The right to a green future: Human rights, environmentalism, and intergenerational justice

Human Rights Quarterly

Volumn 27, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 1346-1364

  Hiskes, Richard P ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ENVIRONMENTALISM; HUMAN RIGHTS; SOCIAL JUSTICE;

EID: 27844608459     PISSN: 02750392     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hrq.2005.0049     Document Type: Article

References (58)

1. James W. Nickel, The Human Right to a Safe Environment: Philosophical Perspectives on Its Scope and Justification, 18 Yale J. Int'l. 281-85 (1993);
2. Joseph L. Sax, The Search for Environmental Rights, 6 J. Land Use & Env. L. 90-99 (1990);
3. Edith Brown Weiss, In Fairness to Future Generations: International Law, Common Patrimony, and Intergenerational Equity (1989).
4. See Shari Collins-Chobanian, Beyond Sax and Welfare Interests: A Case for Environmental Rights, 22 Env. Ethics 133-48 (2000).
5. See Keith Dowding & Martin van Hees, The Construction of Rights, 97 Am. Pol. Science Rev. 281 (2003);
6. Hillel Steiner, An Essay on Rights (1994);
7. Jeremy Waldron, Legislation and Liberal Neutrality, in Liberal Neutrality (Robert Goodin & Andrew Reeves eds., 1989);
8. Carl Wellman, Real Rights (1995).
9. Dowding & van Hees, supra note 3, at 292.
10. Collins-Chobanian, supra note 2.
11. Maurice Cranston, Human Rights, Real and Supposed, in Political Theory and the Rights of Man (D.D. Raphael ed., 1967).
12. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971).
13. Quoted in Wilfred Beckerman, Debate: Intergenerational Equity and the Environment, 5 J. Pol. Phil. 392, 397 (1997).
14. Terence Ball, The Incoherence of Intergenerational Justice, 28 Inquiry 321 (1985).
15. Justice Between Age Groups and Generations 7 (Peter Laslett & James S. Fishkin eds., 1992).
16. See discussion of this and related concepts in Tom J. Farer, The Ethics of Intervention in Self-Determination Struggles, 25 Hum. Rts. Q. 382 (2003).
17. Jurgen Habermas, Remarks on Legitimation Through Human Rights, 24 Phil. & Soc. Criticism 157, 161 (1998).
18. Id. at 161 (emphasis in original).
19. H.L.A. Hart, Are There Any Natural Rights?, 64 Phil. Rev. 184 (1955);
20. Joel Feinberg, The Nature and Value of Rights, in Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty (Joel Feinberg ed., 1980) requires that to be a moral right a right "entails having a moral justification for limiting the freedom of another person and for determining how he should act." Cranston, supra note 6, insists that moral rights exert a legitimate moral claim on others, in all times and in all situations. Feinberg insists that moral rights are claims that must be granted.
21. Jack Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice (1989) summarizes them as rights that individuals possess because and in protection of their moral natures. That is, they arise from the human need for dignity.
22. Jurgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms (William Rehg trans., 1996).
23. See the discussion of Habermas' distinction of his position from Rawls' more fully moral understanding of human rights in Alessandro Ferrara, Two Notions of Humanity and the Judgment Argument for Human Rights, 31 Pol. Theory 392 (2003).
24. See Ferrara, supra note 15;
25. see also David Ingram, Between Political Liberalism and Postnational Cosmopolitanism: Toward an Alternative Theory of Human Rights, 31 Pol. Theory 359 (2003).
26. The relationship between environmental human rights and the possibility of the same rights for animals is an issue the article cannot discuss here. However, it is worth noting that the argument for environmental rights presents a possibility for arguing for animal rights that is somewhat different than the usual basis for such arguments. If humans have a right to clean air, soil, and water, because all are essential for life, it is a bit hard to see how other creatures similarly dependent would not also have this right, or why the right to such essentials would be related in any meaningful way to the different cognitive abilities of such dependent creatures. The author plans to explore this connection in future work.
27. Weiss, supra note 1, embraces this new aspect of environmental rights as part of their appeal.
28. See also Richard Flathman, The Practice of Rights (1976), for a more traditional view of rights which presumes that they exist only in the present tense.
29. Richard P. Hiskes, Democracy, Risk and Community: Technological Hazards and the Evolution of Liberalism (1998).
30. Id. at 12-13.
31. Henry Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy 29-30 (2d ed. 1980).
32. See Hiskes, supra note 19, at 83, for a discussion of the relevant approaches to assigning moral or legal responsibility for such emergent effects.
33. Collins-Chobanian, supra note 2, at 136.
34. Donnelly, supra note 14.
35. Anthony Pagden, Human Rights, Natural Rights, and Europe's Imperial Legacy, 31 Pol. Theory 171, 192 (2003).
36. Donnelly, supra note 14, at 14.
37. Ball, supra note 9, at 322.
38. See John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (1999);
39. Habermas, supra note 12.
40. See also David A. Reidy, Rawls on International Justice: A Defense, 32 Pol. Theory 291 (2004) for elaboration upon and defense of Rawls' position.
41. Habermas, supra note 12, at 167 (emphasis in original).
42. Id.
43. Id.
44. Id.
45. Xiaorong Li, "Asian Values" and the Universality of Human Rights, 16 Report from the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy 18, 21 (1996).
46. Michael Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry 83-84 (2001).
47. See, e.g., Donnelly, supra note 14;
48. Realizing Human Rights: Moving From Inspiration to Impact (Samantha Power & Graham Allison eds., 2000);
49. Richard Rorty, Human Rights, Rationality, and Sentimentality, in On Human Rights: Oxford Amnesty Lectures (Stephen Shute & Susan Hurley eds., 1993);
50. Ignatieff, supra note 34;
51. Cranston, supra note 6, for examples of the pull toward pragmatism within current human rights theory.
52. Ignatieff, supra note 34, at 80.
53. See Benjamin R. Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New age (1984);
54. Benjamin R. Barber, A Passion for Democracry (1998).
55. Kelly A. Parker, Pragmatism and Environmental Thought, in Environmental Pragmatism 30 (Andrew Light & Eric Katz eds., 1996) (emphasis in original).
56. Id.
57. Id. at 25.
58. Ignatieff, supra note 34, at 35.