Natural Resources, Sustainability, and Intergenerational Ethics

Abstract

This chapter examines a variety of views about the nature of society’s putative duty to conserve natural resources for the future, with a focus on the contested idea of sustainability. This chapter examines competing conceptions of sustainability and their implications for natural resource conservation across generations. Sustainability is a very popular concept, but there are many different positions on what might be called the “sustainability of what?” question. The chapter examines a number of competing views and shows how controversy here has informed the debate between so-called weak and strong conceptions of sustainability. It concludes with an examination of the politics of sustainability, and in particular the connections and possible tensions between goals of natural resource conservation and of global justice.