• ISBN13: 9780197803677
• Binding: Hardcover
• Subject: N/A
• Publisher: Oxford UP
• Publisher Imprint: Oxford UP
• Publication Date: September 15, 2024
• Pages: 288
• Original Price: INR 895.0
• Language: English
• Edition: N/A
• Item Weight: 500 grams

Humanity faces an ecological predicament, consisting of a cluster of concurrent, mutually reinforcing crises. They are causally intertwined and resistant to resolution in isolation. In addition to climate disruption, the cluster includes land-system change, loss of biodiversity and biosphere integrity, alteration of biogeochemical cycles, and decreased freshwater availability. Madison Powers argues for a targeted human rights approach to the resolution of our predicament. He assigns priority to a bundle of rights strategically important for counteracting ecologically unsustainable, economically predatory market practices. These practices exhaust natural resources or degrade the environmental conditions essential for a livable planet. Their harmful ecological effects result from or are exacerbated by the structure of the global political economy, especially institutions that influence the acquisition, control, and use of land, energy, and water resources. These institutions shape the economic decisions that have transformed every region of the globe and altered the planetary conditions that support life on Earth.

Madison Powers is Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University, and former Senior Research Scholar in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, where he served as Director from 2000-2009. He is a Fellow of the Hastings Center, and recipient of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Investigator Award. He is co-author of two books with Ruth Faden, Social Justice: The Moral Foundations of Public Health and Health Care Policy (OUP, 2006), and Structural Injustice: Power, Advantage, and Human Rights (OUP, 2019). Before his career as a philosopher, he practiced law, primarily in health and environmental law.