5th Global Conference
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Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers
Monday 3rd July - Thursday 6th
July 2006
Mansfield College, Oxford
Session 6(b): Rights, Property and Social Sustainability
Chair: Kristy Buckley
Examining the Social Approach to Environmentally
Sustainable Architecture in India
Deepika
Mathur
Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning,
University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Sustainable architecture
is a major issue in light of the environmental degradation that the world
faces today. This paper argues that there is a need in India to extend
the technological understanding of sustainable architecture to incorporate
the socio-cultural aspects in its production.
The need emerges from the fact that Indian architects have failed to
recognize the significance of the social dimension in facilitating the
development of sustainable agendas. On one end solutions have been developed
to improve the energy efficiency of a building that need high initial
investment and are based on technology. On the other end low cost
technologies like mud architecture are being developed which do not fit
in with the aspirations of the upwardly mobile urban population. Technology
is thus seen as the only means of addressing environmental degradation.
The social role of people as consumers and decision makers about sustainable
architecture has been ignored. The paper uses Lefebvre’s argument
that space is at once a means of production and a commodity, both a social
product and a means of social reproduction and control. With the government
making all the decisions regarding the environment without any involvement
of the community, the marginalized urban masses thus constitute (in post
colonial terms) the subaltern group.
The results are significant as this issue is of particular relevance
for developing countries such as India that are in the process of industrializing
but are yet to confront the high costs of development. Both urbanization
and suburban growth take a heavy toll on the environment and the lack
of appropriate technologies and sustainable framework suggests that the
architectural profession has failed to recognize the critical need for
developing socially appropriate sustainable architectural practices for
India.
Water Rights are Human Rights
Maria
Baldwin
History Department,
Bowling Green State University,
Bowling Green, Ohio, USA
Perhaps a global common that almost anyone could
agree upon is the human need for water. No matter where one lives,
whether in an urban or rural area or in a developed or developing nation
the need for water is universal. Yet according to a study by the
World Health Organization, in a world of six billion people 1.1 billion
lack access to safe, clean water. This problem will get worse as
environmental crises become more acute across the globe.
The problems
surrounding the current water crisis are often unnoticed; waters importance
frequently recognized only in its absence. If
water supplies are inadequate control and access of water can become
a great source of power and a source of various human rights violations. For
this reason water is much more than an economic commodity; it is a human
right. Many governments, INGOs, and the United Nations have recently
accepted the connection between water and human rights but the political
will to take action has not matched the enormity of the problem.
If
water is understood as a human right then governments, acting as the
collective custodians of common life, have a responsibility to protect
it. The extent of the environmental crises we face demands that
we re-conceptualize our understanding of environmental problems. Re-orienting
the environmental debate is an essential first step toward creating solutions
that work.
This paper asserts that using a human rights framework with
regard to water issues will emphasize water as a global common, too important
to be left to the whims of individual governments or businesses. Only
when we realize this will we be able to find solutions to the global
water crisis; solutions that will undoubtedly require a global response
and international cooperation.
Owning Nature: The Case of Hegel
Simon
Hailwood
University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom
We humans have to make a home for ourselves in the natural world. We need to transform our physical environment to satisfy our wants and needs; and we must interpret it, make sense of it and, in doing so, we inject our surroundings with meaning and significance. Property is central to this process as the notion of ownership encompasses a fundamental relation, mediating the human and non-human, through which we construct our surroundings. Because of this centrality, philosophical derivations of property, their selection of the factors they see as relevant and important, and the way they treat them, are telling indicators of the status given to non-human nature. Derivations of property in the philosophical tradition standardly assume that only human interests, needs, justice and so on, should be taken into account. This is unfortunate for environmental philosophers wishing to articulate the moral considerability of natural entities based on a recognition of their (non-instrumental) value, and hoping to see it given some weight alongside familiar political values of human freedom and equality. Through its adherence to the anthropocentric standard assumption in its treatment of ownership, political philosophy moves in on environmental philosophy and occupies its terrain, pushing aside political consideration of nature for its own sake. Even when a philosopher has a conception of nature that allows for its ‘re-enchantment’, whether through positing the intrinsic value of natural forms or recognising their valuable status as God’s creation, this is superseded when he turns to the political philosophical task of justifying property. My paper will explore this tendency in the thinking of Locke and Hegel on property. I will argue that given the existence of a non-human nature encompassing non-human interests, the presence of the standard assumption marks their theories as unjustifiably ideological.