Date: 09/11/09
Ethics & International Affairs, Volume 23.3
As part of "September is Sustainability Month" at the Council, this issue features Darrel Moellendorf on treaty norms and climate change mitigation; Doris Schroeder and Thomas Pogge on justice and the Convention on Biological Diversity; and Mathias Risse on the right to relocation for populations of islands that are disappearing because of climate change.
Also in this issue: Daniel E. Esser on the need to restructure global health assistance, and Rajan Menon on the failure of the international community to address mass atrocities.
Essays
More Money, Less Cure: Why Global Health Assistance Needs Restructuring [Full Text]
| 09/11/09
Is more money for global health always good news? No, argues Esser, who suggests that many of the problems that plague decision-making in global health assistance lie not in the global South but in the North, where the monetary flows originate and where most policies are conceived.
Pious Words, Puny Deeds: The "International Community" and Mass Atrocities [Full Text]
| 09/11/09
Most of the large-scale violence in the world will continue to occur within societies rather than between or among states. Yet the international community still has not developed the ethical-legal consensus or the institutions required to manage this terrible problem.
Features
Treaty Norms and Climate Change Mitigation [Full Text]
| 09/11/09
UNFCCC norms tightly constrain the range of acceptable agreements for the distribution of burdens to mitigate climate change, restricting us to two viable guiding principles: the equitable distribution of responsibilities and the right to
development. Both principles place much heavier mitigation burdens on industrialized countries.
Justice and the Convention on Biological Diversity [Abstract]
| 09/11/09
By legislating for a system of justice-in-exchange covering nonhuman biological resources in preference to a free-for-all situation, the Convention on Biological Diversity provides a small step forward in redressing the distributive justice balance.
The Right to Relocation: Disappearing Island Nations and Common Ownership of the Earth [Abstract]
Risse is concerned with humanity's common ownership of the earth, which has implications for a range of global problems. In particular, it helps illuminate the moral claims to international aid of small island nations whose existence is threatened by global climate change--such as Kiribati.
Book Reviews
"On Torture" Edited by Thomas C. Hilde [Full Text]
| 09/11/09
This edited collection is an excellent addition to the literature on the torture policy of the Bush administration during its war on terror. The contributors explore the history and practice of torture beyond the U.S. and what these non-American examples say about the U.S role in this area.
"What's Wrong with the United Nations and How to Fix It" by Thomas G. Weiss [Full Text]
| 09/11/09
Drawing on his own UN experience and studying it from outside, Weiss clears away a lot of the debris of superficial critiques to uncover the deeper explanations for why the more world problems become interconnected and global in scope the less the UN seems able to cope with them.
"The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on Terror" by Manfred B. Steger [Full Text]
Faced with the political, economic, and social challenges of a globalized planet, are we bereft of any coherent political guideposts or do we still possess realistic and robust idea-systems? Steger, a prolific scholar of globalization, adopts a cautiously optimistic version of the second position.
"National Responsibility and Global Justice" by David Miller [Full Text]
| 09/11/09
Miller builds on his seminal work on national identity and special duties to co-nationals to carve out a position on such issues as global poverty and immigration that is distinct from both the recent stream of cosmopolitan theories and a narrow "citizens-only" account of obligations.
Briefly Noted
Briefly Noted [Full Text]
| 09/11/09
This section contains a round-up of recent notable books in the field of international affairs.
