Erin Rizzato Devlin

As a catalyst for continued research on ethics and the commons, this chapter reflects on current ethical issues, key questions, and directions forward. We begin by arguing for the need to build ethical awareness, and then outline some of the ethical claims linked to the commons and the potential claims of different ethical theories about the commons. We believe there is a plurality of ethical perspectives and values worth considering across the different scholarly fields, practice communities, and contexts in which we observe and engage with them. We see many different areas where commons, common property, and commoning raise important ethical issues in our current day-to-day lives, neighborhoods, communities, and globally, and also within larger societal debates on economic, political, and environmental issues. These require continued debate and engagement in research, governance, and civil society, through which commons and commoning offer useful perspectives. This final chapter of the book aims to pinpoint these key areas of interest for continued engagement.

In a time of ecological crisis, the notion of the commons can become a means to promote social justice, equity and sustainability responses to the challenges of a changing landscape. This chapter aims to reflect on the urgent need to rethink and practice the commons by understanding the ontological, epistemic and planetary backdrop within which this concept is embedded. Before considering the ethical aspects of governing the commons globally, an introductory discussion on cosmology and plural ontologies will take place to understand the role of pluralism in the context of globalisation. These onto-epistemic considerations aim to shed light on the implications of dichotomies such as North/South and global/local, particularly in relation to power and relationships to the commons. Although most struggles against unequal power are local, the question of how we can politically surpass a single struggle can only be achieved by imagining an accumulation of localisms (Massey, 2015). The power of the global is precisely that it differs from place to place, whilst building solidarity amongst diversity. After having sketched a philosophical case for moving beyond these dichotomies, practical policy directions will be suggested in the hope of shining some light on how an appropriate conceptualisation of the commons can guide ethical governance amongst diversity. The legal recognition of the rights of nature, or future generation acts are, amongst others, proposals that incorporate this pluralistic approach and radically shift the conceptualisation of the commons for the future.

In this time of ecological and energy crisis, it is fundamental to recognise the need to radically reconsider our way of relating to the world, the environment, and energy, to better respond to the changes around us. This effort, however, requires a diversification of knowledge, technologies, and perspectives to address global challenges: this involves a return to the land, to the rural, recognising the importance of plurality and locality, both epistemological and political. Rebuilding our world around an ethics of knowledge, centered on the awareness that there are different ways of understanding and navigating the world, is the only way to promote a technological and energy transition that is equal, ethical, and inclusive of the various localisms that constitute our globality.

Energy politics lie at the heart of human activity. In a time of ecological and energy crises, it is fundamental to realise that our reality systems are always open to change and that, in order to respond to the challenges of a changing energy landscape, we must explore the full possibilities of technology in a radical way. This analysis aims to consider the ethical implications of energy and technology, presenting an urgent case for cosmotechnical pluralism, that is the diversification of world-views, knowledges, technologies in the realm of global politics. To reconstruct the world and its politics around the existence of several ways of navigating and conceiving it, literally leads to a change in reality. The notion of cosmotechnics will present a way of conceiving of the cosmic, epistemic and technic order as interconnected: in this spirit, this exploration will travel through the prisms of cosmology, epistemology, morality, to subsequently enter into the room where energy policies are created. By employing this tripartite framework, policy directions will be suggested on the path towards energy justice in the hope of shining some light on what moral practices of policy-making in the field of energy politics could look like.

The choices we make in our daily lives have consequences that span the oceans: many consumers are not aware that some of the most exotic foods which belong to our breakfast plates every single day, such as coffee or chocolate, have a profound impact on the lives of many people. In Western societies, we are used to eating and consuming fresh ingredients which sprout on a different continent, yet we are unable to see the very hands that carry a simple thing as a banana to our tables, as a consequence of a global supply chain. This alienation from the places and people involved in the supply chain leads consumers to ignore the impact of producing some foods and enabling them to travel all the way to one’s table. What is regarded as a simple commodity, in fact, is a result of the labour and exploitation of many families and crops on the other side of the ocean. Modern slavery comes in many guises and is often obscured by the alienation of modern consumers from their products, an example of which includes the slave system that holds many people tied behind our food chains. As consumers, we unconsciously become commissioners of a system of inequality and exploitation which we ignore. This includes many ‘fair-trade’ certified products, which are employed by multinationals as a psychological marketing tactic. This phenomenon is described by the cultural anthropologist Richard Robbins (2013) as the ‘commodification of morality’, where even commitments to just, fair or sustainable practices have been monopolised by economic agents. Within this framework, our moral choices are put on the market with a price which rarely returns or reflects the true cost of such products. This article begins by defining modern slavery, proceeding with a particular focus on forced labour in the current neoliberal regime. This is then contextualised in the case study of bananas as one of the most consumed, yet furthest grown, items of Western diets. The article then analyses the ethical backdrop of economic practices, using the fair-trade movement as a synecdoche of the moral economy of our day. The main question raised within this analysis is to what extent our moral choices can contribute to exploitation or to social change, and how our way of eating can oppose the great inequalities that still exist in the present context.

Within the classical tripartition of powers, courts and tri- bunals have always held the most marginal role, limited by the interpretation of laws. In the last decades, however, judiciaries have been increasingly addressed with the task of resolving moral issues and political questions, drawing power away from representative institutions. The intention of this essay is to analyse the judicialisation of politics and how this emergent phenomenon is slowly reshaping the skeleton of political structures and mutating the political environment — particularly within the United Kingdom. In order to provide beneficial outcomes, this phenomenon should be accompanied by an attempt to embrace more democratic principles, seeking to promote a more inclusive space in the light of greater political responsibility, dialogue, and plurality of opinion.