Putting Sustainability into Sustainable Human Development

Abstract

Abating the threat climate change poses to the lives of future people clearly challenges our development models. The 2011 Human Development Report rightly focuses on the integral links between sustainability and equity. However, the human development and capabilities approach emphasizes the expansion of people's capabilities simpliciter, which is questionable in view of environmental sustainability. We argue that capabilities should be defined as triadic relations between an agent, constraints and possible functionings. This triadic syntax particularly applies to climate change: since people's lives and capabilities are dependent on the environment, sustainable human development should also include constraining human activities in order to prevent losses in future people's well-being due to the adverse effects of exacerbated climate change. On this basis, we will advocate that the goals of sustainable human development should be informed by a framework that consists of enhancing capabilities up to a threshold level, as well as constraining the functionings beyond this threshold in terms of their greenhouse gas emissions.

Keywords:

• Sustainable human development
• 2011 Human Development Report
• Capabilities
• Climate change

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their useful suggestions and to Julian Cockbain for his language editing.

Notes

Environmental sustainability is informed by a scientific account regarding the identification and quantification of the biophysical constraints of the ecosphere (Ross, 2009, p. 45). Admittedly, these issues are still subjects of scientific debate, and might ultimately depend on political agreement. Yet it should be emphasized that there is a substantial body of scientific evidence and a broad consensus regarding the existence of the biophysical constraints of the ecosphere

Humanity has by now committed itself to a rise in global temperatures of at least 0.76°C, and substantial human costs can already be attributed to the resulting climate change (Costello et al., 2009, pp. 1698 and 1700–1701). Moreover, the climate will continue to change for the foreseeable future due to the accumulated GHGs and the inertia of the climate system, as a result of which the effect of even the most stringent emissions reduction will take several decades to become apparent as well (Füssel, 2007, p. 266). Hence, an equitable climate regime should also comprise adaptation and compensation measures. Nonetheless, our focus in this paper is only on the relevance of mitigation to SHD, since it is vital in order not to exacerbate the adverse effects climate change will have on future people and to reduce the root cause of the problem (see also the section ‘Environmental dependency and commitments’ and Füssel, 2007, p. 265).

The climate change mitigation agenda merely focuses on one aspect of the Earth's ecosystem—the effect of increased GHG emissions on the climate—and this may not reflect environmental sustainability in relation to other aspects of the ecosphere (Ross, 2009, p. 44). Together with issues of justice towards the environment (as addressed, for example, in biocentrist and ecocentric theories), these aspects fall beyond the scope of this paper.

Although their development has diverged somewhat throughout the years, the capability approach has provided the theoretical foundations of the human development paradigm (Robeyns, 2005, p. 94). For clarity, we use one denominator to capture their commonalities.

The 2011 HDR provides data on a range of indicators of environmental sustainability (e.g. ecological footprint, carbon dioxide emissions and biodiversity), but does not change the HDI computation, so as to keep it as focused as possible (Morse, 2003, p. 192; UNDP, 1994, p. 91).

Since humanity has already committed itself to substantial global warming, it would be utopian to claim that future people can possibly be free from the adverse impacts of anthropogenic climate change. Nonetheless, it is clear that future people should at least be free from the adverse effects of exacerbated climate change (exacerbated or unmitigated being key here; see also note 2).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wouter Peeters

Wouter Peeters is a PhD student at the Centre for Ethics and Humanism, Free University of Brussels, Belgium

Jo Dirix

Jo Dirix is a PhD student at the Centre for Ethics and Humanism, Free University of Brussels, Belgium

Sigrid Sterckx

Sigrid Sterckx is Professor of Ethics at Bioethics Institute Ghent and at the Centre for Ethics and Humanism, Free University of Brussels, Belgium