Practices of sustainability and the enactment of their natures/cultures: Ecosystem services, rights of nature, and geoengineering

Abstract

Possible trajectories of sustainability are based on different concepts of nature. The article starts out from three trajectories of sustainability (modernization, transformation and control) and reconstructs one characteristic practice for each path with its specific conceptions of nature. The notion that nature provides human societies with relevant ecosystem services is typical of the path of modernization. Nature is reified and monetarized here, with regard to its utility for human societies. Practices of transformation, in contrast, emphasize the intrinsic ethical value of nature. This becomes particularly apparent in discourses on the rights of nature, whose starting point can be found in Latin American indigenous discourses, among others. Control practices such as geoengineering are based on earth-systemic conceptions of nature, in which no distinction is made between natural and social systems. The aim is to control the earth system as a whole in order for human societies to remain viable. Practices of sustainability thus show different ontological understandings of nature (dualistic or monistic) on the one hand and (implicit) ethics and sacralizations (anthropocentric or biocentric) on the other. The three reconstructed natures/cultures have different ontological and ethical affinities and conflict with each other. They are linked to very different knowledge cultures and life-worlds, which answer very differently to the question of what is of value in a society and in nature and how these values ought to be protected.

An Emergent Planetary Health Law

“…These views may be seen as overly anthropocentric and shaped by a rigid dichotomy between society and nature. 125 As David Boyd, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment, has pointed out, it is not possible to protect the environment if human superiority and universal ownership of all land and wildlife to pursue endless economic growth are continuously asserted. 126 To avoid the excesses of an extreme anthropocentric approach that indiscriminately subjugates ecosystems to narrowly defined human interests, several jurisdictions have found it necessary to infuse a dose of ecocentrism, in the form of 'rights of nature', into a burgeoning planetary health law.…”

Techno-moral change through solar geoengineering: How geoengineering challenges sustainability

“…Frank Adloff and Iris Hilbrich add the concept of 'control' to discuss geoengineering and concepts of sustainability (Adloff and Hilbrich, 2021). They conceptualize geoengineering as a way to enact control over nature, as the eco-modernists seek to solve pressing issues of climate change and societal problems through technological innovation (Adloff and Hilbrich, 2021, p.177).…”

“…Throughout the debate on the ethics of SAI, a specific focus is usually on issues of historical, procedural and distributive justice (Preston, 2016). If sustainability is taken into account when discussing SAI, it is in order to make a point about its unsustainability (Adloff and Hilbrich, 2021), or how the sustainability debate can bring different viewpoints on SAI together (Thiele, 2019). How SAI potentially affects conceptions of sustainability, however, is underdeveloped.…”