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Several members of the Foresight Committee contribute to the reflection of the Institute with articles on issues facing our society
Sustainable development, science and conscience
Text by Hélène Ahrweiler - December 2006 (text available in French only)
Sustainable development is not conceivable without combining certainties of the present and researches for the future. In this respect, science is essential to throw light on and reinforce conscience.
The necessary and the contingent : science and technique
Text by Hélène Ahrweiler - july 2006 (Text available in French only)
After the triumphant era of Sciences and Technologies, scientists and technicians have seen their responsibility engaged. Considering the scale of information and communication technologies nowadays and, above all, ethics, new safeguards are needed.
Previous articles by Hélène Ahrweiler
« Scientific and technological progress with regard to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights »
What are the basis of sustainable development ?
Sustainable development and human freedom
A text by Amartya Sen
"While the acknowledgement of human predicament is not at all new, it had, until recently, taken the form of seeing it as an affliction of individual life, without particularly focusing on the survival and, well-being of the species in general. [...] The possibility of environment-related health hazards, economic disasters and habitational deprivation are increasingly better understood and cogently feared."
"This is where the challenge of sustainable development begins. [...] Is the Brundtland-Solow approach to sustainability intellectually satisfactory? In many ways, it is remarkably so. In particular, it provides an immediate motivation for environmental preservation. The object is not so much to sustain the environment itself, but the lives we can lead in that environment."
"The preservation of human living standards need not be the only concern that human beings themselves have. [...] As Buddha argued in "Sutta Nipata", since we are enormously more powerful than the other species, we have some responsibility towards them that arises from this asymmetry of power.
"The idea of sustainable freedoms can add something substantial to the living-standard-based notion of sustainable development. It integrates the very important concept of sustainability - rightly championed by Brundtland and Solow - with a view of human beings as agents whose freedoms matter, rather than seeing people simply as patients who are no greater than their living standards."
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