On the Nature of Our Debt to the Global Poor

Thomas Pogge’s work on the question of what we, the affluent, owe to the global poor has attracted considerable attention. A recurrent criticism is of his attempt to portray the duties of the affluent in relation to the global poor as negative ones. In response, Pogge has developed sophisticated lines of defence; yet, as I start by showing, these seem unlikely to hold. A reason there has been protracted dispute about whether Pogge’s core duty is positive or negative is, I suggest, that there is insufficient clarity as to what the duty substantively consists in. Pogge’s core idea, or so I shall maintain, is that the rich are in debt to the poor. To put it this way is to give the core duty a simple clarity. The most appropriate way to conceive this debt, I shall argue, is as an ecological debt. This is an unusual conception for political theorists, but I show how it can actually be of great assistance in firming up the conceptual framework of Pogge’s engaged project in political theory. Ecological debt, I argue, is not just a special issue or set of special issues, but is in fact the very essence of the question of global justice. It captures just the issues Pogge seeks to capture, as well as more besides, and allows the debate to be settled about whether the core duty Pogge describes is ‘positive’ or ‘negative’. Ecological debt can in fact be construed to entail a negative duty a simple and clear one.