Environmental Ethics
Environmental ethics is the branch of applied ethics that studies the moral relationships between human beings and the natural environment, including non-human animals, species, ecosystems, and the biosphere.
Definition
The systematic study of the moral status of the natural world and of human duties regarding the environment.
Scope
Environmental ethics examines whether and why nature has moral standing, the limits of human-centered (anthropocentric) ethics, the value of species and ecosystems, and obligations relating to pollution, biodiversity loss, climate change, and future generations. It encompasses positions ranging from extended anthropocentrism to biocentrism, ecocentrism, and deep ecology. As a reference subject it surveys these positions and their supporting arguments without prescribing environmental conduct or policy.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- Does the natural world have value only as a resource for humans, or also in itself?
- Can non-human animals, plants, species, or ecosystems be objects of direct moral concern?
- What do present people owe to future generations regarding the environment?
- How should responsibility for collective environmental harms such as climate change be distributed?
Key theories
- The land ethic
- Aldo Leopold's view that ethical concern should extend to the 'biotic community'—soils, waters, plants, and animals—judging actions by their tendency to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of that community.
- Deep ecology
- Arne Naess's movement distinguishing a 'shallow' resource-oriented environmentalism from a 'deep' ecology that affirms the intrinsic value of all living things and calls for a fundamental shift in worldview.
History
Environmental ethics took shape as an academic field in the 1970s, building on earlier conservationist writing such as Leopold's A Sand County Almanac (1949). The launch of the journal Environmental Ethics in 1979 and works by Naess, Rolston, and others established its core debates over value and moral standing.
Debates
- Anthropocentrism versus non-anthropocentrism
- A foundational dispute over whether only human interests carry intrinsic moral weight or whether nature, species, and ecosystems possess value independent of human use.
Key figures
- Aldo Leopold
- Arne Naess
- Holmes Rolston III
- Val Plumwood
Related topics
Seminal works
- leopold1949
- rolston1988
- naess1973
Frequently asked questions
- How does environmental ethics differ from environmental science?
- Environmental science describes how natural systems work and what is happening to them; environmental ethics asks normative questions about what humans ought to value and how they ought to act with respect to nature.
- Is environmental ethics the same as animal ethics?
- They overlap but differ in focus. Animal ethics centers on the moral status of individual sentient animals, while environmental ethics also considers species, ecosystems, and non-sentient nature, sometimes generating tensions between the two.