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What Is It Like to Be Unborn?

Our Common Fate with Future Generations

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Efficiency, Sustainability, and Justice to Future Generations

Part of the book series: Law and Philosophy Library ((LAPS,volume 98))

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Abstract

The International Year of Biodiversity presents an opportunity to revisit the underlying causes of the relentless loss of biological as well as cultural diversity and to reconsider the anthropocentric framing of environmental conservation. As long as economic and juridical perspectives do not question the stance that culture and nature – and especially biodiversity – are to be safeguarded for the sake of present generations only, they will miss the aim of sustainability. To achieve sustainability, jurisprudence must look to the future as well. By embracing the fiction of future generations as communities of fate, the law will be able to reach beyond the borders of its own limited system of concepts and realize that biodiversity does not serve solely economic utilization and social communication, but in addition carries a tangible (ecocentric) weight for physical survival in the future.

Justice remains, is yet, to come, à venir, it has an, it is à-venir, the very dimension of events irreducibly to come. It will always have it, this à-venir, and always has. Perhaps it is for this reason that justice, insofar as it is not only a juridical or political concept, opens up for l’avenir the transformation, the recasting or refounding of law and politics. 1

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Derrida, pp. 969 ff.

  2. 2.

    See UNESCO, p. 2.

  3. 3.

    King, pp. 428 ff.

  4. 4.

    Latour, Reassembling the Social, p. 204.

  5. 5.

    Gámez, pp. 78 f.

  6. 6.

    Gámez, p. 79.

  7. 7.

    Gámez, pp. 81 ff.; Medaglia, pp. 243 ff.

  8. 8.

    Quezada, pp. 37 ff.; see also Stoll, pp. 3 ff.

  9. 9.

    See Mathis, Efficiency, pp. 7 ff.

  10. 10.

    See e.g. Wullweber, pp. 3 ff.

  11. 11.

    Brand, pp. 129 f.; Brand and Görg, pp. 31 f.

  12. 12.

    Brand, p. 133.

  13. 13.

    Shiva, p. 72.

  14. 14.

    Shiva, pp. 72 ff.

  15. 15.

    Shiva, p. 74; Teubner and Fischer-Lescano, pp. 17 ff.

  16. 16.

    Chen, p. 52.

  17. 17.

    See e.g. Richardson and Loomis, pp. 25 ff.

  18. 18.

    Tribe, p. 1319.

  19. 19.

    Tribe, pp. 1315 ff., 1329 ff.; see also Gruber, ‘Rechte des Lebendigen’, pp. 1546 ff.

  20. 20.

    Tribe, p. 1332.

  21. 21.

    Tribe, pp. 1330 ff.

  22. 22.

    Tribe, p. 1326.

  23. 23.

    Mathis, Efficiency, pp. 185 ff.

  24. 24.

    Luhmann, ‘Risiko und Gefahr’, pp. 158 ff.; see also id., Risk, pp. 1 ff. and pp. 33 ff.

  25. 25.

    Luhmann, ‘Verständigung’, pp. 352 f.

  26. 26.

    Luhmann, Wirtschaft, pp. 43 ff.

  27. 27.

    Teubner and Fischer-Lescano, p. 21.

  28. 28.

    Teubner and Fischer-Lescano, pp. 34 f.

  29. 29.

    Gámez, p. 83.

  30. 30.

    Miller, pp. 359 ff.; Kloppenburg and Rodríguez Cervantes, pp. 12 ff.; Rodríguez Cervantes, pp. 140 ff.

  31. 31.

    Teubner and Fischer-Lescano, pp. 31 ff.

  32. 32.

    See Art. 119 ff. of the Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela (1999), available at <http://pdba.georgetown.edu/Constitutions/Venezuela/ven1999.html> (visited 2 September 2010).

  33. 33.

    Zent and Zent, pp. 103 ff.

  34. 34.

    See e.g. Rosenthal, pp. 373 ff.

  35. 35.

    Glenn D. Stone, pp. 207 ff.

  36. 36.

    Wambugu, pp. 174 ff.; Khush, pp. 179 ff.

  37. 37.

    Busch, pp. 202 ff.; Egziabher, pp. 158 ff.

  38. 38.

    See Decision V/5 of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), available at: <http://www.cbd.int/decision/cop/?id=7147> (visited 2 September 2010).

  39. 39.

    See Art. 9 of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (FAO International Treaty), available at: <http://www.fao.org/legal/treaties/033t-e.htm> (visited September 2, 2010).

  40. 40.

    Egziabher, pp. 170 ff.

  41. 41.

    Rojas, p. 36.

  42. 42.

    Cavalli-Sforza et al., pp. 490 f.

  43. 43.

    Rabinow, ‘Biosociality’, pp. 102 ff.

  44. 44.

    Mauron, pp. 831 f.; Rabinow, ‘Biosociality’, pp. 91 ff.; id, ‘Fragmentation’, pp. 144 ff.

  45. 45.

    Cavalli-Sforza et al., pp. 490 f.; Cann, pp. 443 ff.

  46. 46.

    Fortun, pp. 240 ff.; Pálsson and Rabinow, pp. 14 ff.

  47. 47.

    Cunningham, p. 214.

  48. 48.

    Alper and Beckwith, pp. 286 ff.

  49. 49.

    Central Australian Aboriginal Congress, pp. 88 ff.

  50. 50.

    Translation published by the German Bundestag, available at: <http://https://www.btg-bestellservice.de/pdf/80201000.pdf> (visited 2. September 2010).

  51. 51.

    v. Bubnoff, pp. 52 ff.

  52. 52.

    Preuß, pp. 224 ff.

  53. 53.

    v. Bubnoff, pp. 63 f.

  54. 54.

    See e.g. Gallese, pp. 33 ff.

  55. 55.

    Gruber, Rechtsschutz, pp. 179 f.; Krebs, pp. 19 ff.

  56. 56.

    Latour, Politics of Nature, pp. 53 ff.; see also id., Reassembling the Social, pp. 155 ff.

  57. 57.

    Preuß, p. 228.

  58. 58.

    Rolston, pp. 13 ff.; Meyer-Abich, pp. 25 ff.

  59. 59.

    Camerer, p. 10576 (“hyperbolic discounting”).

  60. 60.

    Revesz, pp. 987 ff.; see also Farber, pp. 289 ff. On this issue, see in the present volume Klaus Mathis, ‘Discounting the Future?’.

  61. 61.

    Busch, pp. 204 f.

  62. 62.

    For this economistic error about the reparability of harm caused to the nature, see the statement of BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg (16 June 2010): “We will look after the people affected, and we will repair the damage to this region, the environmental damage to this region and to the economy.” Available at: <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37739658/> (visited 2 September 2010).

  63. 63.

    Gruber, Rechtsschutz, pp. 128 ff.; id., ‘Rechte des Lebendigen’, pp. 1546 ff.

  64. 64.

    Preuß, pp. 228 ff.

  65. 65.

    Preuß, p. 227.

  66. 66.

    Kant, p. 31.

  67. 67.

    Esser, pp. 199 ff.

  68. 68.

    For a famous example of thinking the “unthinkable”, see Stone, pp. 450 ff.

  69. 69.

    Esser, ibid.

  70. 70.

    Gruber, Rechtsschutz, pp. 25 ff.

  71. 71.

    Gruber, ‘Kontinuum’, pp. 131 ff.

  72. 72.

    Hillgruber, pp. 975 f.

  73. 73.

    Gruber, ‘Kontinuum’, pp. 138 f.; Rechtsschutz, pp. 115 ff.

  74. 74.

    Gruber, Rechtsschutz, p. 133.

  75. 75.

    Luhmann, Social Systems, pp. 210 ff.

  76. 76.

    Luhmann, ‘Form Person’, pp. 166 ff.

  77. 77.

    Preuß, p. 225.

  78. 78.

    See Nagel, p. 437: “Any reductionist program has to be based on an analysis of what is to be reduced. If the analysis leaves something out, the problem will be falsely posed.”

  79. 79.

    Latour, Politics of Nature, pp. 57 ff.

  80. 80.

    Luhmann, Social Systems, pp. 292 ff. and pp. 303 ff.

  81. 81.

    Luhmann, Risk, pp. 29 ff.

  82. 82.

    WCED, chapter 2: Towards Sustainable Development, sentence 1.

  83. 83.

    Spranger, p. 92.

  84. 84.

    See Art. 1 of the CBD, available at: <http://www.cbd.int/convention/articles.shtml?a=cbd-01> (visited 2 September 2010).

  85. 85.

    See Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), available at: <http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/27-trips.pdf> (visited 2 September 2010).

  86. 86.

    Kunczik, p. 101.

  87. 87.

    Teubner and Fischer-Lescano, p. 19 and pp. 40 ff.

  88. 88.

    See http://www.cbd.int/convention/articles.shtml?a=cbd-00 (visited 2 September 2010).

  89. 89.

    See Art. 15(1) CBD, available at: <http://www.cbd.int/convention/articles.shtml?a=cbd-15> (visited 2 September 2010).

  90. 90.

    Kunczik, p. 100; Spranger, p. 92.

  91. 91.

    Teubner and Fischer-Lescano, pp. 41 f.

  92. 92.

    Teubner and Fischer-Lescano, pp. 40 f.

  93. 93.

    Mathis, ‘Future Generations’, pp. 51 ff.

  94. 94.

    See e.g. Complaint for Damages, Native Village of Kivalina v Exxon Mobil Corp (ND Cal, filed February 26, 2008), available at: <http://www.climatelaw.org/cases/country/us/kivalina/Kivalina%20Complaint.pdf> (visited 2 September 2010).

  95. 95.

    Christopher D. Stone, pp. 457 ff.; Gruber, Rechtsschutz, pp. 160 ff.; id., ‘Rechte des Lebendigen’, pp. 1553 ff.

  96. 96.

    Raven, pp. 29 ff.; see also Chen, pp. 50 ff.

  97. 97.

    Derrida, p. 971.

  98. 98.

    Derrida, ibid.

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Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Gerda Häfner and Christopher Hay for their invaluable help. I am also grateful to Miriam Häfner, Klaus Mathis, and Gunther Teubner for their inspired comments on an earlier draft.

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  1. Institute of Economic Law, Goethe University Frankfurt, Grüneburgplatz 1, D-60629, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Malte-Christian Gruber

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Correspondence to Malte-Christian Gruber .

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  1. Rechtswissenschaftliche Fakultät, Universität Luzern, Hofstrasse 9, Luzern 7, 6000, Switzerland

    Klaus Mathis

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© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

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Gruber, MC. (2012). What Is It Like to Be Unborn?. In: Mathis, K. (eds) Efficiency, Sustainability, and Justice to Future Generations. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 98. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1869-2_6

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