A Bioethical Approach to Sustainability: Opportunities and Limitations.

In an ethical perspective, the three pillars of sustainability (environmental, social, and economic) interrelate differently with anthropocentric/biocentric dichotomy. Indeed, this dichotomy has proven its effectiveness specifically in the Environmentalists’ view, rather than in the Ecologists’ or Economists’ one. Nevertheless, what is common to all these views is the core understanding of the development process as synonymous of environmental destruction. Therefore, questioning the concept of sustainability and its application through different approaches seems appropriate. In this context, a bioethical approach, rooted on the criticism of Fritz Jahr and Van Rensselaer Potter – pioneers of Bioethics – may present relevant opportunities, specifically suitable for the transnational, transversal, and cross-sectoral nature of problems requiring sustainable legal – but not exclusively – solutions. A bioethical approach could prove to be ancillary to the human rights approach, the former providing the latter a critical tool. Nonetheless, limitations of a bioethical approach on sustainability may be identified, even considering the challenges posed by an authentic interdisciplinary method into practice, both in scholarship and within the European institutions. Indeed, scholarship is nowadays divided into two current of thoughts: the former refraining from the retrieval of Potter’s perspective for the concern of disrupting the discipline itself of Bioethics and its humanist character; the latter suggesting different methods to resume the role of Bioethics as a «bridge to the future» for environmental purposes.