The UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights and the normative transition from Corporatocene to Sustainocene

Abstract

The United Nations Scientific, Education and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (UDBHR) was a revolutionary non-binding instrument creating principles about sharing beneficial new technologies at the threshold of public international law. It is one of the few international instruments to directly address obligations to corporations as well as governments. The UDBHR involves a controversial linkage of two normative systems with differing positivist origins and enforcement mechanisms: international human rights law and bioethics. It also draws upon and influences domestic or national law and the pseudo-normative system of corporate privilege known as trade or investment arbitration. The UDBHR contains socially important principles of requiring new technologies to be utilised by governments and corporations equitably for the benefit of all people and the environment (Articles 14, 15 and 21).Using the case study of globalising artificial photosynthesis nanotechnology, this chapter explores how the UDBHR may promote a governance transition from what may be termed the ‘Corporatocene’ to the ‘Sustainocene’ particularly by promoting equitable distribution of new energy and food security and environmental sustainability technologies such as artificial photosynthesis. Show more