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Political Research Quarterly

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First published online February 9, 2008

Justice and the Environment in Nussbaum's “Capabilities Approach”: Why Sustainable Ecological Capacity Is a Meta-Capability

Breena HollandView all authors and affiliations

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912907306471

Abstract

What principles should guide how society distributes environmental benefits and burdens? Like many liberal theories of justice, Martha Nussbaum's “capabilities approach” does not adequately address this question. The author argues that the capabilities approach should be extended to account for the environment's instrumental value to human capabilities. Given this instrumental value, protecting capabilities requires establishing certain environmental conditions as an independent “meta-capability.” When combined with Nussbaum's nonprocedural method of political justification, this extension provides the basis for adjudicating environmental justice claims. The author applies this extended capabilities approach to assess the distribution of benefits and burdens associated with climate change.

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1. The idea of human dignity, and a life that is worthy of it, appears throughout Nussbaum's work on the capabilities approach. Her reference to the idea of human dignity, or human worth, provides the basis for arguing that there is a threshold level at which “a person's capability becomes what Marx calls `truly human,' that is, worthy of the human being.” Marx's thought is particularly important to Nussbaum because he followed Aristotle (and on Nussbaum's account, departed from Kant) in emphasizing that the major human powers require material support. See Nussbaum (2000, 72-73; 2006, 70-78). For a detailed discussion of why a life without the capabilities for “affiliation” and “practical reason” do not meet this standard of human dignity, see Nussbaum (1995).

2. Nussbaum's discussion of animals might be best understood as taking up Rawls's (1993, 244-45) suggestion to treat “our relations to animals” as “problems of extension.”

3. The capabilities approach has breadth and specificity largely due to the step it takes away from approaches to justice that evaluate relative social position in terms of resources, such as income and wealth. These resources do not account for the variety of variables that influence social position, and often income and wealth are not good proxies for these other variables. Additionally, the vast diversity of life circumstances produces widely varying needs and widely varying abilities to convert needed resources into valuable outcomes. Evaluating people's capabilities involves accounting for the variety of advantages (besides income and wealth) that are available to people; and it also involves evaluating people's ability to convert the advantages they have into valuable outcomes, or functionings. Thus, a capabilities-based evaluation broadens the range of indicators that are taken as relevant to evaluating social position and is more sensitive to the conditions of an individual's circumstance that determine one's ability to translate available resources into achievements. I discuss these points more fully in the section of this article titled “Nussbaum's Nonprocedural Method of Political Justification.”

4. Nussbaum refers to her capabilities approach as providing a “partial” theory of justice because she does not advance it as an “exhaustive account of political justice” but rather maintains that there may be other important political values she does not include that are closely connected with justice.

5. Although Nussbaum begins this dialogue with Rawl's political theory in Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (2000), she develops the discussion of Rawls (and contractarian political theory more generally) in her second book (Nussbaum 2006) on the capabilities approach. In this second book, she also addresses injustices experienced by the disabled, nonhuman species, and people of other nations.

6. In this article, I use the terms “central human functional capabilities,” “central human capabilities,” and “Nussbaum's list of capabilities” interchangeably. In each case, I refer to the list of capabilities Nussbaum (2000, 78-80) presents in Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach.

7. I say that Nussbaum's list does not yet account for the ecological dimension of human capabilities because Nussbaum follows Rawls in seeing the search for reflective equilibrium as open-ended and subject to ongoing revision and rethinking. In this sense, my effort to ground her list in the reality of our ecological circumstance as human beings should be seen as effort to engage in precisely the kind of reasoning her approach recommends and for which we should recommend it. Aside from revising her own list several times, Nussbaum has consistently emphasized this revisionary aspect of her theory. For example, see Nussbaum (2004, 197).

8. Nussbaum comes closest to recognizing the importance of ecological systems in discussing the eighth capability on her list of central human functional capabilities. The eighth capability is “Other Species” and involves “being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature.” In a footnote, for example, she states that government can do a lot to protect this capability “through its choices of policy regarding endangered species, the health and life of animals, and the ecology” (Nussbaum 2000, 80). Also see Nussbaum (2000, 157-58).

9. See Robyns (1995, 107-10) for a discussion and critique of the claim that the capabilities approach is too individualistic.

10.

10. For example, Bangladesh is already experiencing massive migration due to population growth and land scarcity coupled with floods and droughts. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC; 2001, 572) warned that further “loss in coastal areas resulting from inundation from sea-level rise as a result of climate change is likely to lead to increased displacement of resident populations.” Additionally, the IPCC (2001, 579) noted that a 0.5°C to 2°C increase in atmospheric temperature would inundate about 15 percent of the Bangladesh Sundarbans, exacerbating existing human insecurity and producing further loss of employment. Similarly, a 2°C increase in temperature would produce about a 23 to 29 percent increase in the extent of inundation in Bangladesh lowlands, leading to changes in flood depth and monsoon rice cropping patterns and, thus, to increased risks to human life and property, increased health problems, and a reduction in rice yields.

11.

11. In using Nussbaum's capabilities approach to address matters of environmental justice, the following discussion will refer to “Sustainable Ecological Capacity” and “ecological meta-capability” interchangeably.

12.

12. In contrast to the list of capabilities that Nussbaum proposes, Rawlsian (1971, 62) primary goods refer to basic rights and liberties (e.g., the right to vote and free speech), powers and opportunities (e.g., the right of legislators to vote on a particular piece of legislation), and income and wealth.

13.

13. Rawls (1993) briefly addresses this point, granting that certain basic needs might need to be met in order for citizens to understand and exercise their basic civil and political liberties. But as Nussbaum notes, Rawls grants this point with “tantalizing brevity” and does not explain what it might mean to satisfy basic needs (see Nussbaum 2006, 289).

14.

14. By procedural approach, I mean approaches to deriving principles of justice, such as John Rawls's, that propose a procedure for modeling key features of fairness and impartiality into the choice situation (such as the “Veil of Ignorance”) and then accept whatever principles emerge from those procedures as just.

15.

15. Unlike Rawls, Nussbaum goes “directly to outcomes and examine[s] these for hallmarks of moral adequacy” (Nussbaum 2006, 81).

16.

16. Nussbaum believes her list would gather broad cross-cultural support; in fact, the list has emerged from years of cross-cultural discussion, which has shaped its content. In this sense, it already represents an “overlapping consensus,” which refers to the Rawlsian idea that people with diverse conceptions of the good may support the list, without accepting any particular metaphysical view of the world (see Nussbaum 2000, 76). Nussbaum also follows Rawls in introducing it as a basis for political judgments only. In this respect, she defends it as free from any metaphysical grounding that might divide people along lines of culture and religion (see Nussbaum 2006, 79).

17.

17. More abstractly, it might be said that Nussbaum differs from Rawls in her approach to arriving at the content of what is to be justified through the method of reasoning toward reflective equilibrium. She relies on a “freestanding moral idea” that “certain human capabilities exert a moral claim that they should be developed” (Nussbaum 2000, 83).

18.

18. Because having these capabilities may not be the only requirement of justice, Nussbaum maintains that her theory is partial (see note 4).

19.

19. In asserting her own list as the basis for constitutional guarantees, Nussbaum makes similar claims in the context of current law and policy concerning both religion and “the family” (see Nussbaum 2000, 167-297).

20.

20. Gillroy (2000, 276-77) makes a related point in arguing that excessive wealth for some inhibits the freedom of others by depriving them of the baseline material conditions that empower a citizen's moral agency. On Gillroy's account, these material conditions must therefore include a baseline of ecosystem integrity.

21.

21. I consider the implications of climate change for Bangladesh because it is recognized as one of the countries most vulnerable to the impact of climate change (see Huq 2001, 1617).

22.

22. My claim that people in the United States experience a quality of life that exceeds the level of protection that Nussbaum's capabilities approach requires applies to the materialist capabilities on Nussbaum's list of capabilities (e.g., “Bodily Health” and “Life”) more than to the abstract capabilities (e.g., “Senses, Imagination, and Thought” and “Affiliation”).

23.

23. For example, the IPCC (2001) reported that a 45 cm rise in sea level will inundate 10.9 percent of Bangladesh's land area and expose 5.5 million people in coastal areas to dangerous risks and harm.

24.

24. Although this topic cannot be taken up in the present article, Nussbaum's capabilities approach also has important implications for more democratic methods of resolving environmental concerns. Specifically, Nussbaum's capabilities approach could provide a framework for questioning deliberative and majoritarian approaches that rely on well-crafted procedures to arrive at principles or policies that will produce a fair distribution of environmental benefits and burdens.

References

American Lung Association. 2001. Urban air pollution and health inequities: A workshop report. Environmental Health Perspectives 109 (June): 357-74.

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