The Ethics of Technology

Methods and Approaches

Sven Ove Hansson

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781783486571
• eBook ISBN: 9781783486595
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Our daily lives are affected by new technologies at an ever increasing rate. It is becoming more and more important to assess future technologies from an ethical point of view, and to do this before they are introduced on a massive scale. Such assessments require systematic use of many different kinds of knowledge.

In this important new book, an international team of leading experts in the field provides the first comprehensive treatment of the methods available for ethical assessments of technologies and their social introduction. The book explores how information from empirical research can be used in ethical analyses of technology and includes chapters showing how ethical analysis can shed light on topics such as privacy, risk, sustainability, dual use, gender issues, justice, international technology transfer, and the responsibility of engineers. It provides an invaluable resource for students in the philosophy and ethics of technology, science and technology studies, applied ethics, bioethics, business ethics and the ethics of computing.

Part I

PERSPECTIVES

Chapter 2

Ethics of Sustainability—An Analytical Approach

Christine Rösch

1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The idea of sustainability emerged gradually as a key concept for environmental and social analytical and decision-making processes. It has its roots in the history of Western ideas about the relation between nature and culture and reflections on the impact of resource use on the availability of natural resources. Two famous documents illustrate the negative influence of past (non-sustainable) utilization practices on forest resources, as well as the needs of future generations for continued use of these resources: John Evelyn’s Silva or a discourse on forest trees from 1664 and Colbert’s French Forest Ordinance from 1669. These documents are considered as important starting points in the development of forestry science. Forestry may therefore be considered as the first science that explicitly incorporated concerns about safeguarding finite natural resources for future generations. The concept of sustainability was for the first time explicitly formulated as the “Nachhaltigkeitsprinzip” in the eighteenth-century German forestry literature (Peters and Wiebecke 1983; Rubner 1992).

The term sustainability (German: Nachhaltigkeit) was coined by the Royal Saxon chief mining official Hans Carl von Carlowitz in 1713 in the face of a cross-regional wood shortage that had been precipitated by the mining and refining of iron ore. In his fundamental work on forestry, “Sylvicultura oeconomica oder Haußwirthliche Nachricht und Naturmäßige Anweisung zur wilden Baum-Zucht,” Carlowitz is calling for forests to be exploited in a “consistent, lasting and sustainable way, as man cannot act against nature” (von Carlowitz 1713). In 1804, Georg Ludwig Hartig, appointed privy counsellor and chief inspector of forests in Berlin, further developed this term to ensure that forest resources are still available for future generations as follows: “Every wise forest director has to have evaluated the forest stands without losing time, to utilize them to the greatest possible extent, but still in a way that future generations will have at least as much benefit from as the living generation” (Mantel 1966). Since that time, the concept of sustainability has been elaborated in forestry as the principle of sustained yield. Although the concept of sustainability has for a long time been one of the central principles in forestry, up to the present forestry scientists have pondered upon the precise meaning and operational definition of the concept.

In its modern form—decisively shaped by the report from the so-called UN Brundtland Commission in 1987 (United Nations Group World Commission on Environment and Development)—the definition of sustainable development is a broad ethical principle with three key components. First, it comprises the ethical principle that the needs of the present generations have to be met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This statement makes an explicit commitment to future generations. It clarifies that the quality of today’s living should not be at the expense of the future generation’s quality of life (generational equity). Second, the definition of sustainable development includes the normative principle of global justice. This means that here and now, in all parts of the world, a good quality of life should be possible, and that resources should not only be used responsibly, but also be fairly distributed. The requirements of sustainability are not satisfied if some regions live in abundance while others suffer from deficiency. Last but not least, the definition is clearly based on the philosophical approach in environmental ethics that has been associated with anthropocentrism, or the view that protection of the environment should be based primarily (if not exclusively) on benefits that humans derive from utilizing natural resources.

The Brundtland definition amounts to a comprehensive ethical responsibility for people, living today as well as those in the future, to use the resources and the environment so that everybody can experience a good quality of life today and tomorrow. The operational implementation of this sustainability vision is an enormous challenge for society which requires significant changes in thinking, policy, lifestyles, and economy. For the present, it would mean that wealthier, more technologically sophisticated societies would have to contribute materially and through a wide range of assistance programs to increase the wealth of poorer nations, to aid them in developing the capability to provide for the basic needs of their populations. For future generations, it means ensuring the availability of a wide range of resources: natural, mineral, food, clean air and water, genetic diversity, cultural, educational, and numerous others that support a good quality of life. Beyond that it has to be ensured that the environmental impacts of human societies do not threaten the resilience of nature.

The Brundtland definition of sustainable development is widely recognized and referenced. Yet, because of its complexity it remains inherently difficult to apply it in analytical approaches, assessments, and policy consultations. The implementation of sustainable lifestyles is also difficult due to the enormous shifts in thinking and behavior that it requires. In the decade after the Brundtland report, numerous attempts have been made to specify and quantify its general commitments in more precise language that could be used in analytical and decision-making contexts. In the first decade of the new millennium, a highly technical debate over indicators and specification of the Brundtland approach took place. Indicator sets have been developed to specify the Brundtland definition and to monitor and assess progress in sustainable development in various contexts and at different scales.

At the global level, the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), an international independent standards organization founded in 1997, are the best-known institutions that have developed sustainability goals and indicators. The CSD, established in 1992, commissioned the development of an indicator set by a group of experts from developing and developed countries and international organizations in 1996. After implementing and extensively testing the CSD indicators, they have been revised in 2001 and 2006. The revised edition comprises 96 indicators, including a subset of 50 core indicators. This set of global indicators is applied to follow up and review the goals and targets of the vision “Transforming our World.” The indicators have to be complemented by indicators at the regional and national levels, which will be developed by member states. In 2015, the CSD announced 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and 169 targets, which are regarded as integrated and indivisible and balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social, and environmental. The GRI has developed an indicator-based standard for sustainability reporting in order to enable businesses, governments, and other organizations to measure and understand their most critical impacts on the environment, society, and the economy as well as to communicate their impacts on issues such as climate change, human rights, and corruption.

With the work of the CSD and GRI the meaning of sustainable development has been substantiated and defined at the global level. It is apparent that discrepancies, mismatches, and even contradictions are arising when the SDG are transferred and implemented on the national and regional levels and applied in different contexts. This is related to the varying meaning and definition of sustainability and the differences in existing indicator sets. Hence, if sustainability eludes a more precise definition than the one from the Brundtland report, then the question arises as to how it can serve as a basis for measuring and monitoring sustainability as well as in formulating appropriate recommendations for decision-making processes. There is considerable need for orientation knowledge on how to define sustainable development in a substantial and conclusive way, so that it can guide the transformation of societal systems. To gain practical relevance, some essential criteria have to be fulfilled:

1.a clear object relation, that is, it must be defined what the term applies to and what not, and which are the subjects to which assessments should be ascribed;

2.the power of differentiation, that is, clear and comprehensible differentiations between “sustainable” and “non-sustainable” practices must be possible, and concrete ascriptions of these judgments to societal developments have to be made possible beyond arbitrariness;

3.the possibility to operationalize, that is, the definition has to be substantial enough to define sustainability indicators, to determine target values for them and to allow for empirical “measurements” of sustainability.

The Integrative Sustainability Concept (Kopfmüller et al. 2001) claims to meet these criteria. It provides a theoretically well-founded approach to operationalize the vision of sustainable development and an operable analytical tool for sustainability analyses. The concept has been applied in various research projects (Kopfmüller 2006).

2. THE INTEGRATIVE SUSTAINABILITY CONCEPT

Based on the Brundtland report with its well-known sustainability definition and on essential documents of the sustainability debate, such as the Rio Declaration and the Agenda 21, the starting points of the Integrative Sustainability Concept are not the different dimensions of sustainability, but three constitutive elements (Kopfmüller et al. 2001):

1.inter- and intra-generational justice, equal in weight;

2.the global perspective regarding goals and actions; and

3.an anthropocentric approach with a self-interested obligation of mankind to interact cautiously with nature. This acknowledges that long-term preservation of nature and a healthy, sustainable environment are necessary for the well-being of humans.

The guiding principle of sustainability comprises two objectives of justice: justice between different people of the present generation (intra-generational justice), and justice between people of different generations (intergenerational justice), with equal normative importance being attached to both objectives of justice (WCED 1987). Accordingly, people living today and people living in the future have equal rights to certain basic goods, including ecosystems and their services (e.g., Feinberg 1981; Visser’t Hooft 2007). Accepting these normative elements requires a comprehensive and integrative understanding and implementation of sustainable development; in particular because justice is a cross-dimensional issue. The constitutive elements of the Integrative Sustainability Concept are translated into three general sustainability goals:

1.Securing human existence;

2.Maintaining society’s productive potential;

3.Preserving society’s options for development and action.

These goals are specified by substantial sustainability rules (Table 2.1) forming the core elements of the concept (Kopfmüller et al. 2001). The substantial rules describe the minimum conditions for sustainable development that need to be assured for all people living in the present as well as those who will live in future generations. Sustainability, at least with respect to environmental concerns, results from a sense that certain activities constitute a threat to human well-being through the destruction of environmental integrity. In addition to these substantial rules, instrumental rules were defined. They describe essential framework conditions to fulfil the substantial rules. More information about the Integrative Sustainability Concept and further explanation of the rules and their derivation can be found in Kopfmüller et al. (2001).

Table 2.1 Rules of the Integrative Sustainability Concept (Kopfmüller et al. 2001)

Substantial Rules
Securing human existence	Maintaining society’s productive potential		Preserving society’s options for development and action
1.Protection of human health 2.Addressing basic human needs 3.Enabling all people to secure their own livelihood 4.Equal chances of using nature’s capital and ecosystem services 5.Reducing excessive income and wealth inequalities	6.Sustainable use of renewable resources 7.Sustainable use of non-renewable resources 8.Sustaining ecosystem services 9.Avoiding unacceptable technological risks 10.Sustainable development of man-made, human and knowledge capital		11.Equal access for all to information, education and occupation 12.Enabling participation in societal decision-making processes 13.Preserving cultural heritage and cultural diversity 14.Conserving nature and landscape as cultural assets 15.Maintaining social cohesion
Instrumental Rules
1.Internalization of external social and ecological costs 2.Adequate discounting 3.Limitation of public debt 4.Fair international econom...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Halftitle
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I: PERSPECTIVES
• PART II: TOOLS
• PART III: EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
• PART IV: ETHICAL REFLECTIONS
• Index
• About the Contributors