Human Rights and Legitimate Governance of Existential and Global Catastrophic Risks

Abstract

This chapter will focus on the challenges and possibilities of a legitimate governance regime with regard to existential risks and global catastrophic risks resulting from scientific and technical progress in the 21st century and whether and how these risks should be governed by positive international human rights norms. I concentrate on existential and global catastrophic risks that result from scientific and technical progress as these risks are human-made, which means that humans are fully responsible if a certain risk materializes and damage is caused, and these risks threaten, by definition, to cause the extinction of all human beings or a majority of human beings on earth. At first glance, it seems obvious that human-induced existential and global catastrophic technological risks should not be neglected but that it should rather be a priority for all states and for the international community (or the world society) as a whole to govern these risks in a legitimate way. Despite the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary debates during the last years and policy initiatives that focus on the problem of how to govern existential and global catastrophic technological risks, the existing human rights framework has so far been left aside as a (potential) important basis and starting point for a legitimate governance regime. This chapter takes a first step to close the gap and discuss what principles and rules can be seen as a foundation for a legitimate and universal governance regime. A question discussed here is whether legally binding human rights are important pillars of such a multi-layer governance regime. If this can be answered in the affirmative, it would undermine the argument, brought forward by some scientists, that “human society is incapable of defining what it wants”.

Keywords: Human Rights; Risk; Governance; Legitimacy; Existential risk; Biotechnology; Ethics; Bioethics; Technology