The paper offers a normative analysis of the new Loss & Damage Fund supporting vulnerable countries grappling with climate change-related harms. This fund is primarily financed by affluent nations, often identified as historical polluters. However, the perspective of relational egalitarianism highlights persistent structural injustices in the background of the fund. Addressing them necessitates conceptualizing the fund not merely as an act of cooperative solidarity but as compensation for the consequences of historical and ongoing structural injustices. Properly conceived, the (...) fund manages adverse climate effects and simultaneously tackles their underlying root causes, including the unjust distribution of advantages and power. (shrink)

This paper suggests a way to elaborate the ethical implications of the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) as decided at COP 19 from the perspective of justice. It advocates three pro-posals. First, in order to fully understand the responsibilities and liabilities implied in the WIM, adaptation needs to be distinguished from loss and damage (L&D) on the basis of the different goals which should be attributed to adaptation and to L&D approaches. Second, the primary concern of the WIM should (...) be compensatory justice. In case of climate L&D, three aspects of compensatory justice should be kept separate: corrective liability, remedial responsibility, and with regard to the resources available, fair remedy. Third, it is crucial to distinguish between recov-erable damage and irrecoverable or at least not fully recoverable loss. This distinction is crucial because it informs the principles of fair remedy and because damage and loss may differ in their relevance for the stability and functioning of a human system. (shrink)

This paper explores what is meant by ‘loss and damage’ within the area of climate policy focused on loss and damage. I present two possible understandings of loss and damage, one of which connects it to harm and one of which connects it to value. In both cases, I argue that the best contemporary philosophical understandings of these concepts suggest a much broader range of losses and damages than is currently being considered within the (...) usual discussions in this area. I argue that a broader understanding of loss and damage would allow a more complete assessment of potential climate impacts. I conclude by offering recommendations for evaluating loss and damage according to this broader understanding. (shrink)

The Polluter Pays Principle (PPP) states that polluters should bear the burdens as- sociated with their pollution. This principle has been highly contested because of the pu- tative impossibility of considering individuals morally responsible for an important amount of their emissions. For the PPP faces the so-called excusable ignorance objec- tion, which states that polluters were for a long time non-negligently ignorant about the negative consequences of greenhouse gas emissions and, thus, cannot be considered morally responsible for their negative consequences. (...) This paper focuses on the concept of moral responsibility as it appears in the excusable ignorance objection. I claim that this objection stems from a narrow notion of moral responsibility and that a more fundamen- tal notion of moral responsibility would pave the way to overcome it. I show that it should be out of the question whether historical polluters should bear some burdens asso- ciated with climate change because of their historical emissions. The relevant question is which kind of burdens they can legitimately be asked to bear. I argue that this notion of moral responsibility allows us to assign burdens of symbolic reparation, which are at the core of ‘Loss and Damage’ policies. (shrink)

This introductory chapter summarises key findings of the twenty-two book chapters in terms of five propositions. These propositions, each building on relevant findings linked to forward-looking suggestions for research, policy and practice, reflect the architecture of the book, whose sections proceed from setting the stage to critical issues, followed by a section on methods and tools, to chapters that provide geographic perspectives, and finally to a section that identifies potential policy options. The propositions comprise (1) Risk management can be an (...) effective entry point for aligning perspectives and debates, if framed comprehensively, coupled with climate justice considerations and linked to established risk management and adaptation practice; (2) Attribution science is advancing rapidly and fundamental to informing actions to minimise, avert, and address losses and damages; (3) Climate change research, in addition to identifying physical/hard limits to adaptation, needs to more systematically examine soft limits to adaptation, for which we find some evidence across several geographies globally; (4) Climate risk insurance mechanisms can serve the prevention and cure aspects emphasised in the L&D debate but solidarity and accountability aspects need further attention, for which we find tentative indication in applications around the world; (5) Policy deliberations may need to overcome the perception that L&D constitutes a win-lose negotiation “game” by developing a more inclusive narrative that highlights collective ambition for tackling risks, mutual benefits and the role of transformation. [Open access]. (shrink)

The debate on “Loss and Damage” (L&D) has gained traction over the last few years. Supported by growing scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change amplifying frequency, intensity and duration of climate-related hazards as well as observed increases in climate-related impacts and risks in many regions, the “Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage” was established in 2013 and further supported through the Paris Agreement in 2015. Despite advances, the debate currently is broad, diffuse and somewhat confusing, (...) while concepts, methods and tools, as well as directions for policy remain vague and often contested. This book, a joint effort of the Loss and Damage Network—a partnership effort by scientists and practitioners from around the globe—provides evidence-based insight into the L&D discourse by highlighting state-of-the-art research conducted across multiple disciplines, by showcasing applications in practice and by providing insight into policy contexts and salient policy options. This introductory chapter summarises key findings of the twenty-two book chapters in terms of five propositions. These propositions, each building on relevant findings linked to forward-looking suggestions for research, policy and practice, reflect the architecture of the book, whose sections proceed from setting the stage to critical issues, followed by a section on methods and tools, to chapters that provide geographic perspectives, and finally to a section that identifies potential policy options. The propositions comprise (1) Risk management can be an effective entry point for aligning perspectives and debates, if framed comprehensively, coupled with climate justice considerations and linked to established risk management and adaptation practice; (2) Attribution science is advancing rapidly and fundamental to informing actions to minimise, avert, and address losses and damages; (3) Climate change research, in addition to identifying physical/hard limits to adaptation, needs to more systematically examine soft limits to adaptation, for which we find some evidence across several geographies globally; (4) Climate risk insurance mechanisms can serve the prevention and cure aspects emphasised in the L&D debate but solidarity and accountability aspects need further attention, for which we find tentative indication in applications around the world; (5) Policy deliberations may need to overcome the perception that L&D constitutes a win-lose negotiation “game” by developing a more inclusive narrative that highlights collective ambition for tackling risks, mutual benefits and the role of transformation. (shrink)

This chapter lays out what we take to be the main types of justice and ethical challenges concerning those adverse effects of climate change leading to climate-related Loss and Damage (L&D). We argue that it is essential to clearly differentiate between the challenges concerning mitigation and adaptation and those ethical issues exclusively relevant for L&D in order to address the ethical aspects pertaining to L&D in international climate policy. First, we show that depending on how mitigation and adaptation (...) are distinguished from L&D, the primary focus of policy measures and their ethical implications will vary. Second, we distinguish between a distributive justice framework and a compensatory justice scheme for delivering L&D measures. Third, in order to understand the differentiated remedial responsibilities concerning L&D, we categorise the measures and policy approaches available. Fourth, depending on the kind of L&D and which remedies are possible, we explain the difference between remedial and outcome responsibilities of different actors. [Open access]. (shrink)

The harms of climate change are deeply uncertain. Though climate change will render most individuals more vulnerable to harm, many individuals will not actually suffer climate-related harms. In this paper, I argue that vulnerability to harms is itself a harm, because it undermines our enjoyment of the good of security. After some brief remarks on the concept of security, I give three reasons for thinking that depriving an individual of the security of basic goods harms them: it has a strong (...) contingent connection to fear and anxiety, it directly undermines their ability to make reasonable plans, and security may reasonably be valued as an end in itself. This suggests that one of our goals in determining climate policy ought to be mechanisms which ensure the security of basic goods. (shrink)

A decision was made at the UNFCCC, COP-18 meeting in Doha in 2012 to create a work programme on loss and damage. Part of this programme was to include the production of a technical paper to enhance the general understanding of non-economic losses from climate change. The following article looks carefully at that paper in order to discover whether it provides an adequate conceptual understanding of non-economic losses. Several shortcomings of the paper’s conceptualization of these losses are identified. (...) An alternative ethical framework with methods better suited for capturing a fuller range of non-economic losses is considered. This framework is likely to be most useful if used prospectively for the purpose of devising better adaptation policies to head off potential future losses rather than if used retrospectively for quantifying losses that have already occurred for the purposes of providing compensation. (shrink)

. Two Mutually Exclusive Concepts of Harm? Retrospective and Structural Wrongful Harm at the Bases of a Compensatory-Based Approach for Loss and Damage. Ethics, Policy & Environment: Vol. 21, Geoengineering, Political Legitimacy and Justice, Guest Edited by Stephen Gardiner and Augustin Fragnière, pp. 391-395.

This paper is concerned with the moral concept of harm in the context of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage. This paper delineates between two concepts of wrongful harm: interactional versus architectural. It then examines these options with an eye toward developing a satisfactory normative approach for policy. While the interactional view of wrongful harm supports powerful arguments about moral responsibility, it has some clear limitations. This paper makes a case for the architectural view by underlining (...) that it is not only compatible with the features of the Paris Agreement but also supports a distinctive conception of justice. (shrink)

From a nonideal justice perspective, this article investigates liability and compensation intheir wider theoretical context to better understand the governance of climate loss anddamage under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change(UNFCCC). The usual rationale for considering compensation takes a backward-looking understanding of responsibility. It links those causing harm directly to its remedy. Thisarticle shows that, under current political circumstances, it is more reasonable to understandresponsibility as a forward-looking concept and thus to differentiate responsibilitieson grounds of capacity and (...) solidarity. The article argues that loss and damage entitlementsinUNFCCCgovernance should be understood as entitlements to a threshold of capabilitiesfor resilience. While compensation merely means redressing the situation ex ante a threat,entitlements to capabilities for resilience can entail more demanding responsibilities ofsupport. This means that Article 8 of the Paris Agreement has much more demandingimplications than it might at first appear. (shrink)

The devotion of a full article in the Paris Agreement to loss and damage was a major breakthrough for the world’s most vulnerable nations seeing to gain support for climate impacts beyond what can be adapted to. But how will loss and damage be paid for, and who will pay it? Will ethics be part of this decision? Here we ask what are the possible means of raising predictable and adequate levels of funding to address (...) class='Hi'>loss and damage? Utilizing a framework developed by Marco Grasso, we argue that making the ethical connections between addressing climate impacts and finance mechanisms could significantly enhance their likelihood of being adopted. We briefly review insurance mechanisms and catastrophe bonds, and then move on to six “innovative finance” approaches to funding loss and damage. We utilize six criteria in assessing them: adequacy, predictability, technical feasibility, fairness, and indirect effects, and whether each has a clear link to loss and damage. Several mechanisms for gathering funds emerged as most promising. Three of the six financial mechanisms we reviewed to raise funding involved airline transport: clearly, there is a huge opportunity to tax this sector in one form or another, in recognition of airline emissions’ role in creating losses and damages in vulnerable nations from sea level rise, droughts, floods or hurricanes. Funding loss and damage response is a contentious issue that will get only more unwieldy if Parties’ conceptions of loss and damage are at odds: a common definition of loss and damage needs to be agreed upon under the UNFCCC. Most immediately, to meet any equity criteria, wealthy countries should do more to support the premiums of those who cannot afford insurance. (shrink)

In recent decades, changes in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans. Impacts are due to observed climate change, irrespective of its cause...

Since its introduction in 1938, electroshock, or electroconvulsion therapy , has been one of psychiatry's most controversial procedures. Approximately 100,000 people in the United States undergo ECT yearly, and recent media reports indicate a resurgence of its use. Proponents claim that changes in the technology of ECT administration have greatly reduced the fears and risk formely associated with the procedure. I charge, however that ECT as routinely used today is at least as harmful overall as it was before these changes (...) were instituted. I recount my own experience with combined insulin coma - elcetroshock during the early 1960s and the story of the first electroshock "treatment." I report on who now is being electroshocked, at what cost, where, and for what reasons. I discuss ECT technique modifications and describe how ECT is currently administered. I examine assertions and evidence concerning ECT's effectivness and ECT-related deaths, brain damage, and memory loss. Finally I describe "depatterning treatment," a brainwashing technique developed in Canada during the 1950s, drawing a parallel between electroshock and brainwashing. (shrink)

What does it mean to look? How does looking relate to damage? These are the fundamental questions addressed in Overlooking Damage. From the Roman triumph to the iconoclasm of ISIS and the Taliban to the aerial views of looted landscapes and destroyed temples visible on Google, the relationship between beauty and violence is far more intimate than we sometimes acknowledge. Jonah Siegel makes the daring argument that a thoughtful reaction to images of damage need not stop at (...) melancholy, but can lead us to a new reckoning. Would the objects we admire be more beautiful if they were not injured or displaced, if they did not remind us of unbearable violence? Siegel takes up writers from the time of the French Revolution to today who have reacted to the depredations of revolutionary iconoclasm, colonial looting, and industrial capitalism, and proposes that in these authors we may find resources with which to navigate our contemporary situation. Deftly bringing the methods of literary studies to bear on important debates in the study of heritage, archaeology, and visual culture, Overlooking Damage reflects on the ways in which concepts of beauty intersect with periods of epochal violence in an attempt to resist the separation of broken things from the worlds in which they have come to be embedded. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that the loss of loved ones requires a revised vision of our relationship to past persons. In particular, I argue that relating to deceased loved ones as points on an ordered, forward-moving timeline—on which they grow more distant from us by the moment—has a distorting and damaging effect on our own identity. If we detach ourselves completely from those who sustain important aspects of our identity, this will cause a jagged break in our narrative (...) where a new self must be constructed (whether by us or our circumstances) ex nihilo. On the other hand, if we allow ourselves to drift into the past with the dead—resigning ourselves to existence as an historical object—we will find that we begin to fade away ourselves. Either way, both the self and the beloved are ultimately lost, since both depend on the lost union. To reject both options is a tremendously difficult task that will require rethinking time and our relationship to the past. I argue that we can look to Kierkegaard’s work on maintaining contemporaneity with the historical past, particularly his warnings about how we must not respond to the loss of a beloved. In the last section of the paper, I offer some suggestions for how we might, in a Kierkegaardian spirit, strive to maintain real union with deceased loved ones, thereby rising above the destructive current of time. (shrink)

This article addresses a still unsolved puzzle in private law regarding the proper explanation of cases in which courts make substantial awards of damages to claimants whose rights have been infringed, but who appear to have suffered no factual loss in consequence of the infringement. The paradigm examples tend to involve awards of ‘user’, license fee or ‘hypothetical bargain’ damages in cases involving interference with property rights. It suggests that existing explanations of such cases are all unsatisfactory in one (...) or another respect and posits a new and potentially more powerful explanatory thesis, drawing on Hohfeld. Such awards, it argues, compensate right-holders for the loss of legal powers associated with their primary claim-rights—in particular, the loss of powers they are accorded by the law to ‘prevent’ the infringement of certain types of primary claim right ex ante. Legal powers are thus to be regarded as assets or amenities, the loss of which is amenable to monetary compensation. (shrink)

[Comment] Jonathan Herington argues that harms can occur whether or not there is actually a loss. He claims that subjectively or objectively merely being at risk of losing access to basic goods is sufficient for lowering that individual’s well-being for the value of ‘security’. I challenge whether losing access to basic goods is sufficient to justify the introduction of this value. I also point to some issues in his interpretation of IPCC risk categories and the social science research he (...) relies on. [Open access]. (shrink)

While the precipitous decline of biodiversity threatens life-sustaining processes and vast segments of the human population, concern about its loss remains extremely shallow. Nearly all motivational campaigns falsely assume that upon appreciating the relevant information, people will be sufficiently motivated to do something. But rational argumentation is doomed to fail, for there exists a motivational gap between a comprehension of the crisis and action taken based upon such knowledge. The origin of the gap lies neither in the quantity and (...) quality of information on the crisis, nor in the putative conflict between self-interest and morality. Instead, it lies in “remoteness conditions” which dissociate decision-makers from ecological damage and enfeeble incentive to correct it. The central remoteness conditions are spatial, temporal, and consequential. They can be eliminated by concretizing and particularizing earth others. While direct-experience, place-based educational programs satisfy the criteria, they are uncommon. There is also little opportunity for working adultsto engage in these sorts of activities. As such, the outlook for endangered species and humans in the developing world remains dire. (shrink)

This paper examines the responsibilities of states to assist and to receive stateless people who are forced to leave their state territory due to rising seas and other unavoidable climate change impacts and the rights of ‘climate refugees’ to choose their host state. The paper employs a praxeological method of non-ideal theorising, which entails identifying and negotiating the unavoidable tensions and trade-offs associated with different framings of state responsibility in order to find a path forward that maximises the protection of (...) climate refugees within the constraints imposed by political feasibility. It argues that the responsibility of states to support climate refugees through financial and technical assistance should be treated separately from their responsibility to receive them. The former is a differentiated responsibility grounded in the ability to pay principle, or relative capability, while the latter is a common responsibility grounded in the fact that all states have causally contributed to their plight, albeit in varying degrees which cannot be, and need not be, precisely determined. A common state ‘responsibility to receive’ is linked with a right on the part of climate refugees to choose their host to suit their circumstances, which would provide a form of partial compensation for the injustice and trauma of their loss and damage. This right is expected to become more viable, and the political willingness of states to receive them more likely, the more that climate refugees are assured of adequate support for resettlement according to states’ differentiated responsibilities to assist. (shrink)

The unique problem of lost territory poses one of the most important and complex challenges of compensating for loss and damage due to anthropogenic climate change. Anthropogenic climate change will cause a significant increase in the sea level for centuries to come. A rising sea level endangers many low‐lying coastal areas but also entire states. However, the inundation of an entire state will remain a rare event. Partial loss of territory will be far more pervasive. As measured (...) by the number of states, the area of land, and, in particular, the number of people affected, the phenomenon of partial territorial loss is much more significant. I address this from the perspective of compensatory justice. In particular, I offer (i) background on basic concepts, (ii) an overview and critique of existing accounts, and propose (iii) a novel interpretation of territory as well as (iv) a corresponding criterion of a duty to compensate before (v) I flesh out the overall theory, (vi) take into consideration implications and details of application, and (vii) respond to potential objections. (shrink)

How do people with brain damage communicate? How does the partial or total loss of the ability to speak and use language fluently manifest itself in actual conversation? How are people with brain damage able to expand their cognitive ability through interaction with others - and how do these discursive activities in turn influence cognition? This groundbreaking collection of new articles examines the ways in which aphasia and other neurological deficits lead to language impairments that shape the (...) production, reception and processing of language. Edited by noted linguistic anthropologist Charles Goodwin and with contributions from a wide range of international scholars, the articles provide a pragmatic and interactive perspective on the types of challenges that face aphasic speakers in any given act of communication. Conversation and Brain Damage will be invaluable to linguists, discourse analysts, linguistic and medical anthropologists, speech therapists, neurologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, workers in mental health care and in public health, sociologists, and readers interested in the long-term implications of brain damage. (shrink)

The minimum performance rule applies where the defendant who has repudiated his contract would have had a choice as to how to perform it. The rule requires that damages be assessed on the basis that the defendant would have chosen to perform in the least onerous manner. Two principal criticisms of the rule are made. The first is that the rule’s fundamental assumption, that minimum performance is all the claimant is entitled to, rests on a flawed understanding of what it (...) means to have a choice as to how to perform a promise. The second is that the rule is wrongly applied to claims for consequential loss. Having shown that the rule has no remaining role, the conclusion reached is that it should be abandoned. (shrink)

The gain of a selective advantage in cancer as well as the establishment of complex traits during evolution require multiple genetic alterations, but how these mutations accumulate over time is currently unclear. There is increasing evidence that a mutator phenotype perpetuates the development of many human cancers. While in some cases the increased mutation rate is the result of a genetic disruption of DNA repair and replication or environmental exposures, other evidence suggests that endogenous DNA damage induced by AID/APOBEC (...) cytidine deaminases can result in transient localized hypermutation generating simultaneous, closely spaced (i.e. “clustered”) multiple mutations. Here, we discuss mechanisms that lead to mutation cluster formation, the biological consequences of their formation in cancer and evidence suggesting that APOBEC mutagenesis can also occur genome‐wide. This raises the possibility that dysregulation of these enzymes may enable rapid malignant transformation by increasing mutation rates without the loss of fitness associated with permanent mutators. (shrink)

The Counterfactual Comparative Account (CCA) of harm holds that event e harms subject S when e makes S worse off than S would have been without e occurring. In this paper, I argue that CCA is unattractive because it entails that someone who willingly makes monetary reparations harms himself. I explain why I find this entailment unattractive. I then acknowledge that my intuition about the unattractiveness of this entailment might simply be mistaken, so I offer an argument for the claim (...) that willingly making reparations is not a form of self-harm. I argue that willingly making reparations is not harmful to the person who makes them because losing an unjust advantage does not harm. I then consider some objections against my argument and respond to them. Although I concede that some of these objections do more damage to my argument than others, I conclude that CCA is at least prima facie unattractive for the reasons I give and that, at bare minimum, someone who does not think that willingly making reparations harms the maker and/or that losing an unjust advantage is harmful to the person who loses it could not consistently accept any of the formulations of CCA that I consider in this paper. (shrink)

Although there is an increasing body of opinion that awards of damages for breach of contract should take account of the claimant’s performance interest, there has been little in the way of analysis of what the performance interest is. Commonly the concept is put forward as simply a reformulation or reconceptualization of the expectation interest, itself hitherto regarded as the one true contractual interest. Such thinking is flawed. A closer analysis of contract doctrine shows there to be two distinct contractual (...) interests; in receiving performance, and in being compensated for losses caused by non-performance. Receiving compensatory damages for non-performance is not the same as receiving performance. At present, this important difference is not fully appreciated, resulting in a failure to develop a principled approach to the claims that can be made following a breach of contract. Recognition of this distinction forces us to confront the fundamental question of how committed we are to the notion that contracts entail a right to performance. This article examines the distinction between these two interests, how the performance interest may be given effect by a damages award, and what the consequences of this analysis are for our understanding of the nature of contractual obligation. (shrink)

In this article we examine the role which vindication plays in contract damages. Vindication describes the making good of a right by the award of an adequate remedy. We argue that, while the primary purpose of compensation is to provide an indemnity for loss, an award of compensatory damages will nevertheless generally vindicate the right to performance of the contract. We go on to consider a distinct measure of damages, vindicatory damages. These, we argue, are neither compensatory nor restitutionary, (...) neither loss-based nor gain-based: they are a rights-based remedy. We then identify various situations in which the courts may be seen to have awarded what are, in substance, vindicatory damages. We conclude by considering the benefits which may follow from recognition of the availability of vindicatory damages as a contract remedy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.2 (2003) 31-41 [Access article in PDF] Threescore and TenFire, Place, and Loss in the West David Strohmaier The only conclusion I have ever reached about trees is that I love all trees, but I am in love with pines. —Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac 1He died protecting his pines. It was spring, 1948, and Aldo Leopold was spending time with his family (...) at their beloved cabin they called "the Shack." Over the years, he had planted close to 30,000 trees and shrubs on the property, trying to resuscitate a tired Wisconsin sand farm into some semblance of ecological health. 2 Leopold was keenly aware of fire's natural role in ecosystems, but sometimes there's more to fire and living with fire than energy flow, nutrient flush, and plant physiology. 3During the Leopolds' stay at the Shack, a neighbor's trash fire, fanned by a west wind, escaped its bounds and threatened to overtake the pines. Alone, along one flank of the fire, Aldo suffered a heart attack and was later found dead, lying on his back in the smoldering grass. 4 For the love of pines.In A Sand County Almanac (accepted for publication just one week before his death), Leopold explores several possible reasons for his bias [End Page 31] towards pines: maybe it's because he planted the pines, or pines are rare where he lives, or pines have a longer life expectancy than other trees, or pines are evergreens, or because his neighbors don't have many pines on their land, or pines are worth more to the lumberman than other species, or pines engender more plant diversity than other species. In the end, he concludes that our plant biases reflect not only vocations but avocations, with a delicate allocation of priority as between industry and indolence. The farmer who would rather hunt grouse than milk cows will not dislike hawthorn, no matter if it does invade his pasture. The coon-hunter will not dislike basswood, and I know of quail hunters who bear no grudge against ragweed, despite their annual bout with hayfever. Our biases are indeed a sensitive index to our affections, our tastes, our loyalties, our generosities, and our manner of wasting weekends. 5Leopold's last act in life—fighting a fire endangering something he valued—testifies to the tension between Leopold's concept of thinking like a mountain and our reality of living in the present, between mountain time and human time. It's doubtful that the landscape around the Shack would have suffered permanent damage even if the fire overran his pines. Some trees would have burned and died, but, eventually, the land would revegetate and more pines could be planted. But for humans who, according to the psalmist, live but "[t]hreescore and ten, or even by reason of strength fourscore," 6 we may never see our pines, or any other part of the landscape, fully healed, assuming it even can be. One tree, or grove of trees, is not necessarily interchangeable with another. Places can be lost and never replaced. This is one reason why philosopher Robert Elliot is so skeptical of ecological restoration. Like a work of art, simply replacing it with the most exacting replica will never fully replace the original, for part of an object's value derives from its history: who painted or sculpted it, when it was crafted, the reason behind its contours and colors. 7 Not only are exact replicas in nature hard to come by (even though our science and technology of restoration is improving), but some values can never be restored.Some things are worth protecting from fire simply because they're important to us—even a part of us—and not necessarily because they're resources on their way to becoming beef, venison, or two-by-fours. What's critical, though, as we struggle to live in a land that burns, is getting clear about how we want that land to look and why. I fear that we... (shrink)

Pietsch, Chelsea In a claim of negligence, plaintiffs must be able to prove that they have suffered some sort of damage or loss. Proving damage is usually a straightforward task which involves making a comparison between the plaintiff's position before and after the alleged negligence. However, what damage has been done if a doctor's negligence results in the conception and subsequent birth of a child? Is it ever possible to conceive of life as damage? These (...) questions must ultimately be addressed in wrongful birth claims where parents seek compensation for the conception and/or birth of a life that would not have existed but for the doctor's negligent advice or treatment. However, they are not as easy for judges to answer as you may think. Judges have a duty to resolve such matters - not with reference to vague notions of 'common sense' or 'community interests' - but in accordance with established law. However, what if there is no statute or precedent that speaks on the matter? How should judges resolve such 'novel' issues? Can judges rely on 'common sense' or arguments about 'community interests' in these limited circumstances? The question of whether or not a child may be categorised as damage for the purpose of satisfying a claim in negligence is such an issue. In this essay I acknowledge that, in the absence of guiding legal rules and principles, judges have no choice but to resolve novel questions on grounds of policy considerations. I suggest, however, that a distinction should be made between legal and public policy and that reliance on the former, not the latter, may be used to assert that children are blessings, not injuries. While it may be morally desirable for the issue to end there, this is not the case. Legal policy has also developed the notion of reproductive autonomy in such a way that suggests the opposite may also be true. In an attempt to resolve these conflicting values, I propose the damage in wrongful birth cases is not the conception and/or birth of a child but rather a doctor's infringement on their patient's reproductive autonomy, which warrants legal recognition in the form of compensation. (shrink)

While the precipitous decline of biodiversity threatens life-sustaining processes and vast segments of the human population, concern about its loss remains extremely shallow. Nearly all motivational campaigns falsely assume that upon appreciating the relevant information, people will be sufficiently motivated to do something. But rational argumentation is doomed to fail, for there exists a motivational gap between a comprehension of the crisis and action taken based upon such knowledge. The origin of the gap lies neither in the quantity and (...) quality of information on the crisis, nor in the putative confl ict between self-interest and morality. Instead, it lies in “remoteness conditions” which dissociate decision-makers from ecological damage and enfeeble incentive to correct it. The centralremoteness conditions are spatial, temporal, and consequential. They can be eliminated by concretizing and particularizing earth others. While direct-experience, place-based educational programs satisfy the criteria, they are uncommon. There is also little opportunity for working adultsto engage in these sorts of activities. As such, the outlook for endangered species and humans in the developing world remains dire. (shrink)

While family forms are ever more diverse, there are few critical analyses of the ways in which LGBTQ families have been represented in fiction. This article explores recent Italian novels by Cristiana Alicata, Melania Mazzucco and Chiara Francini that depict lesbian and gay parents and their children. In all these novels at least one gay or lesbian parent dies. Drawing on Judith Butler’s work on mourning and melancholia, I problematize the persistent spectre of grief and loss attached to gay (...) and lesbian parenting. However, reflections by Heather Love also prompt me to explore what Love calls a “politics of damage”, or an attempt to see past the looming threat of inevitable homosexual doom towards the queer, subversive elements of these narratives, which question normative conceptions of the family and open up space to reflect on ‘alternative’ parental models. (shrink)

In tort law, including Lithuanian tort law, damage usually is divided into two types: pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage. The concept of non-pecuniary damage has recently become a focus of attention of Lithuanian legal researchers. However, it has to be noted that the issues related to the concept of pecuniary damage remain scarcely analysed. As a result, the unique type of pecuniary damage, i.e. the damage of purely economic character, has received no attention whatsoever in (...) Lithuanian tort law. It is usually believed that the defence of the values of purely material character fall into the sphere of contractual law, while tort law is not concerned with the protection of these values. However, in the course of the development of social relations it has become apparent that in the present-day society personal financial losses have become equally important to the cases of actual damage to a person or a property. On the other hand, the fear to overextend the limits of tort law and, thus, limit the persons’ freedom to act, coupled with the different nature of the values protected by tort law provide grounds for the position that relatively abstract financial interests and absolute values or relative personal values should be protected in different ways. Referring to the doctrine and practice of foreign countries as well as the results of the analysis of Lithuanian positive law and court practices, in this article we aim at giving an answer to the question of where and how the ambit of protection under the tort law in the cases of damage of purely economic character should be defined. (shrink)

This article makes first use of a set of databases that are authoritative, independent, and consistent to examine an old research question: do firms hurt their financial performance by damaging stakeholder interests? The databases are US government on-line listings of fines for environmental breaches, unsafe workplaces, fraudulent accounting standards, and product recalls. These measures are assumed to proxy for signals to stakeholders of the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) risks in transacting with the firm and appear to have fewer biases (...) than conventional measures of stakeholder standards. Using a sample of all non-financial S& P 500 firms during the most recent 1998-2003 full cycle in the market, after controlling for firm-specific differences, sales margins of firms fell by 0.8% if they announced a product recall and by 0.4% if cited by OSHA for an unsafe workplace; and shareholder return was significantly reduced by an EPA or SEC prosecution. This study links the risk of transaction uncertainty, information signaling theory, and the resource-based view of the firm to company financial performance. Results support the normative assumption that a firm's sales margin will be damaged by unethical treatment of stakeholders as evidenced by ESG breaches, presumably because risk-averse customers and suppliers are alert to signals of counterparty risk. (shrink)

This paper examines potential responses to emerging ‘climate refugee’ justice issues. ‘Climate refugee’ describes migrants forced to flee their homeland due to losses and damages brought about by events linked to global climate change. These include losses and damages due to extreme weather events, severe droughts and floods, sea-level rise, and an array of pollutant contamination issues. A paradigm case if climate refugeedom is seen in the influx of Peruvian immigrants into various North American cities; seeking asylum after losing access (...) to water and agricultural resources after heavy metals were released through rapid glacial melting and contaminated these necessities in recent years. -/- The main discussion begins with a sketch of the scientific picture of the causal genesis of the apparently worsening “climate refugee crisis” and a concise discussion of new climate science research methods, Probabilistic Event Attribution studies (PEAs), that many agree can be used to determine the liability of certain countries for particular extreme events due to climate change (§1). Against that background, and after providing clarifications regarding the distinction between ‘climate refugee’ and ‘environmental refugee’ (§2), I then discuss key ethical and political issues that are unique to climate refugee cases (§3). Subsequently, I critically assess options for helping climate refugees through existing institutions (§4). I endorse pursuing responses to the most pressing climate refugee problems through the provisions for addressing climate change “losses and damages” in the 2016 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, “Paris Agreement”; which outlines “risk sharing” protocol that I contend can be used to help climate refugees who are not currently subject to existing UN policies designed to help other types of refugees (e.g. those fleeing from persecution or war). I conclude by outlining a number of ways that PEAs may aid in effectively implementing those losses and damages provisions. (shrink)

Stakeholder management is an important method for reducing business risk. Recent decades have seen the growth of a new type of stakeholder: social protest stakeholders, individuals engaging in protest action which is directed at other unrelated parties, often the government. However, the actions of social protest stakeholders may negatively affect companies located nearby. This stakeholder category has not received any formal attention in the literature, and this article addresses the knowledge gap by exploring the effects of community-driven protest action in (...) South Africa and the strategies that firms adopt to mitigate the negative consequences of such protests. A multiple case study analysis was used to describe this type of stakeholder group and the management of the consequences of social protest action. Eight manufacturing companies in the Gauteng province participated in the study, the companies varied in size and industry. Among the key findings are that companies need to be highly adaptable if they are to mitigate the impact of protest action. We make practical suggestions about how companies may manage these risks, including the recommendation that companies engage more directly with social protestors to manage risks. The study makes an important contribution to the literature by identifying an additional key category of stakeholder and proposing a risk management approach to avert or minimize loss and damage. (shrink)

Until recently, climate scientists were unable to link the occurrence of extreme weather events to anthropogenic climate change. In recent years, however, climate science has made considerable advancements, making it possible to assess the influence of anthropogenic climate change on single weather events. Using a new technique called ‘probabilistic event attribution’, scientists are able to assess whether anthropogenic climate change has changed the likelihood of the occurrence of a recorded extreme weather event. These advancements raise the expectation that this branch (...) of climate science can contribute to climate adaptation efforts. This paper examines the normative underpinnings of these policy discussions. To date, the debates revolve around whether the findings of attribution science can be used to establish moral liability for harms resulting from climate change. On close analysis, this normative framework has serious shortcomings. The paper rejects the moral liability framework and suggests, through a review of the international climate negotiations under the UNFCCC, that the science of event attribution can inform adaptation policy within a risk-pooling and climate risk insurance framework. The proposed framework is defended both on normative grounds and on the basis of its potential application within the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage under the Cancun Adaptation Framework. (shrink)

The feeling of acting voluntarily is a fundamental component of human behavior and social life and is usually accompanied by a sense of agency. However, this ability can be impaired in a number of diseases and disorders. An important example is apraxia, a disturbance traditionally defined as a disorder of voluntary skillful movements that often results from frontal-parietal brain damage. The first part of this article focuses on direct evidence of some core symptoms of apraxia, emphasizing those with connections (...) to agency and free will. The loss of agency in apraxia is reflected in the monitoring of internally driven action, in the perception of specifically self-intended movements and in the neural intention to act. The second part presents an outline of the evidences supporting the functional and anatomical link between apraxia and agency. The available structural and functional results converge to reveal that the frontal–parietal network contributes to the sense of agency and its impairment in disorders such as apraxia. The current knowledge on the generation of motor intentions and action monitoring could potentially be applied to develop therapeutic strategies for the clinical rehabilitation of voluntary action. (shrink)

When the Global Financial Crisis hit, major political economists were able to boast that they had long warned that "crazy times" were coming. By contrast, leading sociologists seem to have been wrong footed. Totalizing narratives of a new "risk society", "second modernity" and the like appeared to have sacrificed the grounds for weighing up the costs and damages of contemporary capitalism. Made famous by Karl Polanyi, the concept of the embedded market suggests a differentiated diagnosis of our times that should (...) allow sociology to re-enter the discussion as a critic of an ideological attempt to block public discussions about losses and dam ages of contemporary capitalism. The following paper will explore several readings of this concept and will evaluate their capacity to revive sociology's critical powers. (shrink)

A powerful exploration of the human capacity for renewal, as seen through Shakespeare and Freud In this fresh investigation, Stephen Greenblatt and Adam Phillips explore how the second chance has been an essential feature of the literary imagination and a promise so central to our existence that we try to reproduce it again and again. Innumerable stories, from the Homeric epics to the New Testament, and from Oedipus Rex to Hamlet, explore the realization or failure of second chances--outcomes that depend (...) on accident, acts of will, or fate. Such stories let us repeatedly rehearse the experience of loss and recovery: to know the joy that comes with a renewal of love and pleasure and to face the pain that comes with realizing that some damage can never be undone. Through a series of illuminating readings, the authors show how Shakespeare was the supreme virtuoso of the second chance and Freud was its supreme interpreter. Both Shakespeare and Freud believed that we can narrate our life stories as tales of transformation, of momentous shifts, constrained by time and place but often still possible. Ranging from The Comedy of Errors to The Winter's Tale, and from D. W. Winnicott to Marcel Proust, the authors challenge readers to imagine how, as Phillips writes, "it is the mending that matters.". (shrink)

This book contains the Rockwell Lectures delivered at Rice University in February, 1989. What should a business firm do when its activities are within the law, yet potentially harmful? Each of the lectures is built around a case, reflecting the ethical dilemma faced by business managers when doing more than the law requires, which may mean substantial loss of profit. With the issue of dial-a-porn, telephone companies were faced with conflicting interests of protecting children against harm, preserving free speech, (...) and profit. In a property sales case, a potential flooding problem could result in substantial financial loss to the purchaser and damage to condominiums. In a case where the complete bid of a competitor had been obtained and the law was murky, winning a contract was pitted against fairness and honesty. (shrink)

While mitigation and adaptation will help to protect us from climate change, there are harms that are beyond our ability to adapt. Some of these harms, which may have been instigated from historical emissions, plausibly give rise to duties of compensation. This chapter discusses several principles that have been discussed about how to divide climate duties—the polluter pays principle, the beneficiary pays principle, the ability to pay principle, and a new one, the polluter pays, then receives principle. The chapter introduces (...) several challenges to these principles from the literature, before discussing which policies and institutions might be relevant to compensation, whether internationally (e.g. the Green Climate Fund) or intergenerationally (e.g. Broome and Foley’s World Climate Bank). It also describes some recent successful climate cases which require both the Dutch government and a private firm to act in accordance with climate targets to avoid potential rights-violations. Finally, it discusses one of the most important international concepts with respect to compensation: the Loss & Damage pillar of climate policy. (shrink)

While mitigation and adaptation will help to protect us from climate change, there are harms that are beyond our ability to adapt. Some of these harms, which may have been instigated from historical emissions, plausibly give rise to duties of compensation. This chapter discusses several principles that have been discussed about how to divide climate duties – the polluter pays principle, the beneficiary pays principle, the ability to pay principle, and a new one, the polluter pays, then receives principle. The (...) chapter introduces several challenges to these principles from the literature, before discussing which policies and institutions might be relevant to compensation, whether internationally (e.g., the Green Climate Fund) or intergenerationally (e.g., Broome and Foley’s World Climate Bank). It also describes some recent successful climate cases that require both the Dutch government and a private firm to act in accordance with climate targets to avoid potential rights violations. Finally, it discusses one of the most important international concepts with respect to compensation: the Loss & Damage pillar of climate policy. (shrink)

The ability to judge accurately whether or not an action can be accomplished successfully is critical for selecting appropriate response options that enable adaptive behaviors. Such affordance judgments are thought to rely on the perceived fit between environmental properties and knowledge of one's current physical capabilities. Little, however, is currently known about the ability of individuals to judge their own affordances following a stroke, or about the underlying neural mechanisms involved. To address these issues, we employed a signal detection approach (...) to investigate the impact of left or right hemisphere injuries on judgments of whether a visual object was located within reach while remaining still. Regarding perceptual sensitivity and accuracy in judging reachability, there were no significant group differences between healthy controls, right brain damaged and left brain damaged stroke patients. However, while healthy controls and RBD patients demonstrated a negative response criterion and thus overestimated their reach capability, LBD patients' average response criterion converged to zero, indicating no judgment tendency. Critically, the LBD group's judgment tendency pattern is consistent with previous findings in this same sample on an affordance judgment task that required estimating whether the hand can fit through apertures. Lesion analysis suggests that this loss of judgment tendency may be associated with damage to the left insula, the left parietal and middle temporal lobe. Based on these results, we propose that damage to the left ventro-dorsal stream disrupts the retrieval and processing of a stable criterion, leading to stronger reliance on intact on-line body-perceptive processes computed within the preserved bilateral dorsal network. (shrink)

Over the past several years, the human rights implications of climate change have become more evident. While extreme weather events and slow onset changes caused by climate change affect the exercise of human rights, the implementation of climate change policies - in relation to both mitigation and adaptation - may also lead to the infringement of the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities. Despite this recognition by the UN Human Rights Council and other bodies, the international climate change regime (...) has failed to address these implications, recognizing only in 2010 the importance for parties to respect human rights in the implementation of the Framework Convention. The adoption of the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP), together with the reform of existing mechanisms and the operationalization of new institutions, offers several opportunities to ensure the adequate fulfillment of human rights obligations under the Convention. In this commentary, we highlight four concrete options available to the parties in the upcoming negotiations to guarantee the respect of substantial and procedural rights of all the stakeholders and to offer a redress mechanism in the case of loss and damages caused by climate change. (shrink)