1.3. Good life for whom?
1.3. Good life for whom?
When discussing good life, it is important to consider the entities whose well-being and good life is being discussed and the kind of well-being that is considered valuable. The ways of defining good life and well-being influence whose good life (or the possibility for it) is primarily examined and who are left in the background or completely overlooked. Therefore, defining good life is significant both for equality and for the way good life is advanced with politics. “Good life for whom?” is therefore an ethically important question.
Even though people can be thought of as having certain basic material needs, views on what factors are required for an individual’s and a community’s well-being – that is, basic social and psychological needs – are tied to cultural values and norms. Thus, our understanding of well-being is cultural, created inside a certain culture, and affected by, e.g., religious and ideological views. Family ties, for example, are perceived and valued differently in different cultures: a family can be understood as just the nuclear family, or it can also include grandparents and other relatives. In some cultures, non-humans such as animals, plants and places are considered to belong to a family or an extended family. Different cultures also have different views on how important various family ties are thought to be: is it more important to look out for the needs of aunts and cousins or to advance one's personal success?
Cultural values are also fundamentally related to the use and consumption of natural resources. Instead of the fulfilment of basic needs, people may desire status symbols, such as new cars or trips to faraway lands. Behind such desires, there are cultural values and conceptions of what is a good and meaningful life. Therefore, the cultural change required by planetary well-being can also mean challenging such desires and emphasising different values, such as livable environments and global justice. It is not socially or ecologically sustainable that the well-being and living environments of wealthy people are built on the abuse of poor people as well as natural environments.
In UN's Human Development Report of 2007, it was stated that humankind must join forces to stop global warming – and global warming is not the only issue that desperately needs solvimg. Solving the wicked problems that humankind is facing requires cross-cultural cooperation. Looking down on or fearing other cultures, however, can prevent the realisation of this critically important cooperation. Instead of promoting xenophobia, solidarity and global justice should be emphasised as important values of planetary well-being.
Global solidarity is also required because the discussions and policies within wealthy countries often overlook the fact that the climate crisis is negatively affecting the lives of many communities that are marginalised as well as the lives of those racialised as non-white. This is a concern for the present, not the future. The public discussion on preventing climate change often only focuses on preserving a viable future for the coming generations, in which case the well-being of the ones currently suffering from climate change is forgotten.
Racialisation is a term that has gained popularity in the past decades, and it refers to how people are defined and classified according to their outward characteristics (such as skin colour), cultural habits (such as language, culture or clothing) or background (such as ethnicity or place of birth). Racialisation means lumping together a group of people based on superficial observations and assumptions. Therefore, racialisation is a process in which certain people are seen as representatives of their groups. It is also connected with harmful prejudices on, for example, the abilities and characteristics of different groups of people.
Structural injustice
The possibilities for people to achieve good life vary greatly. Different groups of people do not have equal status. Choices and decisions made both near and far form complicated causalities which, as a whole, hinder the possibilities of disadvantaged people to have good lives. In social studies, the complicated mess of inequalities has been called structural injustice.
Structural injustice is unacceptable. However, it is a result of such complicated relations that it is virtually impossible to point out a certain party as the one responsible for the situation. The issues are not caused by any clear chain of events (such as, say, a manager’s decision to overlook occupational safety, which leads to employees being injured) but rather by a web of events in which no individual act is crucial relative to the end result. Such complications is descriptive of global sustainability issues. Climate change is a fine example: even though it is primarily caused by the usage of fossil fuels (and the loss of carbon sinks), the emissions of greenhouse gases are mainly a by-product of regular human activity (in societies that depend on fossil energy). They are not caused with harmful or malicious intent, or often not even because of indifference. They are the unintentional side effects of advancing one's own good life and that of one’s family and friends.
The theory of structural injustice was developed by political theorist Iris Marion Young. One of her interests was the logic of global production chains and the justness of using cheap labour. Young paid special attention to the accumulation of inequality, which – while Young herself did not discuss it – is also an important perspective for environmental issues. According to Young, structural injustice means long-running and normalised (i.e., chronic) inequality which causes persisting and systematically recurring disadvantage for certain groups of people. The chronic nature can be seen in the fact that this type of inequality rarely appears in the news and easily remains hidden.
Structural inequality is created and renewed in the social structures of society: in the systems that shape the functioning of society, the possibilities for our everyday choices and interaction between people. The social structures that shape our lives include, for example, market economy, laws, terms of employment, and cultural norms on roles (parent, employee etc.). For example, a transport system is a social structure that determines who can, say, easily use a bus for transportation and who is compelled to use a private vehicle for managing their everyday life. Such structures are of course dynamic, but changing them is often rigid and difficult, and previously made choices create a path from which it can be difficult to stray from in terms of development. In social sciences, and as we have learned on previous courses on planetary well-being, this phenomenon is called path dependence.
The most extensive large-scale process behind climate change is the coal and oil economy. It has enabled cheap energy, the fast transport of people and products as well as the significant growth of material wealth. The possibilities for making climate-smart choices in everyday life is partly in the scope of individual action, but the preconditions and costs of the choices are defined by the very structures and processes described above.
Global ecological problems are connected with structural injustice. Social scientist Teea Kortetmäki, for example, has examined this, particularly in the context of climate change. For instance, the possibility for an individual to choose their area and place of living is often dependent on their economic status which, on the other hand, may also be affected by their ethnic background (which determines possibilities for employment). At the same time, the structures of cities are directed along with markets in a manner that the safest and highest quality living environments end up inhabited by the wealthiest (because they win the price competition) and worse areas, e.g., areas with poor air quality, or beach areas that are poorly protected from flooding, end up inhabited by the poorest people. The phenomenon was also addressed in the United States in the protests against environmental racism in the 1970s and 80s. The anticipated and already realized harms of climate change, such as flooding risks and heat waves, also exacerbate the problems. For example, protection against heat waves, the number of which is increased by climate change, require cooling systems in hot areas, and poor people can't afford them.
Injustice is not limited to the harmful effects of environmental problems. Instead, inequality may be threefold: in addition to the fact that poor people do not benefit from the profits made in the fossil economy and are most vulnerable to the harms of climate change, they are also in danger of being hit the hardest from the actions of environmental policies. This is because, the appropriate price for greenhouse gas emissions increases the price of basic needs, such as food, energy and transport, the most. Those are the things for which people with low income must use a relatively bigger portion of their income. Even though a low level of income also controls consumption that is harmful to nature, people with low income have a weaker chance to change their consumption habits to be more sustainable. When we keep in mind that out of low-income Finns, only homeless people have an ecological footprint that is considered sustainable, it is clear that political actions that reduce environmental problems may also greatly affect the lives of people with low income. If an increasing portion of one's income is spent on food and transport, there will be less money for “something extra”, such as electric bikes or cars, or cooling systems that protect against heat waves.
Structural injustice is also often connected with, for example, gender or racialisation. The inequality linked to them has been examined widely in gender studies, among other fields. Women and people racialised as being non-white often have weaker chances for education, which prevents them from participating in political decision-making, even when the decisions made would concern them. According to the UN’s developmental program, UNDP (2013), studies have shown that climate change affects the well-being of women in poor areas the most, because women are often dependent on local natural resources needed at home, such as water and firewood (see also chapter 4.1). Because of this, women in poor areas should be listened to when making decisions on climate policies.
Structural injustice means that solving ecological problems in a socially sustainable manner requires collective political decision-making. Merely changing our ideas about consumption and living standards is not enough. Organising good life sustainably and justly – within planetary boundaries – therefore requires a just sustainability transformation.
(Neo)colonialism and environmental racism
European Network Against Racism’s report “The climate crisis is a (neo)colonial capitalist crisis: Experiences, responses and steps towards decolonising climate action” examines the climate crisis as a capitalist and (neo)colonial phenomenon. In the “Introduction to planetary well-being” course, we learned that colonialism means seizing, invading, governing and abusing areas inhabited by other people. In addition to governing the areas, the conquerors subjugate the original inhabitants of the area, and people as well as entire cultures face violence and exploitation. We also learned that the effects of colonialism can still be seen on the background of global inequality, such as in the uneven distribution of natural resource use and areal differences in emissions.
In the network's report, (neo)colonialism means that colonialist structures still remain an influence in the global economy and therefore in the everyday lives of people. Colonialism is therefore connected to capitalism: global capitalism has directed the flow of well-being and wealth towards rich, white Europeans and North Americans and this development has caused – and still causes – suffering to colonial countries and their inhabitants. For example, the islands of Martinique and Guadalupe, which are part of the French Antilles, cannot afford to reinforce their dwellings against hurricanes, the number of which has increased due to climate change. Local economy still suffers from colonial abuse, that is, the enslavement of people and the exploitation of land geared at growing banana and sugar cane for European markets.
Structures originating from colonialism can be called environmental violence or environmental racism. Environmental racism is a term also used to describe how people who are racialised as non-white often do not have a chance to influence the environmental policies that concern their own lives. It is more difficult for them to influence decision-making than it is for the white population. Marginalised people and people racialised as non-white often live in areas that are more susceptible to environmental problems than the residential areas of rich people. Environmental racism also means that people racialised as non-white are often exposed to pollution and other environmental problems, such as drought and hurricanes, to a disproportionally large degree. For example, waste can be stored in the close proximity of the residential areas of people who are racialised as non-white. Indigenous people have lost their lands, which threatens the livelihoods and existence of these peoples. Climate change can also cause migration, when living conditions deteriorate in different regions.
For these reasons, the crisis on climate and environment is not merely a concern of the future. On the contrary: many racialised and marginalised groups are already suffering from it more than the rest of the population. Consequentially, the report emphasises that solving the climate crisis requires decolonisation, i.e., an active dismantling of structures that cause inequality. This means commitment to the idea that the lives of black people, as well as the lives of all who are racialised as non-white, matter. This also includes indigenous peoples, refugees, and immigrants. In the context of planetary well-being, this could mean that when looking for ways to satisfy human needs, we should consider the (neo)colonialist structures, which influence whose needs can possibly be met and how.
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