A Sustainability-Fitting Interpretation of the Capability Approach: Integrating the Natural Dimension by Employing Feedback Loops

Abstract

Combining the Capability Approach (CA) with Sustainable Development (SD) is a promising project that has gained much attention. Recently, scholars from both perspectives have worked on narrowing gaps between these development approaches, with a focus on the connection between the CA as a partial justice theory and SD as a concept embracing justice and ecological fragility and relative scarcity. We argue that to base an SD conception on the CA, the CA must be further developed. To provide the rationale for this claim, we begin by clarifying how we look upon the relation between SD and the CA and how we understand SD (1). We then argue for an integration of the natural dimension in the CA (2). By analyzing similarities of recent contributions integrating the natural dimension, we identify how the CA structure may be developed to include the recursive relation between the human and natural dimensions and especially to include the circumstances of justice relevant to SD (3). Finally, we argue that a new recursive and dynamic CA structure is related to the debate on criteria for ‘valuable’ in the term ‘valuable functionings’ and that this points to an expansion of the CA's evaluative space (4).