Sustainable development goals and human moral obligations: the ends and means relation

Abstract

This paper aims at understanding Sustainable Development Goals as normative ends to be achieved by normative means in the context of global ethics. It distinguishes the descriptive and the normative senses of sustainability and development and puts forward a case for exploring the role of human moral obligations (as understood in the light of the concept of dharma) as the normative means to attain the goals of sustainable development. It argues that it is only when basic human moral obligations and role-related obligations are fulfilled that human well-being and that of the non-human elements of the eco-system can be achieved. Furthermore, it also explains how such a concept can be inclusive, diverse and integrative.

Keywords:

• sustainable development goals
• human moral obligations
• global ethics
• dharma
• normative ends and means

Acknowledgement

The author is grateful for comments received on an earlier draft of the paper from Dr Prodipto Ghosh, Distinguished Fellow, The Energy Research Institute, New Delhi, India.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Shashi Motilal is Professor in Philosophy at the University of Delhi in India. She has co-authored Human Rights, Gender and Environment (Allied Publishers, 2006) and co-edited Social Inequality: Concerns of Human Rights, Gender and Environment (Macmillan Publishing Company, 2010). She is also the editor of Applied Ethics and Human Rights: Conceptual Analysis and Contextual Applications (Anthem Press, 2010). She has been Visiting Faculty at the University of Akron, USA and Carleton University, Canada. She is currently member of the Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision of Experiments on Animals (CPCSEA) Ministry of Environment & Forests, Govt. of India.

Notes

1. There are other approaches to general development which aim to be global in nature but would not be termed global ethics. Dower (2014, 9) characterizes global ethics as ‘an open-textured enquiry … about global issues from a normative point of view’ and also spells out the differences between other approaches – for example between cosmopolitanism, global justice and human rights – and the global ethics approach, while also acknowledging that they are closely related. This is a point on which I would agree with Dower although I am inclined to believe that all these normative approaches presuppose a more basic concept, namely that of ‘human moral obligation’. However, I would not be able to bring out the relations between them in the limited scope of this paper.

2. I introduce and explain the concept of ‘human moral obligation’ in the light of a certain understanding of the concept of ‘Dharma’ (as this original concept is delineated in ancient and modern Indian philosophy), in my forthcoming paper ‘Human Moral Obligations and the International Doctrine of Human Rights' in Human Rights: India and the West edited by Jay Drydyk and Ashwani Peetush OUP India 2015. ‘Human’ in the phrase ‘human moral obligations' refers to obligations that humans have.

3. Karmaṇye vādhikāraste

– you have the power to act only

mā phaleṣu kadācana

– you do not have the power to influence the result

mā karmaphalehtur bhurmāte

– therefore you must act without the anticipation of the result

saṇgostvakarmaṇi

– without succumbing to inaction

Source: http://rowingwithvish.blogspot.in/2009/09/bhagvad-geeta-famous-quotes.html

4. Beckerman questions the utility of the concept of sustainable development and remarks that the concept is ‘morally repugnant or logically redundant' (Beckerman 1994, 192). In his view, sustainability, understood in the strong sense, goes against human interest and is therefore a proposal that is ‘morally repugnant’; and weak sustainability does not go beyond the concept of welfare maximization and therefore, turns out to be ‘logically redundant’. Daly (1995) sides with Beckerman in his critique of weak sustainability but criticizes him for overlooking the distinction between substitutes and complements in his critique of strong sustainability. Daly argues that man-made capital and natural capital are not substitutes but are complements, and therefore sustainable development in the strong sense, which implies maintaining a balance between man-made and natural capital, makes ample sense. In Daly's view, therefore, strong sustainability is absolutely useful in acting as a constraint to welfare maximization.

5. The term ‘trans-boundary obligation’ and the idea of a basic normative concept which accounts for diversity in universality and which is integrative in its approach, I borrow from Dower (2014). I wish to show in what follows how human moral obligations fulfill that role.

6. The aspects of the traditional concept of dharma which I do not think are relevant in the present day scenario are those relating to caste distinctions prevalent in ancient Indian society and the notion of rebirth and liberation. Much of the metaphysical and soteriological concerns related to dharma can easily be offloaded while only retaining its moral aspect.

7. This is one translation. An alternative translation given by M.N. Dutt is ‘Dharma is so called because it protects all. Indeed, morality saves all creatures. Surely then that is morality which is capable of keeping off a creature from all injuries’. Source: https://archive.org/stream/aproseenglishtr01duttgoog#page/n714/mode/2up

8. This verse seems to be giving an anthropocentric sense of well-being and development but the concept of dharma includes duties that one has towards other non-human elements of the universe. It admits that humans are only one element of this vast universe.