And Intergenerational Justice in the Debates About Sustainability

DIMENSIONS OF INTRA- AND INTERGENERATIONAL JUSTICE IN THE DEBATES ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY Edited by Silviya Serafimova DIMENSIONS OF INTRA- AND INTERGENERATIONAL JUSTICE IN THE DEBATES ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY Avangard Prima Edited by Silviya Serafimova Sofia, 2020 DIMENSIONS OF INTRA- AND INTERGENERATIONAL JUSTICE IN THE DEBATES ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY Edited by Silviya Serafimova Scientific consultants: Prof. PhD Mikko Saikku Prof. PhD Vitan Stefanov Edited by Silviya Serafimova ISBN 978-619-239-433-2 Avangard Prima Sofia, 2020 DIMENSIONS OF INTRA- AND INTERGENERATIONAL JUSTICE IN THE DEBATES ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY Edited by Silviya Serafimova Avangard Prima Sofia, 2020 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION.................................................................................7 Silviya Serafimova PART I. REMAPPING THE DEBATES Ethical Dimensions of Sustainability 1. MENSCHENWÜRDE UND DIE VERLETZBARKEIT DES LEBENS. DER MENSCH ZWISCHEN TIER UND ROBOTER.................................................................................29 Gunnar Skirbekk Dimensions of New Environmental Anthropology 2. HUMANITY, RELATIONALITY AND JUSTICE IN THE ANTHROPOCENE..............................................................52 Forrest Clingerman Epistemological Perspectives upon Climate Change Debates 3. A CLIMATE OF DIALOGUE ..........................................................69 Andrea Saltelli and Paul-Marie Boulanger 4. HOW TO MAKE PEACE WITH NATURE..................................100 Ragnar Fjelland PART II. (UN)JUST SUSTAINABILITIES. POLICIES AND PRACTICE Biodiversity Conservation for Sustainable Future 5. FROM FISH MANAGEMENT TO FISH REWILDING: A FINNISH CASE ANALYSIS .......................................................113 Markku Oksanen, Outi Ratamäki and Timo Haapasalo 5 6. HYDROPOWER RESERVOIRS AND IMPACTS TO THE TRANSMISSION OF SÁMI KNOWLEDGE IN SWEDEN AND FINLAND ..........................................................................................130 Tero Mustonen and Stefan Mikaelsson Sustainable Optimization of Recycling 7. WASTE CITIZENSHIP IN CIRCULAR ECONOMY: CASE STUDY OF WASTE GOVERNANCE IN FINNISH LAPLAND....150 Jarno Valkonen and Teemu Loikkanen Production, Procession and Distribution of Sustainable Food 8. HE WAKA EKE NOA: FOOD INSECURITY IN THE WAITĀKERE AREA ........................................................166 Heather M. Tribe PART III. PROSPECTS FOR NEW VOCABULARIES OF SUSTAINABILITY 9. SUSTAINABILITY DIMENSIONS OF BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY ...............................................................................201 Boris D. Grozdanoff 10. THE ROLE OF ‘STRONG’ ETHICAL GRADUALISM IN BUILDING INTRA- AND INTERGENERATIONAL JUSTICE. SOME PROSPECTS FOR A COMMON VOCABULARY OF ECOLOGICAL JUSTICE ...........................212 Silviya Serafimova NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS.......................................................244 6 INTRODUCTION Silviya Serafimova In the era of the Anthropocene, the challenges deriving from the ideas be- hind the realization of sustainable development have a complex gist which requires rethinking numerous mutually connected economic, social, environmental and moral dilemmas. For instance, many researchers warn against giving priority to the examination of economic sustainability over environmental and social sustainability (Goodland 1996). In this context, the role of values guaranteeing the succession between current and future generations is important when clarifying the debates about the responsibility of social agents (Chiesura and De Groot 2003). Some researchers raise the hypothesis that so-called objective ecological criteria should be supplied when exploring the role of societal values and perceptions, ethics and atti- tude to the risk as being “crucial for grounding the critical boundary of natural capital” (Ekins et al. 2003). Consequently, there are researchers who emphasize the existence of separate domains (which include socio-cultural, ecological domains, that of sustainability, as well as the domains of ethical, economic and human survival) where natural capital and ecosystem services can be critical (Brand 2009), whilst others argue that it is the “normative values that underline our use of the natural capital” (Dedeurwaerdere 2014). Specifically, all the five principles of Haughton’s classification of sustainable development regarding equity, namely, those of inter-generational equity (futurity), intra-generational equity (social justice), geographical equity (trans-frontier responsibility), open and fair treatment of people (procedural equity) and the importance of biodiversity (inter-species equity) (Haughton 1999) are addressed in one way or another within all the articles of the current volume. All the contributions aim to outline different, but not mutually exclusive dimensions of sustainability whose crossing points are both the implicit and explicit embodiments of intra- and intergenerational justice, as evaluated within a comparative perspective. It is an interdisciplinary volume whose objective is to give the floor to authors with a different academic back- 7 ground for the purposes of reevaluating some debatable issues in the discus- sions about sustainability and thus, showing that the development of ecological reflexivity on a larger scale (Schlosberg 2007) is possible only as a commonly shared (both a personal and professional) endeavor. The volume is divided into three main parts consisting of contributions which cover three main conceptual perspectives of investigation. The first part is devoted to revealing the theoretical framework, which necessitates the remapping of the diverse sustainability debates (with an intra- and intergenerational focus upon some ethical, hermeneutical and epistemological dimensions of the debates in question). In the second part, some practice- related issues regarding the role of different sustainability policies (such as those concerning biodiversity conservation, understood as being related to identity preservation, sustainable optimization of recycling and distribution of sustainable food) are tackled, whilst in the third part, some prospects for building new vocabularies of sustainability (by exploring future sustainability dimensions of technology and ecological justice) are displayed. The necessity of examining sustainability as a complex phenomenon from both theoretical and practical perspectives requires the provision of differ- entiated approaches towards all the different agents involved, namely, it requires specifying the different groups of social, moral, political and economic agents during the process of their interaction. In addition, adopting such an approach necessitates the exploration of mutually related or mutually exclusive obligations and responsibilities of the aforementioned agents, which turns questions such as “Whose justice? Which rationality?” (MacIn- tyre 1988) into questions that cannot be answered here-and-now nor once and for all. The attempts at (re)mapping the debates about sustainability are not a new phenomenon, since it is already sufficiently clear that the introduction of the concept of sustainable development has triggered a “growing awareness of the global links between mounting environmental problems, socio- economic issues” which have much “to do with poverty and inequality, and concerns about a healthy future for humanity” (Hopwood, Mellor and O’Brien 2005). Nowadays, this ‘clarity’ can be justified as having descrip- tive rather than normative implications by being taken for granted. We all know well that “everything is connected to everything else”, as well as that Bacon’s saying which states that “The world is made for man, not man for the world” (Ibid.) is questionable from a scientific point of view. However, for the purposes of knowing what to do next, we need another remapping of the debates which puts a special focus upon the normative implications of 8 the tackled problems and thus, clarifying why the remapping, as such, is closely tied with the necessity of rethinking the role of justice in both intra- and intergenerational perspectives. In his thought-provoking contribution called “Human Dignity and the Vul- nerability of Life. Man between Animal and Robot” (“Menschenwürde und die Verletzbarkeit des Lebens. Der Mensch zwischen Tier und Roboter”), which is the first chapter of the current volume, Skirbekk clarifies why the issue of vulnerability of life is a normative rather than a technological or strictly biological question. In this context, the normative implications of the aforementioned issue concerning the recognition of the future projects for super-humans as undesirable can be found in the following series of questions posed by Skirbekk: namely, how should humans, as being vulner- able and shaped by crises beings, make a deal with invulnerable and inde- pendent of crises future super-humans? As long as human fears and painful defeats would be something completely non-understandable for the super- humans, how could they collectively develop the ability for a perspective taking? Furthermore, how would it be possible to have conversations with such super-humans which would miss the ability of sharing fears, seeking for comfort, or having deep conversations about life? And most impor- tantly: Do we, as humans, want to sacrifice our complex existential vulnerability, in order to become such super-humans? Looking for answers to the aforementioned questions, Skirbekk begins his analysis by setting the question “What does human dignity mean

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