1.4. Planetary well-being as a condition for good life

In the previous chapter, we focused on outlining the possibilities for the well-being of humans. However, we also discussed views, according to which the well-being of humans is not the only intrinsically valuable form of well-being, nor the only one to be considered morally. Examining sustainable well-being leads one to ask if we should talk about the preconditions for the sustainable well-being of all life. The idea of planetary well-being is, in fact, based on nature-centred ethics, in which humans are seen as part of nature. In addition to the well-being of humans and the living individuals of other species, it also considers the well-being of other ecosystems, species and populations as intrinsically valuable, not only as enablers of humans’ good life. From the perspective of planetary well-being, one must ask: how can humans’ pursuit of good life begin with the well-being of ecosystems and how can a good life be ensured for as wide a variety of life forms as possible?

Looking beyond the human

The ethics of anthropocentric good life means only considering the good life and well-being of humans as intrinsically valuable. The well-being of the rest of nature is mostly seen as only having instrumental value: it is important for the well-being of humans and therefore it must be tended to, but the well-being of nature is not considered important for the sake of nature itself.

At one end of the continuum of values we find the strong anthropocentric view, at the other end a strong nature-centred view. In nature-centred ethics, the well-being of nature (a part of which the human is, but only as one species among others) and the well-being of others besides humans have intrinsic value and not just because of instrumental reasons. This is because moral intrinsic value is not limited to humans, but it is seen as also pertaining to nature or at least to certain creatures of other species. Non-human well-being is also important in itself and must be taken into consideration when we evaluate the acceptability and sustainability of human activity.

According to the basic view of nature-centred ethics, humans have the right to pursue well-being. However, if human activity strives to satisfy desires and needs that are not essential to well-being and conflict with the well-being of nature, humans do not have the right to carry out their despotic desires at the cost of nature's well-being. In practice, there is a fluid continuum between the extreme ends that are anthropocentric ethics and nature-centred ethics, and these values have various manifestations. Our choices may sometimes convey anthropocentric values and at other times, nature-centred values. Society also greatly defines to what extent individuals can act according to certain values. 

Anthropocentric ethics has been criticised in environmental ethics since the 1970s, when the field of modern environmental ethics saw the light of day. The anthropocentrism of cultures has often been presented as the reason for the ecological crisis. It is worth to note that until very recently, the discussion in environmental ethics has been thoroughly Western and developed to examine western cultures without addressing other cultures or considering cultural differences in depth. This does not mean that environmentally ethical questions were not contemplated in other cultures but that the academic philosophical ethics in particular has not been able to consider viewpoints and ways of knowledge-production that depart from its own tradition. We will take a more in-depth look at this subject in section 3 which focuses on knowledge.

On what basis should a creature be included when considering the ethics of well-being or good life? Environmental ethics offers many slightly different answers to this but what connects several viewpoints is the rejection of anthropocentrism. Individuals of other species, such as individual plants and animals, and even entities such as populations and ecosystems, are also thought to have a certain state in which they flourish or do well. They may also have interests relating to well-being, i.e., some things are beneficial to them and some things are harmful to them. If, for example, pesticides are harmful to pollinators or climate change decreases the health of coral ecosystems, it also means that pollinators and coral ecosystems have interests.

Well-being has different forms, and well-being doesn’t have to be subjectively perceived or reportable. The good life of a human can be thought of as being a state that requires some kind of experiential aspect; a more complex subset of well-being, in which the general preconditions for well-being (needs) are intertwined with a perspective, formed by cultural values, on what good human life involves and what possibilities a good life should offer.

Judging the well-being of non-human nature

How can the well-being of non-human nature be judged? Non-human nature does not report its well-being either directly or by responding to surveys, but through its activity. For example, a suffering animal may act in an unusual manner, and a decrease, caused by coral bleaching, in the vitality of fish inhabiting a coral ecosystem may express damage in the coral ecosystem. In ecological research, the well-being of nature is often approached by examining, for example, the typicality of animal behaviour or interspecies interaction (considering the species in question as well as circumstances.) The research also aims to shed light on what the vitality of different ecosystems or, say, populations of species require, i.e., in a sense, the needs for ecosystems and populations to flourish. For example, knowledge on the adverse effects of swamp draining on swamp ecosystems as well as knowledge on the species-specific behaviour of different animals help to understand what securing the well-being of nature requires.

The needs of sentient animals (that are able to feel pain and suffering) have been studied the most. Such needs often include

• moving freely in a large enough space
• living in an a habitat that enables species-specific forms of reproduction and feeding
• avoiding unnecessary physical and mental suffering
• for social species, acting and interacting in a group.

The requirement to take sentient animals into consideration has been included in the legislations of several countries and, for example, in the fundamental treaty of the EU, i.e., the Treaty of Lisbon. However, these entries have not thus far significantly affected industrial food production, for instance. Requirements for the living conditions for pets are much more rigid in legislation. In practice, animals and the matter of their well-being are treated unequally, depending on what humans deem to be the fundamental reason for the animal's existence.

The well-being of different lifeforms includes continuous struggles for resources and utilising individuals of other species, e.g., as nutrition. Securing the lives of all (or even as many as possible) individuals is not a meaningful objective when thinking about the well-being of nature. Because of this, planetary well-being focuses on describing the collective preconditions for the well-being of all human and non-human nature alike: if these preconditions not meet certain standards, pursuing well-being will not be possible for humans or many other species in the long run.

Planetary well-being particularly considers securing the vitality of species and populations, because it is a precondition for the well-being of nature on an individual level as well: for example, Amur leopards and freshwater pear mussels cannot pursue their well-being if the species itself no longer exists or is on the brink of extinction. A decrease in the vitality of populations often expresses a deterioration of their habitat that is also a threat to the well-being of individuals. As we learned on the “Introduction to planetary well-being” course, enabling the well-being of different species is also a moral obligation.

A principle of “well-being belongs to all” that also includes non-human well-being would be a revolutionary change in culture and politics. Such a conception of well-being, however, poses challenges: the well-being of a life form inevitably involves utilising other life forms (e.g., for nutrition) and aspiring to capture resources that are competed for by different species. The perspective of planetary well-being concentrates on this very challenge.

Generational ethics and the ethics of extinction

When discussing sustainability, the premise is usually securing the possibility of a good life for current and future generations of humans. Anthropocentric intergenerational ethics already includes many challenges in itself, even when other species are not yet considered. It is not possible to know anything for certain about the future, so it is very difficult to predict the ways climate change will affect future generations and their well-being. Future generations are not alive yet, and the people of today cannot ask them what it is exactly that they need. Carrying out a responsibility into the future, however, requires a capacity to accept moral responsibility for the lives of entities that we will never meet. This incongruity, where current people do not have to hear the voice of the people suffering from their actions is called “generational tyranny”.

However, the human-centred conception of sustainability has recently been criticised. For example, philosophers Olga Cielemęcka and Christine Daigle have proposed “posthuman sustainability” as a new approach in which future animals, plants and ecosystems are also considered as future generations. The starting point of posthuman sustainability is the overlapping and reciprocity between humans and other life forms. According to this nature-centred view, non-human creatures should not be understood as mere resources for human societies but as intrinsically valuable. In terms of its ethical premises, “posthuman sustainability” greatly resembles the concept of planetary well-being. Cielemęcka and Daigle also ask if the aspiration for sustainability could also include responsibility for past generations.

“Posthuman sustainability” leads one to think about what kind of losses extinctions are. Individual life forms, such as one perch, spruce or human, are short-lived on the scale of natural history. Species, however, have great lifespans: many are millions of years old. When a species becomes extinct, a unique part of life’s history and diversity disappears completely and permanently. Human activity also destroys species of which there is no scientific knowledge. Environmental philosopher Holmes Rolston III Jr. (1985) characterised extinctions as follows: “Destroying species is like tearing pages out of an unread book, written in a language humans hardly know how to read, about the place where they live.”

When, for example, the rainforests of Amazon are cut down for the pastures of cattle and for the production of feed, the free market value of cheap beef and feed are pitted against the preservation of countless unique life forms, which have evolved over millions of years, on the only living planet we know of. One must ask, can any short-term benefit for humans justify destroying life forms that have existed for eons.

Future is connected with many a thing that we cannot know, or predict very accurately. Thinking about responsibility as relations that affect future individuals may seem very complicated. Therefore, we must find a more fruitful perspective from which to consider the responsibility whose effects carry over to future generations. The idea of planetary well-being offers one solution for this, because it deals with the timeless essential preconditions for all well-being, securing which is important both in the short and the long run. Such essential preconditions are, for example, the availability of water and habitats, and the undisturbed functioning of ecological networks. 

The conception of sustainability as per planetary well-being means that the preconditions for all well-being must be secured. Such a timeless sustainability serves currently existing species as well as those life forms that may exist at some point in the far future. This goes for both humans and other species alike. Because planetary well-being considers the well-being of nature valuable for the sake of nature itself, it sets more rigid conditions for sustainability than we are used to: the systems of the world functioning in a way that ensures the possibilities for the well-being of humans is not enough to achieve sustainability. Instead, the systems must work in a manner that also preserves other life forms’ possibility for well-being.

Regarding climate change, for example, this means restricting global warming much more strictly. Humans can adapt to a two-degree increase in warmth, or at least 1,5, (which is considered the limit for dangerous climate change.) However, at that point, the possibilities for the survival of many other species have already been destroyed or severely threatened. Many other harmful effects of human activity are connected with warming, such as habitat loss due to the use of land.

As it focuses on the collective preconditions for all well-being, the perspective of planetary well-being does not directly deal with many things that are important to human well-being specifically. From a human standpoint, issues linked to culture, emotions and social justice, such as equality, education and creative activity, are also important. Such factors related to the good life of humans may also contribute to planetary well-being, for example, when they increase ecological sustainability in societies.