Sustainable solutions
- What is the relationship between sustainability and human rights? How does this impact the development of new technologies? Consider a key current technological example and apply to readings for this week to create a simple case study to serve as an example of your reasoning.
Human rights are those fundamental rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled, often held to include the right to life and liberty, freedom of thought and expression, and equality before the law. When people can live peaceful and secure lives with full access to natural resources, a clean environment, employment, education, and social services, they are more likely to contribute to sustainable communities. However, when the basic human needs and fundamental human rights of individuals are not met, the ability to participate in social, economic, and environmental systems that promote sustainability is compromised.
However, in the context of environmental ethics and technology, sustainability and human rights has a relationship in today’s world. Technology has made human life more comfortable as they can sustain a good life; use of the internet makes human life more sustainable also, it helped them to protect their human rights because people communicate globally. For example; the internet is one of the technologies that make the life of the human being more straightforward. Sustainable freedom and liberty are human rights. If any business is violating human rights like unethical child labour, we can use internet technology to talk and report about that issue online. So, we can say that in 21st-century technology and ethics forms the relationship between sustainability and human rights. We can take the example of the internet, which is useful in developing more new technology like e-commerce, youtube, social media etc. We see that with development, new technology has provided platforms to people to put their views, share their opinions freely. Coherently, we share a story in which a business is violating the human rights of a person by doing an unethical activity, and the new technology like social media can help us to be aware of factors violating other peoples’ well being. ANON(2005)