A new book describes a science-based ‘Inalienable Obligations’ value system to augment human rights-based systems

Inalienable Obligations book cover image

Inalienable Obligations presents a value system based on obligations, not rights, to address the climate and biodiversity crises

BOSTON, MA, UNITED STATES, October 27, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — The book “Inalienable Obligations” proposes a fundamental shift in humanity’s relationship with ourselves and the living world. The shift is from “rights” to “obligations.”

The book explains how our current human-centric, rights-based value systems fail to vest the vast number of humans with what is needed for them to live full lives, and how these rights-based systems are inadequate to slow the twin catastrophes of climate and biodiversity breakdown on which human civilizations and much of life on earth depend.

The book then presents a value system based on obligations that is neither human-centric nor rights-based. The core question asked is: what if society’s values were grounded not primarily in human rights, but in something else, something universal to all life, something drawn from nature itself based on the latest science?

Drawing on a theory of time and the science behind 3.7 billion years of life evolving and flourishing on earth, the “inalienable obligations” value system shifts the way people and institutions can understand the foundations of human society away from human-developed rights to foundations rooted the science of evolution. The stated ambition is to drive effective action on climate change and biodiversity loss.

From a new value system to a new approach to law and policy

A central concept flowing from inalienable obligations is harmonious biodiversity, a new jurisprudential framework. Grounded in the same science, including symbiosis and the interdependence of living systems, harmonious biodiversity provides courts, international organizations, individuals and law and policymakers with tested, science-based guidelines ready for immediate use, replacing law and economics jurisprudence, cost-benefit analysis and other legal frameworks with a jurisprudence capable of meeting the twin challenges of climate and biodiversity breakdown.

An ambition inspired by Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring

The book shares the intent of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring: to make ideas that deeply challenge accepted norms broadly accessible resulting in effective action. Just as Paine’s pamphlet shifted colonists’ thinking and actions towards independence, and Carson’s book drove widespread public awareness and a raft of new environmental laws, Inalienable Obligations aims to power a similarly rapid and fundamental shift.

A starting point for action

Inalienable Obligations invites readers to reconsider the values shaping human decisions and the legal and institutional systems through which those decisions are made. It develops a value system grounded in the conditions that have enabled life to evolve and flourish in order for humanity to find a path forward in the face of the civilization-level threats of climate and biodiversity breakdown.

The book is available now at www.inalienableobligations.com.

Timothy B Higginson
Timothy B Higginson
+1 847-962-6123
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