Page 34 - Sustainability Communication Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Theoritical Foundations

2 Strong Sustainability as a Frame for Sustainability Communication 17

When ethical questions of intergenerational duties are discussed, it has to be first
justified whether there are any obligations to future generations at all (for a thor-
ough analysis and refutation of so-called ‘no obligation arguments’, which deny the
existence of such duties, see among others Ott 2004b). Neither Parfit’s ‘non-identity
problem’ nor the argument claiming that future persons cannot have rights today are
convincing (Parfit 1987). In fact, they seem to contradict basic intuitions of duties
towards future generations that most people across cultures and centuries have
shared. Parfit’s non-identity problem obtains its moral relevance by confusing the
terms individuality and personality (Partridge 1990; Grey 1996; Ott 2004b). An
argument against Parfit is that personality as a normative status is usually ascribed
to human beings with specific cognitive capabilities. This status includes a system
of rights. Individuality on the contrary refers to the concrete and contingent charac-
teristics of a single human being resulting from a unique and non-interchangeable
life story. Moral duties are applicable to a greater extent to personality than to indi-
viduality. Although the non-identity problem highlights the contingency involved
on the level of individuality, its moral relevance regarding the justification of inter-
generational duties is negligible. Accordingly, regardless of the specific individual
identity that members of future generation might embody, they will still be ‘per-
sons’ in the sense proposed here and therefore subjects of rights. Moreover, as
Unnerstall has argued at length, future rights can justify present duties (Unnerstall 1999).
The anticipatable impact of future (moral or juridical) rights of persons is a neces-
sary and sufficient condition for current intergenerational duties with regards to
different goods.
According to the second question, the ethical controversy centres on whether duties
of justice towards future generations should be based on an absolute standard (access
to anything that is required for a life of human dignity) or on a comparative one (no
worse than current generations). The absolute standard ensures a ‘basic human level’
(in terms of basic capabilities, see below) whereas the comparative standard raises the
issue of an appropriate ‘equivalence’. While the former allows current generations to
bequeath less to future ones than they themselves have inherited (provided that this
would be sufficient to lead a decent or dignified human life), the latter requires that
future persons be no worse off than current ones (on average). Many authors argue for
a comparative standard. This also corresponds to widespread intuitions expressed in
deliberative processes with stakeholders and practitioners. However, its ethical justifi-
cation is in no way a trivial one as questions arise as to whether the approximate
equality of intergenerational prospects of life should be aimed at for its own sake and
whether it is morally relevant how spatially and temporarily separated groups of per-
sons with different supplies of goods relate to each other.
The theory of strong sustainability argues on the one hand for a strong and
demanding absolute standard and suggests replacing the ‘basic needs’ approach
with a culturally interpretable and context-sensitive list of capabilities, such as com-
piled by Nussbaum (2001) in her ‘broad and vague concept of the good’ (Ott and
Döring 2008). Whereas according to the basic needs approach all human beings are
entitled to have merely what they need to survive, the capability approach sets the
minimum standard at a much higher level so as to include all the necessary