consequences are preferred to those known alternative possibilities for regulation).”

Principle of Universalization

“(D) Only those norms can claim to be valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all affected in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse.”

Principle of Discourse

• Our question: how can sustainability be meaningful?

• Shift from goods to reasons for action:– What it means to say that such and

such a practice is sustainable is not to say that that practice will enable some good ($, health, welfare, trees etc.) to persist for harvesting now and into the future.

– It means, instead, that that practice can be undertaken in a way that does not impinge on others now or in the future.

Reorienting

• All norms or claims are situated within the local or global community in which the discursive engagement occurs.

• They are contingent and agent-centered.• But they are not relative to those

communities, as there are always pragmatic/universal tests against the norms.

Norms are Situated

Nice Features• Depends on validity claims (not on substantively

loaded accounts of good and bad) of all participants to discourse.

• Allows for activities that may involve some degree of destruction, degradation, or use, so long as they are respectful of others, now or in the future.

• Addresses concerns about the permissibility of unsustainable actions (like the logging of Sherwood Forest or drinking of ‘spensive wine).

• Permits multiple, possibly conflicting, sustainability objectives to be subjected to validity tests

• Also: this is more reflective of actual policy discourse.

Concerns• Relying too heavily on deliberations

can/may/will result in a kind of value relativism.– Maybe a community will opt to ignore

the future– Or will miscalculate the costs– But this is how we adjudicate so many

claims• Feels like it will be unworkable:

– How to get many people to agree?– Reduces the scope of activities

• Just punts on the question of what should be sustainable

• Return to consequentialism again…• Thin theories still face problems with

specification:– Identification, Measurement, Distribution, etc.

• Our answer isn’t as clear as it once appeared– Either environmental sustainability is a generic

and thin concept, in which case it’s meaningless;

– Or it’s a specific and thick concept, in which case it overdetermines that which should be sustained.

Conseq. Revisited

• MDGs are too broad: – to meet them, you can just say, hey, give

people resources, or education, or food, or whatever.

• SDG targets are too narrow:– Symptom of the problem of a problem with

the broadness of MDGs– Specify what people need and it’s a mess.– Kind of like designing a state by appealing

to current needs.

Conseq. Revisited

• Example:– If I have a field of wheat, I can clearly raze that

wheat and grow more wheat next year.– I could, theoretically, do the same with a forest; but

not necessarily with Sherwood Forest.– If I have a bottle of wine, I can drink the wine and

make more wine for later.

• The question is whether I am taking an action that you or other rational interlocutors could accept.

• I cannot ask: will there be enough for you or for future generations? Because the question is: enough what?

Specificity Puzzle

• Before undertaking to act, we must ask ourselves whether our reasons would be acceptable by all affected. Where possible, we should seek that acceptance.

• After taking an action, we can only seek reconciliation through reasoned appeal to the affected. (We can’t take it back.)

Solution

• Sustainability is justifiability.• ‘Justifiability’ is procedural and

deliberative.• Unsustainable actions are those

that could not be justified to those who will be affected by them.

Conclusion

A Puzzle for Sustainability

Benjamin HaleAssociate ProfessorEnvironmental Studies and PhilosophyCenter for Science and Technology Policy ResearchUniversity of Colorado, Boulder