THE CAPABILITIES OF FUTURE HUMANS AND THE NON-IDENTITY PROBLEM

The Capabilities Approach has become increasingly influential as a theoretical approach to social justice and development. Recently, it has also been applied to questions of environmental ethics.1 Since one of the questions that have been discussed most intensively within environmental ethics is what obligations we owe future humans, this raises the question of whether, and if so how, we can justify concern for the capabilities also of future humans2. In this article, the theoretical point of departure for analyzing this question is the version of the Capabilities Approach3 put forward by Martha Nussbaum. So far, Nussbaum has not discussed the issue of justice towards future individuals in detail. In Frontiers of Justice Nussbaum mentions certain issues that are difficult to handle within Rawls’s