The Fair Start Movement
The Fair Start Movement is a children's rights movement that advocates for intergenerational justice, including black birth equity as an overriding human right.[1] It does so through equity-based birth entitlements to improve the environmental and social conditions into which children are born - using metrics like the Children's Rights Convention.[2][3][4][5][6] The movement considers these entitlements a fundamental condition of self-determination, the basis for political legitimacy. Proposed investments include incentives for fertility delay, baby bonds, and climate migration funds to assist families relocating to safer areas that will be less impacted by the climate crisis.[7][8][9][10] The Fair Start Movement has the potential to serve as a vehicle for climate reparations.[11]
The concept of birth entitlements merges the objectives and goals of social justice, reproductive justice, and environmental justice, with their amount, use, and prioritization informed by concrete metrics centered on children's rights.[12][13][14][15]
Legal theory
[edit]The Fair Start Movement operates from the Zero Baseline Model,[16][17] which suggests that theories of legitimacy and political obligation should prioritize intergenerational birth equity. This involves raising children according to principles that allow them to negotiate the terms of any social contract as free and equal individuals, rather than focusing solely on abstract considerations.[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] The necessity to ensure an eco-social fair start in life is partly based on the recognition of ecocide and Earth overshoot as an existential threat to current and future generations.[26][27][28]
Political obligation has typically come from constitutional preambles, but these processes weren't inclusive of everyone. Fair Start is a discourse movement that aims to change that by using public discussion and a family planning system to ensure political obligations are connected to genuinely including and empowering children from the start.[29]
The Fair Start movements method of change involves contrasting claims of public benefit and impact with actual harm to self-determination, political legitimacy, and the obligation to follow any law, using at least eight metrics that show fraudulent claims that will kill countless children.
Fair Star asks all: How do you account for children entering the world on what you value, and claim to do? How do you ensure self- determination for all? Without birth equity as the most basic norm it would be impossible to choose who has influence over you, to be truly free, without this reform. Fair Star suggests that without this reform, individuals entering the world may either lack empowerment or exert influence in ways that affect everyone, including the environment. The Fair Start theory advocates for empowering individuals rather than governments or wealthy entities, and warns against relying on misleading metrics that could harm children.[29]
The Fair Start Movement argues that it is physically impossible to be free or self-determination without accurate language of positionality, entitlements and impact, and an admission by all that failure to ensure share equity as the first human right has resulted in some benefitting at deadly cost to others as the climate crisis worsens.[10]
Activities
[edit]The Fair Start Movement is advanced through litigation, advocacy directed at policy makers, demonstrations, modeling by public figures, and events. Coalitions of NGO partners and thought leaders have called on the entities including the United Nations and the COP delegation to craft Fair Start-informed recommendations and policies.
Those in the movement also engage in whistle blowing corporations,[30] organizations[31], and public figures who engage in greenwashing, humanewashing, and growthwashing.[32]
Fair Start Movement Activists
[edit]Dr. Breeze Harper works with organizations to shift to a decolonial and reparative justice framework and to center the leadership of Black, indigenous, and other people of color impacted by the consequences of European colonialism and corporate capitalism. Dr. Harper states:
“I advocate that Black birth equity, through reparations, should be the primary action taken to resolve consequences such as corporation induced climate change — in particular, because those who are negatively impacted the most are Black communities in California and their future Black children.”
See also
[edit]- Children's rights movement
- Convention on the Rights of the Child
- International Conference on Population and Development
- Cycle of poverty
- Economic inequality
- Sustainable Development Goals
- Universal basic income
References
[edit]- ^ Dillard, Carter (October 24, 2024). standards-that-will-cost-business-trillions-in-climate-costs-should-they-and-their- funders-be-held-accountable "Environmental Nonprofits Set Low Standards That Will Cost Business Trillions in Climate Costs. Should They and Their Funders Be Held Accountable?". Retrieved October 24, 2024.
{{cite web}}: Check|url=value (help) - ^ "How Subsidizing Delayed Parenthood Will Let Children Lead the Way to a Fairer World". Retrieved 2024-04-24.
- ^ Dillard, Carter (2021-09-28). Justice as a Fair Start in Life: Understanding the Right to Have Children. Eliva Press. ISBN 978-9975-154-89-5.
- ^ Frey, Dr Sibylle (2022-10-13). "The Costs of Creation: Carter Dillard's Review of "Birth Rights and Wrongs", a Response by Dov Fox and a MAHB Commentary". MAHB. Retrieved 2024-04-24.
- ^ "How a 20th-Century Family Planning Agenda Fueled the Climate Crisis". Observatory. 2024-07-05. Retrieved 2024-07-05.
- ^ "What's the Fair Start Movement and How it Leads Us Towards a Better Future: An Interview with Carter Dillard". Youth Time Magazine.
- ^ "From Social Justice to Animal Liberation" (PDF).
- ^ Tennent, James (2017-12-18). "Paul Ryan is being offered $25,000 to have a vasectomy". International Business Times UK. Retrieved 2024-04-24.
- ^ Weisbrod, Katelyn (2021-11-16). "More Young People Don't Want Children Because of Climate Change. Has the UN Failed to Protect Them?". Inside Climate News. Retrieved 2024-04-24.
- ^ a b "Being Free Means Getting Climate Reparations Right: But Not Everyone Is Onboard – OpEd". MAHB. 2023-08-09. Retrieved 2024-04-24.
- ^ "Climate Reparations For a Brighter Future - Getting Everyone Onboard".
- ^ "Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William urged not to have a third baby". 2 August 2017.
- ^ "MLC Foundation" (PDF). www.mlcfoundation.org.in. Retrieved 2024-04-24.
- ^ Singer, Samantha (2018-03-26). "Group points to Murfreesboro case to stop neglectful parents from having more kids". WZTV. Retrieved 2024-04-24.
- ^ Dillard, Carter. "Open Letter to COP 28 Leadership: Correct Your Deadly Cost/Benefit Modeling, and Then Say and Act on These Eight Simple Words: All Children Deserve a Fair Start in Life". fairstartmovement.org. Retrieved 2024-04-24.
- ^ "Carter Dillard (Uehiro Centre, University of Oxford; University of Oxford - Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics) has posted Fundamental Illegitimacy (Willamette Law Review, Forthcoming) on SSRN".
- ^ Dillard, Carter (2021-07-19). "Constituting Over Constitutions". University of Bologna Law Review. 6 (1): 48–75. doi:10.6092/issn.2531-6133/13299. ISSN 2531-6133.
- ^ "Behavioural changes for climate action with Michael Shank from Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance". thegreenroom.simplecast.com. Retrieved 2024-04-24.
- ^ Dillard, Carter (2011–2012). "The Primary Right". Pace Environmental Law Review. 29: [v].
- ^ Hamity, Matthew; Dillard, Carter; Bexell, Sarah M.; Graff-Hughey, Catharina (2019). "A Human Rights Approach to Planning Families". Social Change. 49 (3): 469–492. doi:10.1177/0049085719863894. ISSN 0049-0857.
- ^ Dillard, Phoebe Barnard, Carter (2022-07-10). "Access to Family Planning Takes on New Urgency in a Post-Roe, Hotter World". Ms. Magazine. Retrieved 2024-04-24.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ "Convention on the Rights of the Child".
- ^ "Inside the Fair Start Movement". Ruby Warrington. Retrieved 2024-07-06.
- ^ "Could U.S. Constitution Hold Key to Solving the Climate Crisis?".
- ^ "State abortion bans create new governmental obligations for children".
- ^ Loki, Reynard (2024-04-26). "Should harming mother Earth be a crime? The case for ecocide | NationofChange". Retrieved 2024-07-05.
- ^ Singer, Jasmine. "Whether or not to have kids amid the climate crisis".
- ^ "It's Earth Overshoot Day, and Future Generations Are Calling | Opinion".
- ^ a b Afolaranmi, Esther. "Why Children's Rights Are Critical for Climate Policy and Environmental Activism".
- ^ "Climate litigation could cut through Big Oil companies' lies". 26 September 2023.
- ^ Dillard, Carter (2024-10-25). "Environmental Nonprofits Set Low Standards That Will Cost Business Trillions in Climate Costs. Should They and Their Funders Be Held Accountable?". Carter Dillard. Retrieved 2024-12-10.
- ^ "THE FAMSCAM: TIMELINE FOR HOW NONPROFITS KNOWINGLY UNDERCUT THEIR OWN CLAIMS, PUTTING MILLIONS AT RISK TO BENEFIT WEALTHY FUNDERS".