22. November 2013, 10:00 - 12:00 Uhr

Panel des Forschungsfeldes I: Die Gegenwart der Zukunft. Nachhaltigkeit und ökologische Gerechtigkeit

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At present we can only conjecture what conflicts with respect to the justice of a global normative order will be triggered by the predicted changes in the global climate, if we think of distribution conflicts over increasingly scarce resources in the seriously affected regions and social and cultural struggles that could be triggered once the predicted mass migrations to the more favorable climatic zones begin. With a thematic focus on intergenerational justice, poverty and climate change, the panel explores the normative bases of different conceptions of a just world order, with a particular emphasis on the responsibilities that follow from that for present and/or future generations.

Chair: Katharina Michaelowa
Katharina Michaelowa (Ph.D. 1998, Hamburg) is Professor of Political Economy and Development at the University of Zurich. She studied Economics at the Universities of Mannheim (Germany) and at the Delhi School of Economics (India). Before joining the University of Zurich she held positions at the OECD in Paris and at the Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI). From January 2009 to December 2011 she was the Director of the Center for International and Comparative Studies (CIS) at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. She currently chairs the Working Group on “Development Economics” of the German Economic Association and co-chairs the Working Group “Environment & Development” of the Swiss Political Science Association. Moreover, she is a member of the National Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Her research focuses on the areas policies and politics in developing countries, international development cooperation, and international climate policy, and led to over 70 publications including several books, and articles in journals such as Public Choice, the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, World Development, the Review of International Organizations and Climatic Change.

Vortrag 1:

Stemming Climate Change and Eradicating Poverty: Competing Imperatives?

Thomas Pogge

Many people vaguely believe that the fight against pollution and climate change is at cross-purposes with the fight against poverty. A simple argument for this hypothesis goes as follows: „Reductions in poverty increase human population as those who escape extreme poverty will enjoy longer lives. The effect is substantial as about half of current poverty deaths (9 out of 18 million) are children under 5. If we enable these children to survive, most of them will reproduce (and thereby aggravate ecological burdens). This will invariably accelerate climate change and aggravate ecological burdens more generally (including depletion of non-renewable natural resources), as these are positively correlated with population. There is no reason to think that ecological footprint per person declines meaningfully with the number of persons. Therefore, more people means more rapid exhaustion of our planetary resources.“ The lecture will examine this supposed competition of goals in detail.

Thomas Pogge ...

... ist Leitner Professor für Philosophie und internationale Angelegenheiten und Gründungsdirektor des Programms für globale Gerechtigkeit an der Yale Universität (pantheon.yale.edu/~tp4), Forschungsdirektor am Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature an der Universität Oslo und Teilzeitprofessor am Kings College London und den Universitäten Sydney und Central Lancashire. Er ediert den Bereich soziale und politische Philosophie der Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy und ist Mitglied der Norwegischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Seine jüngsten Bücher sind Weltarmut und Menschenrechte: Kosmopolitische Verantwortung und Reformen (Berlin 2011), Kant, Rawls, and Global Justice (Chinesisch, Shanghai 2010), Politics as Usual: What Lies behind the Pro-Poor Rhetoric? (Cambridge 2010), Gerechtigkeit in der Einen Welt (Essen 2009), Hacer justicia a la humanidad (Mexiko Stadt 2009), The Health Impact Fund (mit Aidan Hollis, Oslo 2008), John Rawls: His Life and Theory of Justice (Oxford 2007); und, als (Mit-)Herausgeber, Global Financial Crisis: the Ethical Issues (Basingstroke 2011), Incentives for Global Public Health (Cambridge 2010), Giving Well (Oxford 2010), Health Rights (Farnham 2010), Absolute Poverty and Global Justice (Aldershot 2009), Global Justice/Global Ethics: Seminal Essays (2 Bände, St. Paul 2008), Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right (Oxford 2007). Pogge ist Präsident der Organisationen Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP; www.academicsstand.org), die durch internationale Kollaboration von Forschern, Lehrenden und Studierenden zur weltweiten Armutsbekämpfung beiträgt, und Incentives for Global Health (Strukturanreize für globale Gesundheit e.V.; www.healthimpactfund.org), die durch ein neues Finanzierungsinstrument für pharmazeutische Forschung den Zugang zu neuen Medikamenten strukturell zu verbessern sucht.

Vortrag 2:

Dangerous Climate Change and Responsibility for Mitigation

Darrel Moellendorf

Unmitigated climate change is widely regarded as dangerous. But because the evaluation of a course of action as dangerous is normative, the contribution of the natural and social sciences to such an evaluation is insufficient. In this presentation I argue that the reasons that we have to avoid poverty are key to the identification of climate change as dangerous. These reasons are also important in the distribution of the responsibility of the present (and near future) generations to mitigate climate change.

Darrel Moellendorf ...

... is a Professor of International Political Theory at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main. He is the author of Cosmopolitan Justice (2002), Global Inequality Matters (2009), and The Moral Challenge of Dangerous Climate Change: Values, Poverty, and Policy (2014). He co-edited (with Christopher J. Roederer) Jurisprudence (2004), (with Gillian Brock) Current Debates in Global Justice (2005), (with Thomas Pogge) Global Justice: Seminal Essays (2008) and (with Heather Widdows) The Handbook of Global Ethics (2014). He has been Member of the School of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton) and a Senior Fellow at Justitia Amplificata at Goethe-Universität Frankfurt and the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften.

Vortrag 3:

Addressing (Past) Pollution: The Beneficiary Pays Principle Revisited.

Anja Karnein

Climate change requires helping the most vulnerable countries adapt to severe atmospheric conditions. But who should do so and for what kinds of reasons? Unfortunately, it is far from obvious on what normative grounds such assistance should be provided. There are mainly three options referred to by scholars and politicians: the polluter pays principle (PPP), the ability to pay principle (APP), and the beneficiary pays principle (BPP). Especially in the case of addressing the detrimental effects of past pollution, the BPP is a very widely endorsed principle. However, I argue that the mere fact of having benefited cannot provide the necessary grounds for establishing special obligations to assist victims of past pollution. I will show that additional factors, such as moral responsibility or wealth, have to be present for benefits to generate obligations. But once these additional factors have been identified, having benefitted (alone) appears not to be particularly relevant.

Anja Karnein ...

... is a junior faculty member at Goethe University Frankfurt where she teaches political theory and philosophy. After completing her Ph.D. at Brandels University she was a Visiting Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University and, following that, Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Society and Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Additionally, she has been Visiting Scholar at the Center for Bioethics at New York University and in the Law and Philosophy Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has been a regular Visiting Professor at Karl-Franzens University Graz since 2012. Her first book, A Theory of Unborn Life: From Abortion to Genetic Manipulation, appeared with Oxford University Press (2012) and, for the German translation, with Suhrkamp Verlag (2013). Currently, she is working on her second book on intergenerational justice and climate change.

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