T Hurka
Thomas Hurka is with the Department of Philosophy, University of Calgary. Alberta, Canada.
Note: This article is adapted, with permission, from a presentation made at a conference, Environmental ethics, sustainability, competition and forestry, held on 23 and 24 October 1992 at the University of British Columbia. The conference was sponsored by the university's Centre for Applied Ethics and the Goethe Institute, Vancouver. The conference presentations were published as Environmental ethics: sustainability, competition and forestry. A Working Paper, MacDonald, C.J., ad. 1992. Vancouver: Canada, Centre for Applied Ethics, University of British Columbia.
The implications of the concept of sustainable development.
The concept of "sustainable development", especially as proposed in the Brundtland Commission report Our common future (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987), is an attempt to balance two moral demands. The first demand is for "development", including economic development or economic growth. It arises mainly from the needs or desires of present generations, especially of those groups whose present poverty gives them a low quality of life and calls urgently for steps to improve that quality of life. The second demand is for "sustainability", for ensuring that we do not sacrifice the future for the sake of gains in the present.
As the Brundtland Commission recognizes, these two demands can conflict. In fact, economic growth or development is often a prime source of threats to the natural environment. But the commission believes that the demands can be balanced, that policies can be found which satisfy both to a reasonable degree, or which, in the often-quoted words, "meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Critics of the commission are less sanguine on this point. Environmentalist critics claim that to include any reference to "development" in a moral ideal is to compromise fatally one's commitment to environmental protection; "sustainable development", they say, "is not a balancing act, but a contradiction in terms". Pro-growth critics, on the other hand, contend that the restraints on economic activity proposed in the name of "sustainability" will have unacceptably high costs in foregone growth and prosperity.
Much of the discussion of the Brundtland Commission has focused on this issue of the coherence of its central ideal. But the discussion has tended to take for granted the commission's formulation of the ideal and of its component moral demands. These formulations, however, are vague: there are different interpretations of what is meant by a concern for the "needs of the present" or the "needs" of future generations. This article explores this philosophical issue further and, especially, asks what exactly may be owed to future generations under the heading of "sustainability".
First, however, it should be noted that, although they can conflict, the two moral demands behind the concept of sustainable development have a parallel basis. The Brundtland Commission starts from the assumption that the needs of others place moral demands on us. The commission assumes what can be called an "ethic of outcomes". It assumes that we have a duty to produce good outcomes for people or to prevent bad outcomes, no matter what the cause of the bad outcome would be. And it also holds that this duty is not extinguished by distance in space or time. The place where a person in need lives does not influence our duty to relieve their need. Analogously, that a person will live in another generation or another century does not remove our duty to care about their need. Suffering 100 years hence will be as real then as present suffering is now, and calls in the same way for steps to prevent it. Like the duty to people in underdeveloped areas, the duty concerning future generations arises when an ethic of outcomes is combined with a principle of impartiality: impartiality with respect to spatial location, in the one case, and to temporal location in the other.
This, then, is the abstract basis of the Brundtland Commission's concern for sustainability. And the commitment to temporal impartiality is reflected in the commission's balancing of the "needs of the present" with the "needs" of future generations, or in the implicit assumption that the two sets of needs have equal moral weight. There are, however, different interpretations of an equal concern for generations, or different forms that a temporally impartial concern for needs or interests can take. These interpretations are considered here, both as elaborations of the Brundtland Commission and as moral views worth evaluating in their own right.
The first view says that we should weigh gains in well-being with respect to times and, in particular, should not prefer a smaller increase in present wellbeing to larger increases in the future. We should try instead to maximize the sum of increases in wellbeing across times, or the total surplus of good over evil in all human lives, counting future lives equally against those in the present.
This view applies the structure of utilitarianism to the duty concerning future generations and can therefore be called utilitarianism about future generations. It holds, with the founder of the utilitarian school, Jeremy Bentham, that "each is to count for one and no one for more than one", in the sense that a unit gain in quality of life for one person counts no more nor less than a unit gain for another. Our moral goal should always be to produce the greatest total of such gains, no matter by whom they are enjoyed.
Utilitarianism has been extensively discussed by philosophers, and many objections have been raised against it. Two objections are especially relevant here. First, utilitarianism is an extremely, even excessively, demanding moral view. If we have a duty always to bring about the best outcome, then any time we can increase the well-being of others or ourselves -that is, just about any time - we have a moral duty to do so. There is no moral time off, no moral relaxation, no such thing as a moral holiday. We are always duty-bound to be sacrificing something for the sake of benefits elsewhere. Second, utilitarianism can favour unequal distributions of wellbeing and, in particular, can impose severe deprivations on the few for the sake of gains for the many. Given its interpretation of impartiality, utilitarianism will count the deprivations of the few as a moral cost but, if they produce benefits for enough other people, this cost will be outweighed and even a severe inequality can be approved on balance.
These two objections come together when utilitarianism is applied to future generations. If the quality of life improves through time because of economic growth and technological innovation, then the worst-off generations in history are the earliest generations. But they have a very demanding duty to make sacrifices for future generations, for example by investing rather than consuming resources. The earliest generations, despite their comparatively low quality of life, have a stringent duty to sacrifice their quality of life for the sake of people who, no matter what, will be far better off than they.
Some philosophers, feeling the force of these objections, have proposed replacing utilitarianism about future generations with a different -egalitarian -view. This view cares not just about the sum of benefits across generations but also about their equitable distribution, or about intergenerational equality. We do not sacrifice the worst-off generation for better-off generations, but aim in some way at equality of condition among them.
This egalitarian view can take several forms, but an interesting version has been proposed by Barry (1983). Barry considers that each generation has a duty to pass on to its successors a total range of resources and opportunities that is at least as good as its own. Those generations that enjoy favourable conditions of life must pass on similar circumstances of life to their successors: generations that are less fortunate have no such stringent obligation.
Several points in Barry's view are worth mentioning. First, it characterizes our duty concerning future generations not in terms of their well-being or quality of life but in terms of their range of opportunities. If we leave successor generations the opportunity for a high quality of life but they misuse it - if they squander the resources we have left them -that is their fault, not ours, and does not mean that we have failed in our duty. Second, the view's reference to a "total range" of opportunities allows variations in how the duty is fulfilled at different times in history. Referring to a range of opportunities allows trade-offs between different sources of opportunities: resources, technology, capital investment, environmental quality.
Understood in this way, the egalitarian view has several interesting features. It does not require large sacrifices by the earliest generations; on the contrary, it never requires a generation to make sacrifices for the sake of generations that will be better off than it is. This view seems close to some of the intentions of the Brundtland Commission. Utilitarianism about future generations fits at best the abstract idea of impartiality with respect to times, but the egalitarian view fits the specific language of "sustainable development". Thus, the term "sustainable" suggests a process that continues at a constant level through time. This is precisely what happens if each generation passes on an equal range of opportunities to its successors: a level of opportunities is achieved and then sustained through time. And the view's focus on opportunities fits the commission's interpretation of "development": what is sustained is not quality of life as such, but the economic and other activity that permits quality of life. What sustainable development ensures, in the commission's words, is the "ability of future generations to meet their own needs"; again, what is passed on is only opportunities.
Is the egalitarian view, therefore, the best view of our duty concerning future generations? There seem to be two serious objections against it.
The first objection is the other side of one of the view's merits. The egalitarian view does not place excessive demands on early generations to make sacrifices for the sake of later generations, but that is because it places no such demands at all - early generations need do nothing for later generations. Surely this is going too far; surely early generations have some duty to enable their successors to live better than themselves. An ideal of "sustainability", or of a constant level of wellbeing through time, may be attractive when we imagine it starting from a high level of well-being, but it is not attractive starting from a low level of well-being. There is nothing inspiring about a consistently maintained level of misery. There may not be as stringent a duty to improve conditions for future generations as utilitarianism claims, but surely there is some such duty.
The second objection is more abstract and concerns the way all egalitarian views focus on comparative judgements. Imagine that I am well off and you are badly off. Egalitarianism says the reason I should help you is that you are worse off than I. But surely this is not the right reason. The right reason is simply that you are badly off, apart from any comparison with me; it is your condition considered in itself that generates my duty. The egalitarian interest in comparative judgements does not make a practical difference in this case, since it still leads to the right conclusion: that I should help you. But, in other cases, it does make a difference. Imagine that I am extremely well off and you, although very well off, are still somewhat less well off than I am. Egalitarianism says I have the same reason to help you as in the first case; that you are less well off than I am. But it is not clear that there is any necessity about helping in this case. If your condition considered in itself is very good, why do I have any duty at all to improve it?
Reflecting on these objections leads to a third view about our duty concerning future generations. This third view states that our duty is not to make the condition of future generations as good as possible, as utilitarianism claims, or even as good as our own, as egalitarianism claims. Our duty is only to make the condition of future generations reasonably good. If we follow utilitarianism and formulate the duty in terms of quality of life, we will say that we have a duty to give future generations a reasonable quality of life. But Barry (1983) had persuasive arguments showing that the proper subject-matter of justice is opportunities. If we accept these arguments, we will formulate the third view as saying that each generation has a duty to pass on to its successor a range of opportunities that allows for a reasonable quality of life - in short, a reasonable range of opportunities. If a generation can pass on a better range of opportunities, one that allows for a more than reasonable quality of life, that may be a nice or even admirable thing to do. But it is not a duty.
This third view rests on an idea for which economists have coined the term "satisficing", meaning "making satisfactory". It says that, in general, rational agents do not strive obsessively for the best possible outcome but are content when they find one that is reasonably good. This third view, the "satisficing" view, has several attractive features.
First, the view's claims about early generations are midway between those of the egalitarian and utilitarian views. Early generations do have a duty concerning later generations; they should help enable their descendants to live lives that are reasonably good. But if their own lives are not reasonably good, they may weigh a concern for their own interests against their duty to their descendants. Second, the view moderates its demands on later generations, Imagine that our present range of opportunities allows us a quality of life that is far more than reasonably good. We do not violate a satisficing duty if we pass on a smaller range of opportunities to our successors, so long as this range is reasonably large, i.e. above a threshold.
Finally, the satisficing view fits an important part of the Brundtland Commission's language: its reference to "needs", as in "the needs of the present" and enabling "future generations to meet their own needs". We normally contrast people's needs with their wants, or with luxuries, or with things that benefit them but in a less significant or morally compelling way. Needs are not all that matter for a good life, but they come first and have a certain priority. It is natural to define this priority in satisficing terms: people's needs are what must be satisfied if they are to have a reasonably good life, while wants and luxuries allow them an even better life. And needs have priority because our duty to others is only to make their conditions of life reasonably good. To talk of "needs", then, as the Brundtland Commission does, is to talk in what looks like a satisficing way.
If this is right, however, there is a certain conflict between the commission's discussion of "sustainability" and its references to "needs". "Sustainability" suggests a constantly maintained level of well-being through time, and a duty that is violated if there is ever a decline in the conditions of life. But to speak of "needs" allows such a decline: if a wealthy generation's duty to its successors concerns only their needs, it does nothing wrong if it leaves them a little less than its own tremendous range of opportunities. In fact, speaking of "needs" allows a continuous decline in the conditions of life, so long as they remain above some threshold level. This is not to suggest that this conflict is of great practical or political significance. The problem in the world today is not that people are tempted to sacrifice more than they need to for future generations; it is that they seem oblivious to duties concerning the future.
Nonetheless, there is a philosophical question about what the best account of our duty concerning future generations is, and on that question "sustainability" and "needs" conflict. The author considers that the reference to "needs" is primary here: it is future people's condition considered in itself that matters, not its comparison with our own. It is not our privilege that entails responsibility, but our descendants' possible poverty. Accordingly, the satisficing view could be the best account of both our duty concerning future generations and, despite the need to rename it, sustainable development. It needs just two refinements to be complete.
In their initial formulations, the egalitarian and satisficing views treat generations as wholes; the present generation as a whole has a duty to pass certain conditions of life on to successor generations as wholes. But generations consist of individuals, and it is these individuals whose conditions of life matter morally. Thus, the demands of satisficing are not satisfied if just some or even a reasonable number of the individuals in a future generation live well; they must all be able to live well. We cannot, acting today, guarantee a proper division of a future generation's conditions of life, but our goal is that all its members can enjoy reasonable wellbeing.
The second point concerns an issue any complete view of our duties concerning the future must address: population growth and population size. This issue is especially pressing for the utilitarian view. Since this view is concerned with producing the best outcomes possible, it must decide whether producing a larger population is, other things being equal, better than producing a smaller one and, if it is, how the value of increased numbers weighs against the disvalue of its probable result: a lower quality of life. The egalitarian and satisficing views do not need to address these questions themselves. They seem neutral on the question of whether a larger population is, other things being equal, better or even whether there is a duty to preserve the human race from extinction. They claim only that, if there will be future people, we owe them certain conditions of life. The views therefore need to be supplemented by claims about the duty (if any) to produce numbers of human lives. Whatever these supplementary claims say, issues about population size affect the core of the satisficing duty. Since this duty is, as mentioned above, to ensure that each member of a future generation enjoys reasonable conditions of life, its demands will be more pressing the more such members there will be. If the numbers in a future generation will be larger, we must pass on a larger total set of resources, capital and unspoiled wilderness if each individual is to have a reasonable supply. And if we cannot pass on this larger set, and producing the larger population is not a duty, then producing a smaller population is a duty. If we are to avoid violating our duty concerning future generations - to ensure that each can live reasonably well - we must restrain population growth.
The focus has so far been on the "sustainable" half of "sustainable development", and the interpretation of our impartial duty concerning future generations. But the Brundtland Commission also accepts an impartial duty concerning people in developing countries, and the same interpretive options arise for it. Thus, a utilitarian view about developing countries states that we should aim at the greatest sum total of benefits for people in all countries, counting a unit gain in one country no more or less than in another; an egalitarian view states that developed countries should help developing countries reach a level of opportunities equal to their own; and a satisficing view states that developed countries should help developing countries reach a level of opportunities that is reasonably good. Arguments similar to those favouring satisficing in the intergenerational case could also favour it in the international case, suggesting that the best overall view applies a satisficing principle both across times and across spatial locations: we are all to aim at reasonably good conditions of life both for our own descendants and for people elsewhere. The debate about the coherence of "sustainable development" is then one about whether these two aims are compatible. Critics of the commission claim that they are not: we cannot ensure reasonable opportunities both for our descendants and for people elsewhere now. The commission believes we can. But the debate is an empirical one, about the possibility of satisfying two parallel satisficing demands, each arising from a satisficing interpretation of an impartial ethic of outcomes.
Turning briefly to the relationship between sustainable development and competitiveness, if there is a moral vision implicit in the term "competitiveness", is this vision compatible with the ideal of sustainable development?
At the level of theory, the answer must be no. The term "competitiveness" is not normally used by those who have an impartial concern for people in all countries. On the contrary, it usually appeals to those who are competitive, who want their own country to do better than others or who at least care more about their country's doing well than about others' doing well. Taking Canada as an example, the promoters of Canadian competitiveness would not think it a good thing if economic developments led to a transfer of wealth from well-off Canadians to poorer people in developing countries; on the contrary, they would deplore this loss of competitiveness. But the ideal of sustainable development as formulated by the Brundtland Commission would applaud this development as helping to meet the needs of those whose needs are most pressing.
A moral vision of competitiveness can embrace part of the ideal of sustainable development, that is, its impartial concern for the future. Thus, we can care about competitiveness in a long-term rather than in just a short-term way, so that we care about competitiveness for Canadians not just now but into the distant future. In managing the British Columbian forests, for example, we can ensure that we do not ravage the forests today for the sake of quick profits, but instead practise sustainable forestry, leaving a resource that our descendants can use and gain employment from in the same way that we do today.
This limited concern for sustainability - sustainability just here, for Canadians only - is indeed compatible with a kind of competitiveness, namely long-term competitiveness. In fact, the two concerns seem identical: caring about preserving a range of opportunities for future Canadians seems indistinguishable from caring about Canada's long-term competitiveness. But what coincides with long-term competitiveness here is not sustainable development in the sense intended by the Brundtland Commission, which requires impartial concern for all people everywhere. In the commission's words, sustainable development "requires meeting the basic needs of all and extending to all the opportunity for a better life". And it involves economic growth, because "such growth [is] absolutely essential to relieve the great poverty that is deepening in much of the developing world". In comparison with these remarks, the vision of long-term Canadian competitiveness, or any vision of merely local sustainability, seems incomplete and even internally in tension. Sustainable development in the full sense involves two parallel demands of impartiality, across times and across spatial locations. But how can one accept one of these demands but not the other? How can one endorse a concern for future Canadians, accepting that temporal distance does not extinguish moral duties, but reject a concern for non-Canadians, who are merely spatially distant? Whereas the ideal of sustainable development has an inner coherence, that of local long-term competitiveness seems at odds with itself.
There is a further theoretical difference between competitiveness and sustainable development. Assuming that we interpret sustainable development as involving a satisficing view, reflected in the Brundtland Commission's talk of "needs", we have a duty to ensure that others enjoy reasonable conditions of life, but any interests they have beyond this level - for example, interests in having mere wants satisfied or in acquiring luxuries - make no claims on us. And what is true of them is equally true of us - any interests we have in mere wants or luxuries have no moral weight. Imagine that we are extremely well off, and that the reduction in our well-being required to satisfy others' pressing needs will still leave us more than reasonably well off. On the satisficing view, the fact that we will suffer this reduction has no moral weight against the demand to satisfy others' needs. It is not that it counts for something but is outweighed by gains to the needy, as in the utilitarian view; in the satisficing view it counts for nothing at all.
A satisficing version of sustainable development is therefore an ethic of limits - not just ecological but ethical limits. It holds that no one has any claim to more than a reasonable supply of resources, at least so long as the more pressing demands of others are not satisfied. This ethic of limits seems to be essential to the Brundtland Commission's belief that the two component demands in its ideal are compatible. We can satisfy the needs both of people in developing countries and of future generations once we realize that people in developed countries - or at least the wealthiest among them - have no legitimate claim to that share of their resources that is not needed for a reasonable life.
But there is no suggestion of this ethic of limits in the moral vision of "competitiveness". On the contrary, this vision seems to imply a continual striving for material acquisition, a "competition" for wealth and luxury that never ends. This is in stark contrast to an ethic of "needs" that sees no legitimate claim to what is unnecessary for satisfying needs.
As has already been argued, there are two theoretical differences between the moral visions of sustainable development and competitiveness, differences in the fundamental principles that inspire them; however, someone may object that the central issue before this conference is not theoretical, it is practical. Sometimes radically different principles can require the very same action; they can give different reasons for doing exactly the same thing. May not this not be the case for sustainable development and competitiveness today? May these two different ideals require the same behaviour in our circumstances now?
It is true that a certain concern for sustainability - for local sustainability is compatible with competitiveness. Managing the British Columbian forests, for example, in a sustainable way will promote, not sacrifice, the long-term competitiveness of British Columbia and Canada. But it should also be recognized that local sustainability is not the only concern in the full ideal of sustainable development: that ideal includes an equal concern for people, now and in the future, in developing countries. So the practical question is whether ensuring reasonable conditions of life for these people as well as for our descendants is the best way of promoting our standard of living - not just to a reasonable level, but as high as it can go - in Canada.
There are many reasons for answering no to this large question which is, in effect, the ancient philosophical question about the relationship between morality and self-interest: is promoting the good of others the best way of promoting one's own good? It would certainly be nice - it would be wonderful - if this were so, but it is not, either in the case of individuals or in that of nations. In the author's view, satisfying the needs of people in developing countries, both now and in the future, will require sacrifices by those in developed countries. These sacrifices may not leave them unable to satisfy their needs - it would be wrong if they did - but they will properly require some sacrifice of luxuries, wants and mere competitiveness.
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