Abstract
The article aims to provide some ethical orientation on how sustainability might be actualized by institutions. Since institutionalization is about rules and organization, it presupposes ideas and concepts by which institutions can be substantiated. After outlining terminology, the article deals with underlying ethical and conceptual problems which are highly relevant for any suggestions concerning institutionalization. These problems are: (a) the ethical scope of the sustainability perspective (natural capital, poverty, sentient animals), (b) the theory of justice on which ideas about sustainability are built (capability approach, Rawlsianism), and (c) the favored concept of sustainability (weak, intermediate, and strong sustainability). These problems are analyzed in turn. As a result, a Rawlsian concept of rule-based strong sustainability is proposed. The specific problems of institutionalization are addressed by applying Rawls’s concept of branches. The article concludes with arguments in favor of three transnational duties which hold for states that have adopted Rawlsian strong sustainability.
Highlights
Disposal of nuclear waste, extinction of species, degradation of soils and forests, overfishing, desertification, and the like are paradigm cases within focal perspective of sustainability‖ (FP). Given such ethical puzzles and practical topics, current FP has a high level of complexity on its own
There might be pragmatic reasons to conceive FP as centerpiece of an ethics of sustainability and place poverty reduction and animal ethics in the close surrounding as being augmentations of FP. It follows that we should clearly distinguish among (a) ethical presuppositions of sustainability, (b) the overall moral cluster (FP, absolute poverty, animal ethics), (c) original FP as centerpiece, and d) the many pressing moral and justice problems that are external to a theory of sustainability
Even if the persons in the original position had some broad insights into the reliance of human systems upon nature and knew about ecosystem services, this knowledge would remain too unspecific to answer the question ―What to sustain?‖ This question cannot be resolved behind the veil of ignorance anymore (The fourth principle does not imply any answer to the political question how the relationship between private and public bequests should be determined in a given society and which system of property rights may best serve the idea of sustainability.)
Summary
Let us assume for the sake of the argument which is being presented in this article that reasonable ideas, as sustainability, are in themselves bound to become actualized via concepts, institutions, and policy making. This general perspective is clearly inspired by Hegel’s idea of actualization (―Verwirklichung‖) [1]. The article addresses the question how this gap between the very idea and institutions of sustainability might be bridged. The last section argues that states which have adopted Rawlsian strong sustainability should adopt some transnational obligations
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