Environmental Ethics

ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS BIO2207– ECOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL BIOLOGY

Lecturer: Ms. Leanna Kalicharan [email protected] Office Hours: Monday, 14:00 – 16:00 HRS Wednesday, 10:00 – 12:00 HRS

OBJECTIVES ▪ At the end of this lecture you should be able to: ▪ Understand the role of ethics in society. ▪ Recognize the importance of a personal ethical commitment.

▪ List three nature.

conflicting

attitudes

toward

▪ Explain the concept “greenwashing.” ▪ Explain the importance of individual ethical commitments toward environment. ▪ Explain why global action environment is necessary.

on

the

▪ Ethics is one branch of philosophy. ▪ Ethics seeks to define what is right and what is wrong.

▪ For example, most cultures are ethically committed to the idea that it is wrong to needlessly take life. Many cultures ground this belief on the existence of a right to life. It is considered unethical to deprive humans of this right to their life. ▪ Ethics can help us to understand what actions are wrong and why they are wrong. ▪ Many of the issues discussed throughout this course (energy, population, environmental issue, etc.) have ethical dimensions.

OVERVIEW

▪ More so, across the world, not all cultures share the same ethical commitments.

▪ Cultural relativism in ethics acknowledges that these differences exist. ▪ In some cases, it is appropriate to show sensitivity to legitimate differences in ethical commitments. ▪ However, despite the presence of some differences, there are also many cases in which ethical commitments can and should be globally agreed upon. ▪ The rights to life, liberty, and security of person, for example, are judged to be important across the globe.

OVERVIEW

▪ The 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights issued by the United Nations expressed a commitment to these basic human rights. ▪ Furthermore, given the importance of the planetary ecosystem to all of Earth’s inhabitants, an area that shows potential for similar global agreement is the question of the proper treatment of the natural environment.

OVERVIEW

▪ Ideally, the laws of a particular nation or community should match the ethical commitments of those living there. ▪ Sometimes laws are amended to match ethical commitments only after a long period of struggle and debate. ▪ Not every action that is ethically right can have a law supporting it.

▪ But even without a law it still might be the ethically right thing to do.

ETHICS AND LAWS

▪ In the case of environmental issues, care needs to be taken over when it is appropriate to legislate something and when action should be left up to the individual’s sense of right and wrong. ▪ For example, most people today agree that knowingly putting harmful pollutants into water and into the air is unethical. ▪ But while it may be appropriate to legislate against deliberately dumping toxic chemicals into a river, it may not be appropriate to legislate against driving a car more than a certain amount per week.

ETHICS AND LAWS

▪ Similarly, it may not be appropriate to legislate how many material goods people can purchase, or how much food they can waste, or how many kilowatts of electricity they can use, or how large a family they can have. ▪ On these issues, individual environmental action tends to be determined more by custom, habit, and certain social and economic pressures. ▪ In addition to these factors, a strong personal ethical commitment can help guide behavior in the absence of supporting laws.

ETHICS AND LAWS

▪ Even when people have strong personal ethical commitments, they might find that some of their commitments conflict. ▪ For example, the Major might have an ethical commitment to preserving the land around the city but at the same time have an ethical commitment to bringing in the jobs associated with the construction of a new supermarket on the outskirts of town. ▪ There are often difficult balances to be struck between multiple ethical values. ▪ As such, ethics can be complicated.

CONFLICTING ETHICAL POSITIONS

▪ Ethical issues dealing with the environment are especially complex because sometimes it appears that what is good for people conflicts with what is good for the environment. ▪ For instance, saving the forest might result in the loss of logging jobs. ▪ While recognizing that there are some real conflicts involved, it is also important to see that it is not necessarily the case that when the environment wins people lose.

CONFLICTING ETHICAL POSITIONS

▪ In a surprising number of cases it turns out that what is good for the environment is also good for people. ▪ For example, even when forest protection policy reduces logging jobs, a healthier forest might lead to new jobs in areas such as recreation, fisheries, and tourism. ▪ Searching for genuine “win-win” situations has become a priority in environmental decision making.

CONFLICTING ETHICAL POSITIONS

THREE PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACHES TO ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

▪ Given the complexity of the issues, environmental philosophers have developed a number of theoretical approaches to help ‘us’ see more clearly our ethical responsibilities concerning the environment. ▪ In these environmentally conscious times, most people agree that we need to be environmentally responsible. ▪ Toxic waste contaminates groundwater, oil spills destroy shorelines, and fossil fuels produce carbon dioxide, thus adding to global warming.

OVERVIEW

▪ The goal of environmental ethics, then, is not simply to convince ‘us’ that we should be concerned about the environment— many persons already are. ▪ Instead, environmental ethics focuses on the moral foundation of environmental responsibility and how far this responsibility extends. ▪ There are three primary theories of moral responsibility regarding the environment. ▪ Although each can support environmental responsibility, their approaches are different (Figure 1).

OVERVIEW

Figure 1: Philosophical Approaches Of the three major approaches only anthropocentrism refers all value back to human needs and interests.

▪ The first of the three theories is anthropocentrism or human-centered ethics. ▪ Anthropocentrism is the view that all environmental responsibility is derived from human interests alone. ▪ The assumption here is that only human beings are morally significant and have direct moral standing. ▪ Since the environment is crucial to human well-being and human survival, people have an indirect duty toward the environment, that is, a duty derived from human interests.

ANTHROPOCENTRISM

▪ People must ensure that Earth remains environmentally hospitable for supporting human life and even that it remains a pleasant place for humans to live. ▪ Nevertheless, according to this view, the value of the environment lies in its instrumental worth for humans. ▪ Nature is fundamentally an instrument for human manipulation.

ANTHROPOCENTRISM

▪ Some anthropocentrists have argued that our environmental duties are derived both from the immediate benefit that people receive from the environment and from the benefit that future generations of people will receive. ▪ However, critics have maintained that since future generations of people do not yet exist, they cannot have rights any more than a dead person can have rights. ▪ Nevertheless, both parties to this dispute acknowledge that environmental concern derives solely from human interests.

ANTHROPOCENTRISM

▪ The second theory of moral responsibility to the environment is biocentrism or lifecentered environmental ethics. ▪ According to the broadest version of the biocentric theory, all forms of life have an inherent right to exist. ▪ A number of biocentrists recognize a hierarchy of values among species.

▪ For example, some believe that we have a greater responsibility to protect animal species than plant species and a greater responsibility to protect mammals than invertebrates.

BIOCENTRISM

BIOCENTRISM ▪ Another group of biocentrists, known as “biocentric egalitarians,” take the view that all living organisms have an exactly equal right to exist. ▪ Since the act of survival inevitably involves some killing (for food and shelter) it is hard to know where biocentric egalitarians can draw the lines and still be ethically consistent.

▪ The third approach to environmental responsibility, called ecocentrism, maintains that the environment deserves direct moral consideration and not consideration that is merely derived from human or animal interests. ▪ In ecocentrism it is suggested that the environment itself, not just the living organisms that inhabit it, has moral worth.

ECOCENTRISM

▪ Some ecocentrists talk in terms of the systemic value that a particular ecosystem possesses as the matrix that makes biological life possible.

▪ Others, go beyond particular ecosystems and suggest that the biological system on Earth as a whole has an integrity to it that gives it moral standing. ▪ Another version goes even further and ascribes personhood to the planet, suggesting that Mother Earth should have the same right to life as any mother.

ECOCENTRISM

OTHER PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACHES

▪ As traditional political and national boundaries fade or shift in importance, new variations of environmental philosophy are fast emerging.

▪ Many of these variations are founded on an awareness that humanity is part of nature and that nature’s component parts are interdependent. ▪ Beyond the three ethical positions discussed previously, other areas of thought recently developed by philosophers to address the environmental crisis include:

OVERVIEW

▪ Ecofeminism: the view that there are important theoretical, historical, and empirical connections between how society treats women and how it treats the environment.

▪ Social ecology: the view that social hierarchies are directly connected to behaviors that lead to environmental destruction. Social ecologists are strong supporters of the environmental justice movement.

▪ Deep ecology: the generally ecocentric view that a new spiritual sense of oneness with the Earth is the essential starting point for a more healthy relationship with the environment. Deep ecology also includes a biocentric egalitarian world view. Many deep ecologists are environmental activists. ▪ Environmental pragmatism: an approach that focuses on policy rather than ethics. Environmental pragmatists think that a human-centered ethic with a long-range perspective will come to many of the same conclusions about environmental policy as an ecocentric ethic. Consequently they find the emphasis on ethical theories unhelpful.

▪ Environmental aesthetics: the study of how to appreciate beauty in the natural world. Some environmental aesthetics advocates think that the most effective philosophical ground for protecting the natural environment is to think in terms of protecting natural beauty. ▪ Animal rights/welfare: this position asserts that humans have a strong moral obligation to nonhuman animals. Strictly speaking, this is not an environmental position because the commitment is to individual animals and not to ecosystems or ecological health. Animal rights advocates are particularly concerned about the treatment of farm animals and animals used in medical research.

ENVIRONMENTAL ATTITUDES

▪ Even for those who have studied environmental ethics carefully, it is never easy to act in accordance with one particular ethic in everything. ▪ Ethical commitments pull directions at different times.

in

different

▪ Because of these difficulties, it is sometimes easier to talk in terms of general attitudes or approaches to the environment rather than in terms of particular ethics.

OVERVIEW

▪ The three most common approaches are the:

1. Development approach, 2. Preservation approach, and 3. Conservation approach.

OVERVIEW

▪ The development approach tends to be the most anthropocentric of the three. ▪ It assumes that the human race is and should be master of nature and that the Earth and its resources exist solely for our benefit and pleasure. ▪ This approach is reinforced by the capitalist work ethic, which historically dictated that humans should create value for themselves by putting their labor into both land and materials in order to convert them into marketable products.

DEVELOPMENT

▪ The development approach suggests that improvements in the human condition require converting ever more of nature over to human use.

▪ The approach thinks highly of human creativity and ingenuity and holds that continual economic growth is itself a moral ideal for society. ▪ In the development approach, the environment has value only insofar as human beings economically utilize it. ▪ This mindset has very often accompanied the process of industrialization and modernization in a country.

DEVELOPMENT

▪ The preservationist approach tends to be the most ecocentric of the three common attitudes toward the environment. ▪ Rather than seek to convert all of nature over to human uses, preservationists want to see large portions of nature preserved intact.

▪ Preservationists argue that nature has intrinsic value or inherent worth apart from human uses. ▪ Preservationists have various ways of articulating their position.

PRESERVATION

▪ While many preservationists adopt an ecocentric ethic, some also include anthropocentric principles in their arguments. ▪ These preservationists wish to keep large parts of nature intact for aesthetic or recreational reasons. ▪ They believe that nature is beautiful and restorative and should be preserved to ensure that wild places exist for future humans to hike, camp, fish, or just enjoy some solitude.

PRESERVATION

▪ The third environmental approach is the conservationist approach. ▪ Conservationism tends to strike a balance between unrestrained development and preservationism. ▪ Conservationism is anthropocentric in the sense that it is interested in promoting human well-being. ▪ But conservationists tend to consider a wider range of long-term human goods in their decisions about environmental management.

CONSERVATION

SOCIETAL ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

▪ The environmental ethic expressed by a society is a product of the decisions and choices made by a diverse range of social actors that includes individuals, businesses, and national leaders. ▪ For instance, Western, developed societies have long acted as if the Earth has unlimited reserves of natural resources, an unlimited ability to assimilate wastes, and a limitless ability to accommodate unchecked growth.

▪ The economies of developed nations have been based on a rationale that favors continual growth. ▪ Unfortunately, this growth has not always been carefully planned or even desired. ▪ This “growth mania” has resulted in the unsustainable use of nonrenewable resources for comfortable homes, wellequipped hospitals, convenient transportation, fast-food outlets, among other.

▪ In economic terms, such “growth” measures out as “productivity.” ▪ But the question arises, “What is enough?” ▪ Poor societies have too little, but rich societies never say, “We have enough.” ▪ Until the last quarter of the twentieth century, economic growth and resource exploitation were by far the dominant orientations toward the natural environment in industrialized societies.

▪ Developing countries were encouraged to follow similar anthropocentric paths. ▪ Since the rise of the modern environmental movement in the last 40 years, things have started to change. ▪ Some of the most dramatic changes have occurred in corporate business practices.

CORPORATE ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

▪ The enormous effects of business on the state of the environment highlight the important need for corporate environmental ethics. ▪ For example, Waste and Pollution. The daily tasks of industry, such as procuring raw materials, manufacturing and marketing products, and disposing of wastes, cause large amounts of pollution.

▪ When raw materials are processed, some waste is usually inevitable. ▪ It is often hard to completely control all the by-products of a manufacturing process. Some of the waste material may simply be useless. ▪ For example, the food-service industry uses energy to prepare meals. ▪ Much of the energy is lost as waste heat. Smoke and odors are released into the atmosphere and spoiled food items must be discarded. Heat, smoke, and food wastes appear to be part of the cost of doing business in the food industry.

▪ Corporations are making frequent references to environmental issues over the past several years. ▪ Is such concern only rhetoric and social marketing, (also called “greenwashing”) or is it the beginning of a new corporate environmental ethic? ▪ Greenwashing is a form of corporate misrepresentation whereby a company presents a green public image and publicize green initiatives while privately engaging in environmentally damaging practices.

Is there a Corporate Environmental Ethic?

▪ Companies are trying to take advantage of the growing public concern and awareness about environmental issues by creating an environmentally responsible image. ▪ Greenwashing can help companies win over investors, create competitive advantage in the marketplace, and convince critics that the company is well intentioned. ▪ Although some corporations only want to appear green, others have taken a more ethical approach. Corporations face real choices between using environmentally friendly or harmful production processes.

Is there a Corporate Environmental Ethic?

▪ As the idea of an environmental ethic has become more firmly established within society, corporations are being increasingly pressured to adopt more environmentally and socially responsible practices.

Is there a Corporate Environmental Ethic?

INDIVIDUAL ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

▪ Ethical changes in society and business must start with individuals. ▪ We have to recognize that our individual actions have a bearing on environmental quality and that each of us bears some personal responsibility for the quality of the environment in which we live. ▪ In other words, environmental ethics must express themselves not only in laws and in better business practices but also in significant changes in the ways in which we all live.

▪ While new technologies will certainly play a major role in the future in lessening the environmental impact of our lifestyles, individual behavioral choices today can also make a significant difference to the health of ecological systems. ▪ Environmental ethics must therefore take hold not only at the level of government and business but also at the level of personal choices about consumption.

GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

▪ As human stresses on the environment increase, the stability of the planet’s ecological systems becomes more uncertain.

▪ Small environmental changes can create large-scale and unpredictable disruptions. Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane, whether caused by humans or not, are leading to changes in surface temperatures that will result in major ecological effects. ▪ For example, just a small reduction in seasonal snow and ice coverage in Arctic regions due to global warming can greatly increase the amount of solar energy the Earth absorbs.

▪ This additional energy itself raises atmospheric temperature, leading to a further reduction in snow coverage. ▪ Some models predict that ocean currents, nutrient flows, and hydrologic cycles could make radical shifts from historic patterns in a matter of months.

▪ Such disruptions would cause catastrophic environmental change by shifting agricultural regions, threatening species with extinction, decimating crop harvests, and pushing tropical diseases into areas where they are currently unknown.

▪ Glaciers will continue to melt and ocean waters will rise, flooding heavily populated low-lying places like Bangladesh, the Netherlands, and even the U.S. Gulf Coast.

▪ Millions of people would be displaced by famine, flood, and drought. ▪ As environmental justice advocates point out, these changes will hit the poor and those least able to respond to them first. ▪ However, the changes predicted are of such magnitude that even the very wealthy countries will suffer environmental consequences that they cannot hope to avoid.

▪ Many of these problems require global solutions. ▪ This new sense of urgency and common cause about the environment is leading to unprecedented cooperation in some areas. ▪ Perhaps one of the most important questions for the future is, “Will the nations of the world be able to set aside their political differences to work toward a global environmental course of action?”

▪ Environmental ethics suggests that we may have an obligation beyond simply minimizing the harm that we cause to our families, our neighbors, our fellow human citizens, and future generations of people that will live on Planet Earth. ▪ It suggests that we may also have an obligation to minimize the harm we cause to the ecological systems and the biodiversity of the Earth itself. ▪ The ecological systems, many believe, deserve moral consideration for what they are in themselves, quite apart from their undeniable importance to human beings. Recognizing that our treatment of the natural environment is an ethical issue is a good start on the challenges that lie ahead.

▪ Recognizing that our treatment of the natural environment is an ethical issue is a good start on the challenges that lie ahead. “Today we are faced with a challenge that calls for a shift in our thinking, so that humanity stops threatening its life-support system. We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own—indeed, to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty, and wonder. This will happen if we see the need to revive our sense of belonging to a larger family of life, with which we have shared our evolutionary process. In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. That time is now.” Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize winner.

SUMMARY ▪ People of different cultures view their place in the world from different perspectives. Among the things that shape their views are religious understandings, economic pressures, geographic location, and fundamental knowledge of nature.

▪ Because of this diversity of backgrounds, different cultures put different values on the natural world and the individual organisms that compose it. Environmental ethics investigates the justifications for these different positions.

SUMMARY ▪ Three common attitudes toward nature are the development approach, which assumes that nature is for people to use for their own purposes; the preservationist approach, which assumes that nature has value in itself and should be preserved intact; and the conservationist approach, which recognizes that we must use nature to meet human needs but encourages us to do so in a sustainable manner. The conservationist approach is generally known today as “sustainable development.”

SUMMARY ▪ Recognition that there is an ethical obligation to protect the environment can be made by corporations, by individuals, by nations, and by international bodies. ▪ Corporate environmental ethics are complicated by the existence of a corporate obligation to its shareholders to make a profit. Corporations often wield tremendous economic power that can be used to influence public opinion and political will. Many corporations are now being driven to include environmental ethics in their business practices by their shareholders.

▪ Natural capitalism and industrial ecology are ideas that promote ways of doing profitable business while also protecting the environment. ▪ Individuals must demonstrate strong commitments to environmental ethics in their personal choices and behaviors. ▪ Global commitments to the protection of the environment are enormously important. ▪ Opportunities for global cooperation and agreement are of critical importance in facing these real and increasing challenges. ▪ Environmental ethics has a role to play in shaping human attitudes

SUMMARY

▪ Environmental ethics has a role to play in shaping human attitudes toward the environment from the smallest personal choice to the largest international treaty.

THINKING GREEN Calculate your ecological footprint.

SUMMARY

CLASS ACTIVITY Which approach to the environment— development, preservation, or conservation— do you think you adopt in your own life? Do you think it appropriate for everybody in the world to share the same attitude you hold?