Responding to Global Poverty (completed)

About the project

Two principles are commonly invoked in support of the view that we, the affluent in the developed world, have a responsibility to address global poverty.

The first is based on the idea that because the poor are in severe need and we are in a position to alleviate such need at some cost, we have responsibilities to do so; the principle of assistance.

The second principle is based on the idea that because the poor are in severe need and we have contributed or are contributing to their need we have responsibilities to alleviate it; the principle of contribution.

This project investigated the meaning, moral significance, and practical implications of these two principles, and addressed some of the crucial and often underappreciated implications of the failures of affluent agents to act on their responsibilities to address global poverty.

Objectives

This project pursued innovation across five main themes.

1. We developed a compelling account of the distinction between contributing to global poverty and merely failing to prevent it.
2. We explored the relative importance of different kinds of responsibilities, based on either principle, that the affluent may have to address global poverty.
3. We examined in detail the largely neglected issue of how to distinguish and specify fair standards in the application of ethical principles such as the principles of assistance and contribution under conditions of evidential and ethical uncertainty.
4. We posed the generally overlooked but particularly urgent question of what actions the poor are at liberty to take to protect themselves when the affluent fail to meet their responsibilities to alleviate poverty.
5. We related our philosophical conclusions to real-life political questions of climate change, trade policies, and management of the Norwegian Pension Fund.

Partners

• The Ethics Programme, UiO
• PRIO International Peace Research Institute in Oslo 
• CAPPE Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Australia

Duration

2010 - 2013. 

Financing

The project was funded by The Research Council of Norway and Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature.

CSMN

The project was hosted by the completed Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature (CSMN), Oslo.