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Climate change, justice and the right to development.
- Source :
- Journal of Global Ethics; Dec2011, Vol. 7 Issue 3, p251-260, 10p
- Publication Year :
- 2011
-
Abstract
- The primary human rights documents of the United Nations claim that every human has a right to development, a right that also includes continuous improvement of each person's living conditions. On one interpretation, this implies a right to a never-ending improvement of living conditions. According to the author, this interpretation faces several counterintuitive implications. First, it seems reasonable that we cannot have a right to improvement without regard to environmental sustainability; improvements must instead focus on well-being, a concept that is partially unrelated to material improvements. Second, if development is a human right, there are several distributional problems with this right. The paper discusses three different responses to the idea that everybody has a right to continuous improvement and concludes that the best solution is to reject the idea that everyone has such a right. This does not imply that we must reject a right to a certain minimum level of well-being; it just means that this right cannot include claims for never-ending improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- HUMAN rights
CLIMATE change
JUSTICE
SUSTAINABILITY
CLIMATOLOGY
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 17449626
- Volume :
- 7
- Issue :
- 3
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Journal of Global Ethics
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 69733023
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1080/17449626.2011.635687