Back to the Drawing Board : Appropriation and Environmentalism, Lifestyles

Is There a Right to Culture?

Donny with an A — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:52:00 GMT

[Cross-posted on the parent blog]

Last week I had a conversation with my thesis advisor, Dr. Harry Brighouse, in which we discussed an interesting idea which I think might prove important in one way or another, and which I think is worthy of elaboration here. The idea was that a big part of what people are concerned about in discussing climate change is that members of certain social groups will be deprived 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 were able to flourish.

To illustrate, we might travel to Bangladesh several decades in the future. In my imaginary scenario, sea levels are rising around the low-lying country, and the property of the locals is suffering considerable damage. However, because I am the master of this imaginary scenario, I'll stipulate that we have fully compensated all of these property owners for the damage done to them (regardless of whether or not they would actually be entitled to this compensation). So everyone whose property is damaged by climate change is fine.

But imagine that there is a child, Nadia, who has grown up in Bangladesh and is beginning to plan a life for herself. Perhaps it would be possible for Nadia to live in Bangladesh, but with the environmental damage being done to the area, perhaps it would be unfeasible for her to do so. It's not that she has such great opportunities elsewhere, but rather that the prospect of living a good life in Bangladesh looks bleak. Accordingly, the best choice for Nadia and her peers might be to assimilate into another culture which would offer a more promising future. Would Nadia have been deprived of something to which she was entitled?

We have stipulated that Nadia owned no property which was damaged, or that if she did, she was fully compensated for it. Further, we have stipulated that Nadia had not yet even chosen a profession, or settled down anywhere. She was simply deciding what she wanted for her life, and she saw that Bangladesh offered scarce opportunities for the kind of future she envisioned for herself. Given the way we normally think about rights violations, it doesn't seem like we have wronged Nadia in any real way.

But at the same time, I can see why Nadia would offer an objection. She might say that as a Bangladeshi, she would have wanted to be integrated into Bangladeshi society. Now, as a result of the effects of climate change, it will be extremely difficult for her to make that happen. Nadia's claim, then, would seem to be that she had some kind of right which is infringed by other people making it difficult or impossible for her to become a part of the culture of her upbringing. And it does seem like a good portion of the concern aimed at climate change is directed at the idea that we would be infringing this kind of right by contributing to a state of affairs in which Nadia is forced to find a way of life which does not reflect her native culture.

It's easy to sympathize with Nadia, and see how she would be frustrated by the state of affairs in which she finds herself. But does Nadia have any right like this? Do we act impermissibly when we put Nadia in this position?

In a previous post, I discussed the possibility that in cases involving inheritances, the would-be inheritors of some valuable object might claim injustice if that object were damaged or destroyed, even if the person or people who owned that object at the time of its destruction were compensated. I said that while I understood why someone might see things that way, it would seem to go very much against the way we normally think about property rights, and I wasn't sure I could defend the position. However, I didn't think that the problem could be dismissed as easily as that, because there was something intuitively reasonable about the objection. But I'm not dealing with that issue here.

In our story, Nadia isn't inheriting any property. Therefore, we avoid all of the problems associated with Akiko's case in the other post. Here, we're dealing with a particular right not to an object, but to a kind of opportunity which is being denied to Nadia. Namely, the opportunity to become a member of the culture.

But in spite of the differences between Nadia's case and Akiko's case, I want to reintroduce an example I used in the previous post:

...we might point out that the above case sounds a lot like a story where an agrarian community is "destroyed" by industrialization and mass production. Small scale family farms can't keep up with the low prices generated by the advanced practices of a local agribusiness concern, and can no longer support their old way of life. It's a sad story, but we wouldn't want to claim that any injustice has occurred. Perhaps as a society, we would want to help these farmers get back on their feet and find a new place in the market. But we wouldn't want to blame the agribusiness for doing something wrong.

It seems to me that if I were the offspring of one of the small scale farmers, I might feel frustration towards the agribusiness, but I would have no legitimate claim against them. So if we're going to attribute to Nadia the kind of right we're talking about here, we need to give some reason for thinking that Nadia's situation is fundamentally different from the industrialization case. In the earlier post, I pointed out that the small scale farmers' frustration is the result of relying on something which they never had any right to: the support of their customers. But the source of Nadia's frustration is less clear.

We might say that Nadia simply wants to be offerred an appealing job in the location in which she wants to work, and a place to live which matches what she hoped for. If we phrase Nadia's frustration this way, then it is clear that she has no right to these things, as they too require something of others. But this seems unfair to Nadia's case.

It seems to me that Nadia's objection is more holistic in nature. She sees her cultural community as a distinct entity, to which we could coherently apply the concepts of stability and integrity. When healthy and vital, that community would provide her with a range of opportunities to try to make a life for herself without any active facilitation by any members of the community. Certainly she could choose to pursue other opportunities, and this would not be a problem for anyone. But the option would be available to her if she wanted it. By causing climate change, we degrade Nadia's community, and diminish her opportunities. Nadia's objection seems to be that the degradation of her community, which is the result of the actions of those who contributed to climate change, represents a wrong done to her.

This is an interesting idea, but is not one which I know how to handle. I think it would be best to take some time to digest it. So having set up this discussion, I'll leave settling it for another time.

Climate Change, Vanishing Lifestyles, and Children

Donny with an A — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:56:00 GMT

[Cross-posted on the parent blog]

So in a previous post, I discussed a case in which rising sea levels, resulting from a warming of the Earth, caused the salinization of a Bangladeshi farmer's land, so that he could no longer grow rice on it in the way to which he was accustomed. I concluded that as the owner of the land, with full property rights, he should be entitled to compensation for any damage done to him by those contributing to climate change. And it seems like this could be extended to any member of the contributors' generation who were harmed by climate change.

But costs associated with climate change will not only be incurred by individuals who are alive now, they will be realized by future people as well. The nature of the cost to future people, however, is less clear than the nature of the costs to existing people. This post will explore a sort of impact which seems to be central to people's concern about climate change, but which is difficult to deal with in the framework of human rights. Namely, many communities will be impacted in a way that makes it difficult for them to continue their cultural existence, making it necessary for the children of those cultures to find fundamentally different ways of living.

For example, indigenous communities in Africa will see progressively more significant alterations to their natural setting as the climate continues to change. Plants and animals which were once prevalent in the region will no longer be fit for survival there, and new species will move in. Knowledge developed over centuries will no longer be effective. Being ill adapted for life in a fundamentally different climate, it is conceivable that these communities will be unable to survive in the manner in which they have for countless generations. They would have to find a new way to live.

What do we say about this? It is clear that a great number of people are concerned about precisely this sort of problem, and cite it as a reason to be worried about climate change. But does it tell a story of injustice? Many people's intuitions say yes.

However, we might point out that the above case sounds a lot like a story where an agrarian community is "destroyed" by industrialization and mass production. Small scale family farms can't keep up with the low prices generated by the advanced practices of a local agribusiness concern, and can no longer support their old way of life. It's a sad story, but we wouldn't want to claim that any injustice has occurred. Perhaps as a society, we would want to help these farmers get back on their feet and find a new place in the market. But we wouldn't want to blame the agribusiness for doing something wrong.

If there is no wrongdoing in the industrialization case, where communities might be unable to sustain their old lifestyles as the result of the actions of others, then can we consistently hold that there is injustice being done to indigenous people by climate change? Or are we simply setting indigenous communities on a pedestal because they're different and mysterious, and we somehow think that by being so unusual, these individuals come to have different rights than the rest of us?

It seems to me that there is a critical difference between the destruction of the indigenous community caused by climate change and the destruction of the agrarian community caused by industrialization. In the industrialization case, it's not as if the agribusiness made it impossible for the family farmers to continue farming. Rather, the problem arises because the family farmers were depending on the support of their customers in order to sustain themselves. Given that their customers had the right to remove their support at any time, it should be clear that the farmers were depending on others making choices which they could permissibly not make, or stop making at any time. The agribusiness, with its greater efficiency, could offer much lower prices than the family farmers, and their customers decided to withdraw their support, as was their right. It should be clear that in our story, the agribusiness never did anything to the family farmers. It simply revealed the fact that the family farmers could only continue to sustain themselves in their traditional manner if their customers continued to voluntarily purchase their products. The family farmers never had any right to that support, and so when it was withdrawn, no right was violated.

On the other hand, it doesn't seem like the indigenous communities in question depend on anyone for their continued survival. They require only that their environments not be modified so as to make them incompatible with their lifestyles. And as far as these indigenous communities have been making use of their environments for centuries, it seems fair to say that they have some legitimate claim to their not being negatively affected by the actions of other people.

I suspect that if we told the agrarian story in a way that matched the indigenous story, our intuitions would tell us that we were dealing with a rights violation. For example, let's say an agrarian community depended on an underground stream to bring water to the region with which to grow crops. Now imagine that someone diverted the flow of water through the area so that the community's land ran dry. Surely we would say that the diversion of the water flow represented a wrong done to the farmers, right?

In the same way, it seems that changing the climate in a way that would negatively impact indigenous peoples' ability to continue living in their traditional manner would be unjust. But this is not new ground. This conclusion is pretty much the same as the one I reached in my post about the Bangladeshi farmer and the rising sea levels. I want to go one step further here.

As I mentioned before, the intuition that people have about this sort of case is not simply that our alteration of the climate is wrong because it harms currently existing indigenous peoples' ability to live in the manner to which they are accustomed. The problem is also that their children will be unable to live in that manner. That is, the issue is not just what happens to the people whose lives are made difficult by climate change, but also what happens to the people who will be unable to live in the traditional manner dictated by their culture, and what consequently happens to the culture itself.

In order to isolate these factors from the harm done to the currently existing indigenous individuals, we might imagine that these individuals have been fully compensated for the damage done to them as individuals. This compensation not only takes into account the damage to their property, but also the damage to their character and psyche; the currently existing indigenous individuals recognize they were wronged, but acknowledge that they have been compensated adequately for all that they personally have endured.

Now we might imagine that one of these indigenous individuals has a child, Akiko. Akiko is raised in the indigenous culture, but sees that she will be unable to support herself in the traditional way. She will need to live a fundamentally different lifestyle from that of her people in order to survive. If we are to sustain that climate change will result in injustice to people like Akiko, then we must say that Akiko is wronged by having to find a way of life which differs from her culture's traditions.

At first glance, this might seem absurd. I grew up in Westport, CT; do I have the right to a house there? I have a friend who comes from a family of doctors; does he have the right to be one too? Surely we don't want to say that people have a right to live like the people who brought them up lived. We must find some other way to explain what is wrong with Akiko's situation if we are to be taken seriously.

A clue can be found in the fact that just like in the example with the agribusiness and the family farmers, my demands about a house in Westport and my friend's demands for a doctor job require things of others. Given that I have no right to anything from these people, it seems ridiculous to suggest that I am wronged if they do not provide me with something. I do have the right to try to buy a house in Westport, and my friend has the right to try to be a doctor. But given that having a house or being a doctor require the voluntary consent of others (in my case, the consent of the house's previous owner; in my friends case, the consent of the hiring institution and of the customers who choose to purchase his services), we cannot have the right to these things.

Akiko's demands would also be rooted in her getting others' consent. That is, she does not own her people's land; the older members of her culture do. But the kind of consent Akiko requires is very different from the kind of consent I would need in order to get a house, in that Akiko has that consent. Akiko's people, we presume, would gladly allow Akiko to use, and even to own, the group's land. In the absence of climate change, Akiko would be able to support herself in the traditional way using nothing but this land. But because of the effects of climate change, the land will not be able to support her in the traditional way. The substance of Akiko's complaint, then, might seem to be that she should have inherited enough resources to sustain herself, but that climate change diminished those resources to make it impossible for her to use them in the way her culture would have suggested.

This leads us to an interesting idea. Remember, we have said that the current owners of the land were fully compensated for all of the damage done to them by the effects of climate change on their land. Akiko's complaint is that there is a gap between what she should have inherited and what she actually did inherit. In order to satisfy Akiko (if we have interpreted her complaint correctly), we would need to take the view that by damaging the indigenous people's land, we not only wronged those people, but also the people who stood to inherit the land later. The "damage done" would be the damage done to the current owners, as well as the "damage" done to the future owners who "should have" inherited the land in its original condition, but instead inherited it in a damaged and less useful state. Accordingly, Akiko too would be entitled to compensation.

Of course, from Akiko's standpoint, this seems like it would be a fair solution. Because climate change destroyed her people's ability to live off the land, every generation of people in her community would be compensated for the damage done to the land. I'm not sure if this would actually be right, though. It seems to go completely against the way we normally think about damage and liability. I'd like to think about this some more, but I think this was a good place to start.