http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8429-0532
This edited book aims to bridge the gap between the academic discourses of sustainability and human rights. The book’s primary enquiry is how the contemporary human rights system could become reinterpreted in order to enable it to respond to environmental sustainability challenges. Coming from a legal-philosophical perspective, the book scrutinizes the possibilities for the legal standing of future people (i.e. currently non-existing peoples) in contemporary human rights law. The argument presented is that accepting their legal standing is important to ensure that decision-making formally acknowledges long-term responsibilities. When legal standing is accorded to future people, it would mean that they would have human rights and then the protection of their human rights would need to be observed. This would have implications for the decisions made today about resource use and other pressing concerns of sustainability. The various authors imagine and formulate human rights duties for future generations, assuming that a continuous environmental abundance, economic opportunity and consumption are not likely. Furthermore, the book discusses potential limitations to do so in practice, considering restrictions on food consumption and birth control.
The book has a strong focus on a philosophical-legal perspective. The central philosophical question addressed is ‘whether national and international institutions building on basic rights require protection of these rights for the future’. The first part of the book addresses a legal question, considering how long-term environmental concern is consistent with existing human rights practice and documents. This part discusses whether the various conceptions of sustainable development can be framed into existing human rights conventions. Also, it proposes a utopian human rights law, discussing the possible implications of a (now non-existent) right to a healthy environment. The second part of the book provides conceptual reflections on long-term responsibilities and establishes through philosophical and moral reasoning why future people should be granted with human rights. Then, the book continues with the challenges involved in applying a human rights-based approach to long-term environmental responsibilities. The relevance of human rights norms such as decent life, freedom, equality, solidarity and participation as well as addressing questions of ‘what should be left’ for future generations, are central in this part of the book. The final chapters discuss more practical questions and the editors conclude with a statement of urgency to better align the human rights approach with longer term responsibilities.
The following statement in the conclusion of the book shows why the in-depth philosophical and legal reasoning on sustainability and human rights was important: ‘If we see human rights simply as people’s entitlement to exercise their liberties without asking what kind of ecological consequences the exercise of those liberties will have and how these consequences affect the right of (current or future) human beings, the human rights regime appears as one of the causes of the ecological crisis rather than its remedy’. Unfortunately, the book provides a very limited reflection on how specific human rights should become formulated in the context of sustainability. Also, the book does not reflect on how human rights and sustainability could become better operationalized in policy-making by local, national and international decision-makers. This will be a major challenge, given that our global context is characterized by the promotion of individual interests and freedoms.
The book’s chapters predominantly examine and compare various theoretical approaches. The final part of the book is intended to be more practical and attracted most of my interest. Chapter 13 specifically focuses on the right to food trying to address whether there exists a moral responsibility to change our food consumption in order to respect the right to food for future generations. This is an extremely relevant topic in the context of sustainability, as current meat consumption and other luxury food products form one of the major contributors to deforestation and climate change. However, the discussion in the chapter is somewhat limited to the nature of the right and the potential lack of corresponding duties of states and other international organizations. A lack of ‘enforceability’ of economic, social and cultural rights is an ongoing debate in human rights theory. In my view, human rights scholars should move forward in arguing the relevance of each of these rights, and it would have been interesting if the book consisted of more chapters discussing, for example, rights to health, water, and culture in the context of long-term environmental responsibility.
For impact assessment professionals, human rights are increasingly relevant in relation to their analysis of the adverse environmental, social and health impacts of large-scale projects and other development interventions. In impact assessment, ethical thresholds are of increasing importance in order to determine impact significance (especially in relation to impacts on cultural and natural assets and heritage). Human rights form an ethical threshold in impact assessment, which has not been touched upon in the book’s discussion on human rights and sustainability. Impact assessment professionals would benefit from a clarification on how to integrate human rights into their work, taking into account the sustainability aspect of future generations. Especially, impact assessment would have to balance the property and otherwise legal rights of governments and corporations with the human rights of local communities and future populations. Project-induced environmental changes and impacts involving decreased access to natural resources, environmental degradation and/or deterioration of a healthy environment, can form critical human rights risks to local people.
For impact assessment professionals not well aware of the application of human rights in their work, the book might come across as being highly theoretical and philosophically overwhelming. However, professionals that are interested in the connections between impact assessment, human rights and sustainability might find the book intriguing. Even though impact assessment is not specifically mentioned by any of the authors, the discussion in this book will stimulate deeper thinking on how the adverse impacts of projects infringe on future generations’ human rights.
Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen
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© 2018 Lidewij van der Ploeg
https://doi.org/10.1080/14615517.2018.1445184