Suchergebnisse

Climate change will heavily impact on water and aggravate existing inequalities. These inequalities result importantly, but not exclusively, from actual physical shortages of water. Quite often, they are also the result of social conditions. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) repeatedly address the issue of water (such as SDG 2, 6 or 14). This paper deals with normative standards for a fair distribution of water. By going so, it is critical and constructive contribution to the debate about water invigorated by the SDGs. It aims to identify potential injustices (critical) and argues for more just solutions in the face of changing environmental conditions (constructive). The paper starts by outlining that the aim of sustainable development is about safeguarding the right to live in dignity for all present and future generations. Moreover, it obligates that the natural and social preconditions for such a life are to be protected and supported. Yet, the difficulty in protecting a life of dignity lies in defining it by way of universalistic ethical principles without ignoring the diversity of particular ways of living it. This is why this paper, secondly, draws on the deontological approach by the social ethicist Alan Gewirth in order to determine what people need to live a life of dignity. Moreover, the paper applies these insights to water and water governance. Finally, it will briefly discuss implications for a fair distribution of water after the adoption of the SDGs and Paris.

Abstract"Access and allocation" is one of the five analytical problems identified as key for analysing earth system governance in the first Earth System Governance Science and Implementation Plan officially published in 2009. Ten years later and with a new Science and Implementation Plan in place, it is time to take stock. Therefore, this paper addresses the question: What does a decadal review of the Earth System Governance literature tell us about how to conceptualize and define access and allocation, what ethical norms and epistemologies underlie access and allocation research, and what does Earth System Governance scholarship reveal about the interplay between access and allocation and other norms? We find that: (a) there is a relatively small body of the Earth System Governance literature on access and allocation, albeit growing; (b) this literature is largely empirical and dispersed across a variety of topics; and (c) there is a diversity of ethical norms and principles emphasized in Earth System Governance scholarship, but the dynamics between different forms of access and related implications for allocation are relatively underexplored. In light of these findings and with a new Earth System Governance Science and Implementation Plan in place, this paper highlights key areas for further research and development.

Im Zentrum des Bandes steht die Frage, welche Rolle der Wissenschaft bei der Findung von Antworten auf die Herausforderungen der nachhaltigen Entwicklung zukommt bzw. zukommen sollte. Die Beiträge präsentieren einen ambitionierten Überblick sowohl über die Grundlagendebatten als auch über die anwendungsorientierten Reflexionen über Themen wie Wasser, das Anthropozän-Konzept und die Mensch-Tier-Beziehungen.In englischer Sprache