Abstract
This paper argues that the Lockean proviso can be utilized as a relevant principle of justice for food security under global climate change. Since reducing GHG emissions is key to enhancing food security, we suggest a global food security scheme that systematically allots, among all people, access to GHG sinks in food systems impacted by global climate change. For consideration of the scheme, it is important to have a principle of justice. Furthermore, it should incorporate the value of fairness. A relevant principle of climate justice for food security should meet the following criteria: (1) the parties concerned under the scheme are states; (2) fairness does not undermine the requirement that the basic needs of all people must be met; (3) when determining fair burdens, a fair distribution of the rights to use GHG sinks should be sensitive both to each state’s responsibility for its GHG emissions and to (4) each state’s effort to reduce such emissions. With them in mind, first, we argue that the Lockean proviso can provide legitimate guidance for each state. Second, the Lockean proviso reasonably enjoins that a state has a right to a food system that secures its citizens’ basic needs, and a duty to meet the basic needs of other people. Third, the Lockean proviso can be deployed as a principle of both global justice and intergenerational justice for food security. Finally, the Lockean proviso enables us to count the reduction of GHG emissions by each state as “the fruits of its labors”.
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Notes
This distinction between the policy measures is based on the treaty framework of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
For the distinction between personal and impersonal values, see Heathwood (2015: 137–139). I am indebted to Shu Ishida for noting this distinction.
This reasons that we need not tackle the demandingness objection, which is often posed in applying the Lockean proviso to non-human animals (e.g., Milburn 2016).
More specifically, this point concerns cases in which the strict achievement of fair burden-sharing based on all individual claims would collide with the state of all individuals’ basic needs being met; for example, the cases where exploiters would lapse into needy if they bore the burden of costs imposed on the exploited.
As to responsibility for past emissions, there is discussion over whether we can hold people (states) responsible for the consequences of their (their ancestors’) actions while they were ignorant of the harm they (or their ancestors) caused. Admittedly, this discussion is important, but a defense of excusable ignorance does not easily hold in either empirical or theoretical terms. Empirically, people (ancestors) cannot excuse the effects of their GHG emissions even in relatively earlier times—indeed, the United States and North Atlantic region warmed significantly in the 1930s (Weart 2008). Theoretically, and perhaps more importantly, the idea of free-riding that makes people (states) beneficiaries of their (their ancestors’) past emissions weakens the claim based on excusable ignorance and so licenses the assignment of a certain degree of responsibility to the ignorant parties (Gosseries 2004; Caney 2020). We owe an anonymous reviewer for noting the importance of this point.
Note that, in Nozick’s argument, a right to life is not akin to a right to strive for whatever one needs when the exercise of the former right involves “striving” for the justly held property of another person (Nozick 1974: 179). The water hole case shows that the Lockean proviso allows for the limitation of the private right to the only water hole in the context of a moral catastrophe. For a relevant discussion concerning the consistency between the prohibition for the survival of other people and the self-ownership idea, see Arneson (2005: 281–283).
Note that Locke’s (1690 [1988]: II.27, 306) statement of appropriation, “no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others” allows for contested readings: for example, this states a necessary condition for just acquisitions, sufficient, or neither (Waldron 1979; 2002: Ch. 6; Sarkar 1982; Arneson 1991; Mack 1995; Van der Vossen 2009; Roark 2012); the “enough” stipulation means “enough for similar use” or “enough for survival by use of the remaining resources” (Simmons 1992: 292; Cohen 1995: 76–78). Even Nozick’s statement of the Lockean proviso is ambiguous (and this is why we put his proviso as constituting possibly either a necessary condition or biconditional statement).
To be fair, Hillel Steiner’s resourcist-metric-based egalitarian Lockean proviso involves the auction of germ-line genetic information as a natural resource. Such use of the Lockean proviso to allocate information resources may alleviate inequalities in internal resources to some degree, if not fully (Steiner 1994: 247–248).
This description of joint ownership is proposed by G. A. Cohen (1995: 14), and then elaborated by Mathias Risse (2012: 110–111), Arabella Fisher (2015: 609–610), and Billy Christmas (2020: 204–209), especially for distinguishing joint ownership from other forms of ownership. Note that the consent of others should be viewed loosely; otherwise, occupying certain spaces with bodies always requires the consent of others (Cohen 1995: 98). Some appropriation should be allowed without the consent of others (Fisher 2015: 609–610). Nor do we need to obtain any explicit consent of others for joint ownership; as will be argued below, we can reasonably view people’s claim to ownership as a reflection of their willingness to pay for the ownership (Steiner 2011: 333). Thus, joint ownership is relevant to the discussion here.
It might be claimed that the idea of joint ownership cannot reasonably explain the formation of states, because even tacit consent may involve unfreedom to give (dis)agreement on the joint use of natural resources under the sovereignty of states. This is similar to a well-known objection by David Hume (1748 [1985]: 475) against the Lockean theory of states. However, the thrust of this objection could (at least partly) be alleviated if, as in our argument, the egalitarian Lockean proviso were adopted; under the egalitarian proviso that secures all people an equal division of natural resources in acquisition, a lack of real opportunities to leave (which can be seen as a kind of disagreement) does not necessarily undermine the voluntariness of remaining in the states. For this, see Otsuka (2003: Ch. 5).
We are indebted to an anonymous reviewer for raising this question.
According to Crippa et al. (2021), per capita emissions from food systems can be more or less detected in the world and so can be held responsible for a portion of global climate change in most countries.
Admittedly, the joint ownership picture of states differs slightly from traditional Lockean theories that do not explicitly account for the rights of states independently from the rights of individuals. However, contemporary Lockean theorists (including Nozick) allow the rights of states to hold in a way that is compatible with the private rights of individuals (Nozick 1974: 178; Steiner 1992: 87–88; Simmons 2016: 93–150). Note that our joint ownership picture is only used in the context of food security justice under global climate change. That said, no claims for the legitimacy of states relevant to the other—more general—contexts are involved in this paper. We believe that this renders the joint ownership picture much less contentious than what the contemporary Lockean theorists claim.
One might object that the Lockean argument is implausible in that many historical claims to restitution have been superseded over a long period of time by contemporary individuals leading reasonable lives. If there are certain inequalities owing to the difference in natural resources states possess, it can reasonably be rectified by the “presentist” theories of justice—either Rawlsian, Kantian, or otherwise (Stilz 2009, 2011, 2019; Ypi 2013a, 2013b, 2014). However, this objection has a part in rationalizing (or, at least, making reasonable) the dismissal of past wrongs in favor of a focus on present considerations. For this point, see Simmons (2019: xx).
A question may arise: How can the Lockean proviso tell us what to do in cases where basic needs cannot be fully met? While our specification of the Lockean proviso does not do so in any precise manner, the same criticism could also be applied if other principles of justice were to be applied to this scenario, such as sufficientarianism, which requires that basic needs plus some other need(s) be met. It is well-known that sufficientarianism cannot fully resolve cases of an extreme kind, such as cases where not all people’s basic needs can be met, in such a way as to conform with our moral intuition. For this point, see Hirose (2017) and Bossert, Cato and Kamaga (2022).
This objection is owed to an anonymous reviewer.
Note that Anna Wienhuse (2020: Ch. 4) supports ecological space only as a currency of justice, not as an equal per capita access to ecological space. Moreover, in her defense of the Half-Earth proposal, she proposes a definition of ecological space that covers the Earth systems for non-human animals more broadly than any Lockean theory does (Wienhuse 2020: 98–99): half of the Earth (both land and sea) should be secured for non-human living beings. The definition of ecological space in the present work is more human-oriented, such that it can fit within the Lockean theory of justice endorsed, for example, by Tim Hayward (2005, 2006, 2007). Note that Wienhuse’s employment of ecological space as a currency of justice is undoubtedly more demanding than required by our proposal with respect to the maintenance of food systems under global climate change.
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Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2021 Congress of the European Society for Agriculture and Food Ethics (EurSafe 2021), held (online) at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, on June 24, 2021. I am grateful to the audiences, particularly Martin Huth, Teea Kortetmäki, Eva Meijer, Hanna Schübel, and Anna Wienhues, for their invaluable questions and comments. I would also like to express many thanks to Susumu Cato, Hayatora Hotta, Shu Ishida, Masaya Miyamoto, Ryo Ogawa, Madison Powers, Ryuto Shibata, Keisuke Urano, Kazuki Watanabe, the Editor and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments based on their careful reading of (earlier versions of) this paper. This work was partly supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 18H00602, 20H01446, and 22H00598.
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This work was partly supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 18H00602, 20H01446, and 22H00598.
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Inoue, A. A Lockean Theory of Climate Justice for Food Security. J Ethics 27, 151–172 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-022-09414-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-022-09414-5