[Cross-posted on the parent blog]
The Right to an Opportunity for Cultural Integration
Focusing
only on property damage caused by climate change, it may be noted,
seems to leave out a large part of the picture of why people are
concerned about climate change. In addition to
the impacts discussed so far, many would find objection the fact that
climate change will deprive members of certain social groups of the
opportunity to integrate themselves into the societies in which they
were raised, as a result of changes in the physical context in which
those societies have been able to flourish. In
many situations, entire cultures will be forced to relocate in order to
continue to exist, and in some, they could vanish altogether. Surely this is a troubling consequence of climate change. But does it represent an infringement of rights?
In
examining this question, we must take care to isolate the deprivation
of an opportunity for cultural integration from the other sorts of
rights infringements which we have been discussing so far. For
example, if you are so deprived because your farm was flooded by ocean
water and you were forced to move, then the problem seems to be one of
property rights, and we already know what to say about it. To
avoid confusion, we will discuss cases where the deprived party’s
property is not being damaged in any way, and the only harm being done
seems to be the kind of cultural deprivation that we are concerned with
here.
Accordingly,
we will imagine a hypothetical scenario in which a young Pacific
Islander, Akiko, is setting about deciding what she wants for her life. She owns no property, and has not settled in to any profession or living situation. She is simply evaluating her options in order to choose how she will begin her adult life.
The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests that small
island communities will be particularly vulnerable to climate change. In
addition to submerging land on the island, sea level rise will likely
make storm surges more dangerous and exacerbate erosion and other
coastal hazards. On land, water resources will
likely be seriously compromised, and the introduction of salty ocean
water into the environment will likely make agriculture more difficult. In
the ocean itself, changing environmental conditions could fundamentally
alter ecosystems, possibly affecting populations of fish and other
organisms on which the islanders rely. Further,
a number of studies have concluded that the effects of climate change
on the tourism industry will produce generally negative outcomes for
island economies. All things considered, it might be unfeasible for Akiko to try to start a traditional life for herself on the island. Changing
environmental conditions could make it impossible for her to live the
kind of life which has characterized her people in the past, and she
must act accordingly.
It seems clear that this is something of a sad story. But
it might here be noticed that there are plenty of ways which one might
deprive a person of the opportunity to live in the manner for which
their culture is adapted, which would not involve any violations of
their rights. For example, we might imagine a
community of small-scale farmers who have fallen on hard times on
account of the emergence of a large agribusiness corporation, whose
greater efficiency and high output caused market prices for the
farmers’ goods to fall below a level which could support their
traditional lifestyles. Jebediah, a child growing up in such a community, would seemingly be faced with a set of circumstances similar to Akiko’s. Circumstances
would make it impossible for Jebediah to take his place in the culture
of his upbringing, much like Akiko was driven away from her heritage by
the changing environmental conditions on her island brought about by
climate change.
Presumably,
we would not think that the agribusiness corporation, in bringing its
products to market in higher quantities and better prices, was doing
anything wrong, even if it had no significant moral reason to support
its actions. In fact, we might applaud it for
representing an increase in the wellbeing of its customers, who could
use the money they saved on purchasing food products to improve their
material conditions in ways that would have been otherwise unavailable
to them. So surely its actions would not
represent infringements of any rights held by the young members of the
farming community, like Jebediah, who would be denied an opportunity to
carry on in the traditions of their parents. And
so we might think that in the same way, Akiko’s rights are not
infringed when she is denied the opportunity to become integrated into
the culture of her upbringing by climate change.
One
might object that there is a difference between Jebediah’s case and
Akiko’s, in that Akiko’s situation is the result of rights-infringing
damage to the environment in which her culture existed, whereas
Jebediah’s situation is the result of customers exercising their right
to withdraw their patronage from producers who do offer noncompetitive
products. Jebediah lost his opportunity because
it was built upon an assumption of support from others which proved to
be false, and neither he nor any of his predecessors had any right to
this support. Akiko’s elders, however, did
have a right to the things that Akiko would need in order to exercise
her opportunity, and Akiko was only denied access to them because a
third party actor acted in a way that infringed upon rights.
But
as we mentioned at the beginning of this section, we have to be careful
to avoid focusing on infringements of the rights of those whose
property is damaged by climate change. Those factors have already been accounted for. And remember, we have stipulated that none of the property which is damaged belongs to Akiko. So
this avenue of establishing Akiko’s rights seems closed: it seems
fairly clear that Akiko has no claim to the property of other people,
and her rights are not infringed when we damage that property.
Rights as a Member of a Community
However,
one might point out that Akiko’s claim is not centered on the property
damage itself, but rather its implications for the island community as
a whole. Viewed holistically, Akiko’s community
is composed of a system of interdependences which can be “benefited” or
“harmed” in a way that cannot be understood simply as the sum of
impacts on individual members. From this
perspective, we harm the community not only when we harm a given
individual, but also when we interfere with an individual’s fulfillment
of her function in the community. For example,
if a community depends on the agricultural products supplied by a
particular farmer, and we damage the farmer’s land so that his
productivity is constrained, then we not only harm the farmer, in that
his property is damaged, but we also harm the community as a whole, in
that the farmer filled an important “niche” as the provider of food for
the rest of the community.
From
Akiko’s perspective, climate change is not only damaging a great deal
of others’ property, but it is also destroying the integrity of the
community in which she was raised, and of which she expected and hoped
to become a part. As we have described them, the
opportunities that Akiko has been deprived of seem to have been
dependent on the health of the community. So it
might be that in objecting to the loss of her opportunity to be
integrated into her culture, what Akiko is really objecting to is the
loss of her community’s integrity due to the impairment of members’
functions due to climate change.
But
what is so special about the “community” in this example which sets it
apart from other instances where an individual’s social functions are
impaired in a way that has negative implications for others? Imagine that Russell has been training himself to work as a laborer at a pogo stick factory in his town. But when he arrives at the factory to apply for a job, he discovers that it has been destroyed by terrorists. Unfortunately,
Russell’s only hope of supporting himself in his town was to work at
the pogo stick factory, and its destruction will force him to leave his
community.
In this case, it does not seem that the terrorists infringed on Russell’s rights (though they almost certainly infringed on the factory owners’ rights). But
it is nevertheless true that Russell depended on the factory’s ability
to fulfill its function as a provider of jobs, and by impairing that
function, the terrorists deprived Russell of the opportunity to
integrate himself into his community. It seems
as though the only difference between Russell’s situation and Akiko’s
is that Russell’s situation was brought about by the impairment of the
functioning of a single member of the community, whereas Akiko’s was
brought about by the impairment of the functioning of multiple members. I see no reason to think that this difference is morally significant. Accordingly,
it seems fair to conclude that, while her tale is a sad one (as are
Jebediah’s and Russell’s), Akiko’s rights are not infringed as a result
of her being deprived of the opportunity to integrate herself into the
culture of her upbringing.