Research Project: "Diverse ethical values and just sustainability futures"
Contemporary sustainability research and policy discourses feature calls for ‘transformative change towards sustainability’ (IPCC 2022; IPBES 2022), a sustainable future that ‘leaves no one behind’ (UN Agenda 2030), even the promotion of ‘sustainability-aligned values’ (IPBES 2022). Such calls are vague about what exactly needs to be transformed, and the technologies or institutions necessary to achieve it. Crucially, this ambiguity concerns the ethical values that ought to be recognized and protected by sustainable development policies.
This PhD project will explore the place of environmental values within political theory, in the context of a just and sustainable future. A key challenge will be whether the tensions between anthropocentric theories, non-anthropocentric theories, and plural worldviews can be overcome. This may involve clarification of the controversy about relational values in environmental ethics. Another key focus will be to examine the compatibility between diverse ethical and political values and sustainability futures, for instance involving green growth, or futures challenging high consumption lifestyles and prioritizing human needs.
Key objectives:
- Examine the diversity of environmental values for political theory debates about a just and sustainable future
- Examine the implications of value diversity for the modelling of sustainability futures
This PhD position will also be affiliated with the NWO funded ‘Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies’ programme (https://www.esdit.nl/), which examines the ethical implications of socially disruptive technologies, and in particular with the research lines on Society and Nature.