Abstract
The interconnection between the wellbeing of humans and that of the environment is undeniable. Whether due to economic globalization or climate change caused by anthropogenic or natural drivers, it is the lives of the people on the margins, who are already struggling to make ends meet, that are most affected. Even though they do not contribute much to the global crises, they are the ones that bear the brunt of these crises. In that context, even as we embark on finding ways to address the ecological emergency, we need to consider ways to address the humanitarian crises.
Towards that end, while there is a need to find new ways of understanding the flourishing of the planetary communities of life in a holistic manner, there is a need to revisit and revise some of the frameworks of understanding so that they can be more inclusive. It is through such revisiting and revising we change the narratives of justice in our communities. This essay in that regard is an attempt to show how the capabilities approach, as proposed by philosopher Martha Nussbaum, has transformed over time in its consideration of the wellbeing of nonhumans and the environment as it dwells on the flourishing of humans. Furthermore, in the process of examining the transformation of this approach, we may also see its potential to address the demands of the ecological emergency without compromising the needs of human development.
ALTHOUGH CLIMATE CHANGE is a global threat, it is especially menacing to the world’s poor. As the mean temperature of the Earth rises, the impact of climate change on sources of water and food, and on health and living standards, will be greater in those regions that are already struggling. Waves of “climate refugees,” damage to traditional cultures, increasingly frequent and severe floods and droughts—these and other results of global warming will constitute a humanitarian disaster on top of the environmental one.
Strobe Talbott (Foreword to Lael Brainard, Abigail Jones and Nigel Purvis, eds., Climate Change and Global Poverty: A Billion Lives in the Balance? (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2009, vii.)
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Notes
- 1.
This is the same title that Amartya Sen used for his Tanner Lecture at Stanford University in 1979, where he proposed his capabilities theory. I do not intend to go into Sen’s understanding of capabilities in this paper, but the complete lecture may be found at: https://www.ophi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Sen-1979_Equality-of-What.pdf (last accessed on 18th May, 2021).
- 2.
Nussbaum’s critical appraisal of Rawls’ theory may be found at: Nussbaum 2000, pp. 65–70.
- 3.
Nussbaum gives the same list of capabilities under the heading “The Central Human Capabilities” in her Frontiers of Justice (pp. 76–78). Although the list has the same capabilities, Nussbaum has modified and refined a few words here and there and added some phrases in certain capabilities. For instance: under “Control over One’s Environment,” in the recent version, Nussbaum adds a sentence: “In work, being able to work as a human being, exercising practical reason and entering into meaningful relationships of mutual recognition with other workers.” See Frontiers of Justice, 78. Although the modifications are minor, these modifications might prove the point that the list is ‘open-ended’ and is open to be ‘remade,’ as Nussbaum claims. In any case, I would follow the version of capabilities in Women and Human Development, 78–80.
- 4.
The conception of meta-capability as a capability that is necessary for the exercise of other capabilities is similar to the manner in which Henry Shue defines basic rights—“rights are basic in the sense … [that] only if enjoyment of them is essential to the enjoyment of all other rights.” See Henry Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980, 19).
- 5.
Dignified existence, according to Nussbaum, at least includes: “adequate opportunities for nutrition and physical activity; freedom to act in ways that are characteristic of the species (rather than to be confined and … made to perform silly and degrading stunts); freedom from fear and opportunities for rewarding interactions with other creatures of the same species, and of different species; a chance to enjoy the light and air in tranquility” (Nussbaum 2006, p. 326).
- 6.
David Schlosberg (2007) rightly criticizes that Nussbaum gives “mixed messages on sentience.” As he points out, on the one hand, Nussbaum (2006) insists that sentience “is not the only thing that matters for basic justice, but it seems plausible to consider the possession of sentience as a threshold condition for membership in the community of beings who have entitlements based on justice” (pp. 361–362). Yet immediately following this, she moves beyond sentience, and notes: “Given the fact that pleasure and pain are not the only things of intrinsic value for the capabilities approach, the approach, strictly speaking, should not say that the capacity to feel pleasure and pain is a necessary condition of moral status. Instead, we should adopt a disjunctive approach: if a creature has either the capacity for pleasure and pain or the capacity for movement from place to place or the capacity for emotion and affiliation or the capacity for reasoning and so forth (we might add play, tool use, and others), then that creature has moral standing” (ibid., p.362; Schlosberg 2007, pp. 146–147).
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Motupalli, C. (2023). The Capabilities Approach and the Environment. In: Weir, L. (eds) Philosophy as Practice in the Ecological Emergency. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94391-2_12
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