Serena Olsaretti, Researcher ICREA of the Law Philosophy area with the Department of Law of the UPF

Philosophers have long grappled with questions related to wellbeing. What is good for us and why? What is required for individual wellbeing, beyond the meeting of basic needs such as health? What does it mean to live well? They have also examined the social, economic and political conditions needed to promote human wellbeing. In recent decades, the growing scientific evidence that anthropogenic climate change is a threat to both current populations and future generations has opened philosophers’ eyes to new challenges, given their concern for human wellbeing: how can we maintain our current level – or, at least, an acceptable level – of wellbeing whilst at the same time fulfilling our obligations to leave our descendants resources on earth that are ‘enough and as good’ (to quote John Locke) as those we have appropriated for ourselves? How just is it that we distribute the costs of mitigating climate change across different nations and generations?

These questions, regarding climate justice and intergenerational justice, are some of the central philosophical questions related to the research agenda covered by the idea of ‘Planetary Wellbeing’. It is an idea that invites us to reflect on the undeniable fact that our wellbeing, as individuals and as groups, is intrinsically linked to the welfare of our planet, of other animal species and of the Earth’s ecosystems. (Needless to say, philosophers can also be concerned about the state of the planet and the other living creatures on it for reasons unrelated to human wellbeing.)

My current research deals with questions about how just it is that societies distribute the costs and benefits associated with having and raising children. These costs can be divided in many different ways between the parents and society at large, and between current and future generations. Procreation and parenthood are important components of the wellbeing of many people; they are also crucial for the continued existence of our societies and our species. At the same time, the number of people we bring into existence and how we raise them entails costs as well as benefits, both for the people who raise them (traditionally, mainly women) and for third parties. These costs include the fact that continued population growth seems to be in tension, under current conditions, with the moral imperatives of meeting everyone’s needs whilst also mitigating climate change. In these conditions, the discussion of the just distribution of the costs and benefits of procreation is closely related to the discussion of climate and intergenerational justice. Is a society with policies that support procreation and population growth, which could entail a reduction in the level of individual wellbeing, more or less just than a society that offers incentives to reduce fertility in order to ensure equal wellbeing to all people across generations? Is a society in which the economic and environmental costs of children are socialized more or less just than one that requires parents to assume these costs, reducing their own environmental impact? Providing the normative framework to answer these questions is an important task for today’s justice theoreticians.

This research is funded under ERC Consolidator Grant 648.610, 2015-2020, on ‘Justice and the Family: An Analysis of the Normative Significance of Procreation and Parenthood in a Just Society’.