Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Sustainability Science

Publisher

Springer Verlag

Rights and Access Note

This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-holder(s) for educational uses. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).

Publication Date

5-2016

Publisher location

Berlin, Germany

First Page

373

Last Page

383

Issue Number

3

Volume Number

11

Abstract/ Summary

If sustainability science is to mature as a discipline, it will be important for practitioners to discuss and eventually agree upon the fundamentals of the paradigm on which the new discipline is based. Since sustainability is fundamentally a normative assertion about tradeoffs among values, how society chooses the specifics among these tradeoffs is central to the sustainability problem. Whose values should count in making social decisions and how should the multiplicity of values that exist be known and used in that decision process? Given the vast spatial domains and temporal domains at work in the sustainability problem, we need some means of reconciling the inevitably divergent choices depending on whose values we count, how we know what those values are, and how we count them in making social decisions. We propose an approach to dealing with these questions based on Rawls (A theory of justice. Belknap Press, Cambridge, 1971) and explore the problems inherent in a social choice theory for sustainability science.

Publisher Statement

© 2016 Springer Japan

DOI

DOI: 10.1007/s11625-015-0345-1

Version

post-print (i.e. final draft post-refereeing with all author corrections and edits)

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Rights Statement

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted.