I call attention to Bhagwati argument about "rights" to scarce resources, such as water. It has some merit. Where there is scarcity there will be markets -- legal or illegal. On the other hand there are many "rights" in the Bill of Rights that require a certain material level of culture to sustain, and indeed are enjoyed unequally by different social classes. Such as "freedom of speech", which is quite difficult to separate from "means of speech". Rights, in other words, are granted by humans not by God. When we say something is a "right" we mean it should, and can, be enjoyed by all, that it is in some sense not scarce. We use the expression in demanding "health care is a human right", because we are demanding a level of universal, not market, access to care. Bhagwati would argue health care should be a social priority, not a right, since there will always indeed be some medical services which will inherently be scarce. If they are not allocated by price and wealth, then some public line must be formed that decides how much social wealth to spend on health care, and who gets served first. I think he makes a valid point but doth protest too much. We make as rights those entitlements -- including those that require resources -- that we have sufficient abundance to universalize at some minimum level and promise to maintain and sustain as part of the social contract. Its true that were we to lose the ability to provide or afford universal health at any meaningful level of coverage -- that "right" would be lost. Its not a natural right, but it is a human right if humans can make it so.
[Jagdish Bhagwati is University Professor of Law and Economics at Columbia University and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. A renowned expert on international trade, he has served in top-level advisory positions for the World Trade Organization and the United Nations, including Economic Policy Adviser to the Director-General, GATT (1991-93), and Special Adviser to the UN on globalization. He is the author of many books, including In Defense of Globalization.]
NEW YORK – If George Orwell were alive today, he would be irritated, and then shocked, by the cynical way in which every lobby with an axe to grind and money to burn has hitched its wagon to the alluring phrase “sustainable development.” In fact, the United Nations’ Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development is about pet projects of all and sundry – many of them tangential to the major environmental issues, such as climate change, that were the principal legacy of the original Rio Earth Summit.
Thus, the International Labor Organization and trade-union lobbies have managed to insert “Decent Jobs” into the seven priority areas at the Rio conference. I would love for everyone, everywhere, to have a decent job. But what does that have to do with either the environment or “sustainability?”
No one should pretend that we can magically offer decent jobs to the huge numbers of impoverished but aspiring workers in the informal sector. Such jobs can only be created by adopting appropriate economic policies. Indeed, the really pressing task facing many developing economies is to pursue policies that promote economic opportunities by accelerating growth.
The flavor of the week in Rio is “sustainability indexing” for corporations, by way of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Such indexing is being compared to accounting standards. But the latter are “technical” and gain from standardization; the former are not and must reflect variety instead.
Corporations can, of course, be asked to conform to a “don’t” list – don’t dump mercury into rivers, don’t employ children for hazardous tasks, etc. But what they practice as “do’s” by way of altruism is surely a matter of what they consider virtuous to spend their money on.
The notion that a self-appointed set of activists, in conjunction with some governments and international agencies, can determine what a corporation should do by way of CSR contradicts the liberal notion that we should ask for virtue to be pursued, but not in a particular way. At a time when the world is emphasizing the importance of diversity and tolerance, it is effrontery to suggest that corporations should standardize their notion of how they wish to promote good in the world.
Even when the Rio+20 agenda includes something more properly “environmental” – say, the supply of water – platitudes predominate. Thus, the availability of safe drinking water is now to be enshrined as a “right.” We have traditionally distinguished in human-rights conventions between (mandatory) civil and political rights, such as the right to habeas corpus, from (aspirational) economic rights, because the latter require resources. Blurring that distinction – thereby disregarding the problem of scarcity – is no solution.
After all, “availability” can be interpreted according to many criteria and thus in myriad ways: How much water? At what distance from different households (or by pipe into each house)? At what cost? These decisions have different implications for the availability of water, and they must compete, in any event, against other “rights” and resource uses.
In the end, therefore, water availability cannot properly be called a “right.” Rather, it is a “priority,” and countries will inevitably differ in the sequence with which they pursue it relative to others.
While these are “sins of commission,” the “sins of omission” at Rio+20 are even more glaring. For a conference that is supposedly addressing “sustainability,” it is worth lamenting the absence of a heroic effort to agree on a successor treaty to the Kyoto Accord. If the cataclysmic scenarios implied by neglect of climate change are valid – and extreme estimates, it must be said, could backfire politically by looking implausible or, worse, by producing a “Nero effect” (if Rome is burning, let’s party) – Rio+20’s lack of action should be regarded as an historic failure.
But a matching omission is that prompted by our societies’ increasing political unsustainability, not because of the immediate financial problems like those afflicting Europe and threatening the world, but because the modern media have made visible to all the disparities in the fortunes of the rich and the poor. The rich should be urged not to flaunt their wealth: extravagance amid much poverty arouses wrath.
The poor, meanwhile, need a fair shot at raising their incomes. That can only come through access to education and economic opportunity, both in poor and rich countries.
“Less Excess and More Access”: only a policy mix based on this credo will guarantee that our societies remain viable and achieve genuine “sustainability.”
