Sustainability, Rights and Values

This Seminar will suggest that one explanation for the appeal of rights is that it is held to be more intelligible, and thus more motivating, than many alternative moral idioms

Abstract

The idea of environmental human rights has gained currency in environmental theory and is an emerging phenomenon in international environmental legal practice. Earlier generations of green scholars who were committed to the claim that a fundamental shift in values would be a necessary condition of a sustainable society might be surprised by this move to embrace the concept of rights, rooted as it is in a liberal and anthropocentric tradition. In this paper I will suggest that one explanation for the appeal of rights is that it is held to be more intelligible, and thus more motivating, than many alternative moral idioms. However, I will also suggest that the ways in which rights connect to motivation are not straightforward, and stress the significance of the values that underpin an account of environmental human rights, where humans are understood to be inherently vulnerable, ecologically-embedded beings.

This event is the first of three Political Theory Research Seminars. It is free to attend and there is no need to register.

Baines Wing is number 58 on the campus map.