Human Rights: Necessary? Sufficient? Diversionary?

Abstract

Claims of human rights have historically been a response to the violence and oppression brought by some people onto others. Focusing on the individual person, modern concepts of human rights inadequately address the relationships of individual people to their communities and rarely address relationships of people with other species and ecological systems more generally. During the past 50–100 years the world has undergone profound ecological change, and although concepts of human rights remain useful, their limits are becoming increasingly clear. Advances in ecological and biological sciences demonstrate dialectic relationships among components and the whole of complex systems. Where the individual begins and ends is unclear. A new ethic that incorporates new ecological understanding is essential in order to address the essentially new world of today. A deep sense of responsibility and an ethic of care, trust, respect, and reciprocity are essential to this undertaking.

Keywords:

• human rights
• ecology
• ethics
• social resonsibility