Colin von Negenborn

How should the preferences of future people be considered in today’s decision making? Two challenges arise. First, there is uncertainty regarding the content of future preferences: the epistemic challenge lies in eliciting these preferences correctly. Second, present people must be motivated to respect these preferences: the psychological challenge is to induce incorporation of future people into present-day decisions. I compare two methods of intergenerational procedural justice. The first takes a generation-first approach: it considers future individuals primarily as members of their respective generations and seeks to represent their interests through generational ombudspersons. The second focuses on the social group to which a future person belongs. This community-first approach makes room for an individual’s preferences by giving a voice to present members of her transgenerational community. Existing theories of intergenerational justice by and large implicitly follow the generation-first method. However, the community-first approach better addresses both the epistemic and the psychological challenge.

How should competing claims by individuals be weighed against each other? This key challenge to theories of justice is exacerbated when future individuals come into play. With the shift from an intra- to an intergenerational theory, claims are no longer distributed solely in space but also in time. This article addresses the issue of aggregating and reconciling the dispersed claims. To this end, we distinguish between a synchronic and a diachronic conception of justice. The former considers the temporal dimension as an extension of the spatial one. It first brings together the claims raised within a generation at a given point in time. These aggregated generational claims are then weighed against each other over time in a second step. The latter, in contrast, dismisses the generation as the relevant means to represent individual needs. Instead, it invokes the idea of transgenerational communities. It first considers individual claims within their respective, temporally extended community. Subsequently, it juxtaposes these communities. Existing theories of intergenerational justice oftentimes implicitly invoke the synchronic conception: they extend an existing intragenerational theory along the dimension of time, relying on the role of generations. In contrast, this article develops two arguments supporting the diachronic alternative. First, shifting the focus from claims of entire generations towards those of future members within our transgenerational communities, it counters the motivational challenge. Why we are to make room for future interests in today's actions at all? If these interests are envisaged within the transgenerational community, they do not stand in isolation but are developed through interaction with the group, allowing us to realise our own interests beyond our own lives. Second, we can also address the epistemic challenge this way, concerning the content of these future interests. Asking about the plans and projects pursued by future members of our community instead of those by generations in their entirety, we can draw inferences from today to the future. The call to consider future claims of justice in present actions gives rise to the questions of 'why' and 'how'. The diachronic conception of intergenerational justice allows us to address both more convincingly.

The authors argue that the ethics of marine environmental change should provide the grounding for political and policy responses. They identify what they consider to be vital ‘ethical building blocks’ and consider how these might be translated into legal practice in the marine context. They ask whether human rights approaches and viewing the oceans as a legal entity have utility in marine environmental governance. Their analysis leads them to conclude that the notion of a ‘covenant’ of leading states, within the context of UNCLOS, has the potential to take seriously claims for environmental justice while having sufcient political viability to shape marine environmental governance amidst global environmental change. The initiative that they advocate, which they believe is implicit in SDG14, involves a ‘global initiative for ocean recovery and restoration’, aggressive cuts in carbon dioxide and other pollutants, expansion of marine protected areas and protection of coastal ecosystems, and the sustainable regulation of fisheries. Doing all of these things will promote ethics, justice and human rights while also realising the objectives discussed by other contributors to this volume.

Governing human interaction in the maritime space implicitly rests on the ascription of value to this space. Environmental ethics helps to disentangle the many concepts of value that may come in conflict. As a particularly contested concept, ecocentrism assigns value not just at the atomistic level, but also at the holistic one. It has, however, been subject to criticism, thus challenging the validity of recent approaches to ocean management implicitly resting on ecocentric grounds. This paper provides a new justification for ecocentrism in the marine realm. Instead of relying on notions of community or teleonomy in nature, this paper builds on its ontology. It considers “the Area” beyond national jurisdiction and its declaration as “common heritage.” While a shared understanding of this concept is necessary to put it to practice in the intergovernmental sphere, the paper argues that any characterization of its ontology is subject to fuzziness. In the light of disagreement, fluctuation, and uncertainty on the atomistic level, a holistic perspective on the Area is necessary. Ecocentrism thus allows to overcome the conceptual hindrances and facilitates the implementation of a genuinely common heritage.

In his Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith lays out an account of ethics based on reflected passions towards our neighbours. I argue that this account can inform theories of intergenerational justice. Existing approaches implicitly focus on claims of justice between generations, not individuals. Instead, following Smith, we should think of each individual situated in her spatio-temporal neighbourhood. Relations between neighbours take the form of intergenerational sentiments. Reflection on these sentiments then allows us to identify due claims of justice. On this account, individuals are not just members of their respective generation, but also of their intertemporal community.

Wie sollen individuelle, miteinander konkurrierende Ansprüche gegeneinander abgewogen werden? Die gerechtigkeitstheoretischen Herausforderungen wachsen, wenn künftige Personen mit einbezogen werden. Mit dem Schritt von rein intra- zu intergenerationeller Gerechtigkeit sind die Ansprüche nicht mehr nur im Raum, sondern auch in der Zeit verteilt. Dieser Beitrag widmet sich der Frage, auf welche Weise die so verteilten Ansprüche zusammengeführt werden sollen. Dazu wird zwischen einer synchronen und einer diachronen Gerechtigkeitskonzeption unterschieden. Erstere sieht die zeitliche Dimension als Erweiterung der räumlichen: Zunächst setzt sie jene Ansprüche, die zu einem gegebenen Zeitpunkt innerhalb einer Generation existieren, zueinander in Beziehung. Die so zusammengeführten generationellen Ansprüche werden anschließend entlang der Zeit gegeneinander abgewogen. Letztere hingegen verwirft die Generation als relevante Gruppe, um die Bedürfnisse des Individuums zu vertreten. Stattdessen basiert sie auf der Idee transgenerationeller Gemeinschaften. Sie stellt individuelle Ansprüche zunächst innerhalb der jeweiligen, zeitlich ausgedehnten Gemeinschaft einander gegenüber. Anschließend setzt sie dann diese Gemeinschaften zueinander in Beziehung. Bestehende Theorien generationenübergreifender Gerechtigkeit verfolgen dabei zumeist eine Extensionsstrategie: Sie erweitern eine bestehende intragenerationelle Theorie um die zeitliche Dimension hin zur Intergenerationalität. Dies entspricht einer synchronen Konzeption, die jedoch oftmals nichts expliziert wird. Demgegenüber entwickelt der Beitrag zwei Argumente für die diachrone Alternative. Konzentrieren wir uns weniger auf Forderungen ganzer Generationen, sondern auf Bedürfnisse künftiger Mitglieder unserer transgenerationellen Gemeinschaften, so werden wir, erstens, der motivationalen Herausforderung besser gerecht werden. Sie besteht in der Beantwortung der Frage, warum wir im heutigen Handeln überhaupt Raum für nachfolgende Interessen schaffen sollten. Innerhalb transgenerationeller Gemeinschaften stehen diese nachfolgenden Interessen jedoch nicht in Isolation, sondern sind durch Interaktion innerhalb der Gemeinschaft geprägt und erlauben uns damit, unsere eigenen Interessen über das eigene Leben hinaus zu verwirklichen. Zweitens können wir so auch der epistemischen Herausforderung begegnen. Diese stellt sich angesichts der Frage, worin eigentlich die nachfolgenden Interessen bestehen. Greifen wir sie nicht als kollektive Wünsche ganzer Generationen auf, sondern als die Pläne und Projekte künftiger Mitglieder unserer Gemeinschaft, so wird es leichter sein, vom Heute auf die Zukunft und ihre Bedürfnisse zu schließen. Die Forderung, künftige Ansprüche im heutigen Handeln zu berücksichtigen, wirft die Frage nach dem ‚Warum‘ und die nach dem ‚Wie‘ auf. Beiden kann eine diachrone Konzeption intergenerationeller Gerechtigkeit eher begegnen.

Humans and animals interact frequently, although the degrees of freedom as well as the consequences are distributed rather unevenly in these interactions. The language of game theory allows to study such interactions systematically. However, while game theory has become increasingly influential in moral and political philosophy, it has done so within a purely anthropocentric framework. Either, it focused on interaction between humans alone, or it treated animals as mere instruments to human welfare. This article argues that a physiocentric extension of game theory is both required and possible, considering different concepts of agency. It is shown that a modern utilitarian environmental ethic is not only compatible with the economic methodology of game theory, but that both can also enrich one another.