Author:
Pinto Albuquerque Cristina
Abstract
The chapter seeks to analyze how precautionary principles and different conceptions of sustainability are evident in the main international resolutions and summits on development and the environment since the Stockholm Conference (1972). These conceptions determine different ways of conceiving individual and collective responsibility, giving rise to a kind of “virtue ethics” of diffuse contours. In this context, the aim is to discuss the ambiguities and paradoxes of sustainable development discourses and the precautionary approaches that are often associated with them. If, on the one hand, the precautionary principle can be seen as a restrictive and minimalist approach to preventive policies, which should presuppose a multidimensional articulation between anticipation, minimization, and reparation, anchored in a global debate and commitment, and on the other hand, the adoption of more protective and punitive measures (especially if they are only localized) can embody (new) (un)balances between freedoms and the common good, leading to a kind of “scientifically backed authoritarianism”. We, therefore, need a profound debate on the foundations of (global) citizenship, governance, and participatory scales, assuming the interdependence between the economy, society, politics, and the environment.