Human Rights and Sustainability: Moral responsibilities for the future

In their new book Human Rights and Sustainability. Moral responsibilities for the future (Routledge), Dr Gerhard Bos (Philosophy) and Prof. Dr Marcus Düwell (Ethics) explore the implications of our moral responsibilities in protecting human rights with respect to future people and societies.

Human rights and responsibilities

This book develops the idea of environmental obligations as long-term responsibilities in the context of human rights. The history of human rights suggests that individuals should be empowered in their natural, political, social, and economic vulnerabilities. States should protect essential human vulnerabilities, even when this is not a matter of self-interest. Within the international arena, states hold each other responsible for doing just that, and support or interfere where necessary.

long-term thinking

Bos and Düwell propose that human rights require recognition that, in the face of unsustainable conduct, future human persons are exposed and vulnerable.  Human Rights and Sustainability explores the obstacles for long-term responsibilities that human rights law provides at the level of international and national law and challenges the question of whether lifestyle restrictions are enforceable in view of liberties and levels of wellbeing typically seen as protected by human rights.

• Editors: Gerhard Bos & Marcus Düwell
• Title: Human Rights and Sustainability. Moral responsibilities for the future (2016)
• Publisher: Routledge
• ISBN: 9781138957107