bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Preferences in their Place
Authors: Lenman James
Published: June 2007

In at least some of their forms, Cost-Benefit techniques for the evaluation of environmental projects and policies treat the preferences of citizens as the sole determinants of the value of outcomes. There are two salient ways in which this supposition might be defended. The first is metaethical and appeals to considerations about how we must understand talk of environmental and other values. The second is political and appeals to considerations about democratic legitimacy and the proper aims of public policy. Metaethical considerations, I argue, are something of a red herring here. Roughly subjectivist understandings of our talk of values may be appealingly metaphysically unassuming, but in their most plausible formulations they do not support a view of preferences as the sole determinants of value. Political considerations, on the other hand, are to be taken very seriously. They offer, however, no straightforward rationale for any crudely preferentialist measure of social value. Findings obtained from the use of cost-benefit techniques might sometimes have a legitimate role as an input into, but not as a substitute for, political deliberation. Questions about the scope and limits of such legitimacy are properly addressed in political and not in metaethical terms.
The WTP/WTA Discrepancy: A Preliminary Qualitative Examination
Authors: Burton Anthony C. , Chilton Susan M. , Jones Martin K.
Published: June 2007

This paper explores the psychological foundations of the 'Willingness to Pay/Willingness to Accept' discrepancy. Using a qualitative approach we find that the two response modes appear to invoke different strategies for completion. An examination of the heuristics used by respondents to answer questions concerning the buying and selling of the chance to play a straightforward lottery shows that only some could be taken as supporting current theories which aim to explain the discrepancy.
Distributive Justice in International Environmental Policy: Axiomatic Foundation and Exemplary Formulation
Authors: Helm Carsten , Simonis Udo E.
Published: June 2007

Proceeding on a limited number of general, widely accepted equity criteria, we develop a proposal for distributing common resources. In particular, the proposed fair division mechanism is individually rational, envy-free, Pareto-efficient and satisfies the stand alone test, which follows as a minimum requirement from the resource and population monotonicity criteria. Applied to international climate policy, the thrust of this proposal is that the South should initially be fully compensated for the greenhouse gas abatement measures it is to undertake as a result of efficiency considerations.
Why the Naïve Argument against Moral Vegetarianism Really is Naïve
Authors: Benatar David
Published: June 2007

When presented with the claim of the moral vegetarian that it is wrong for us to eat meat, many people respond that because it is not wrong for lions, tigers and other carnivores to kill and eat animals, it cannot be wrong for humans to do so. This response is what Peter Alward has called the naïve argument. Peter Alward has defended the naïve argument against objections. I argue that his defence fails.
Non-Humean Holism, Un-Humean Holism
Authors: Lo Y.S.
Published: June 2007

In this article I argue that textual evidence from David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature does not support J. Baird Callicott's professedly Humean yet holistic environmental ethic, which understands the community (e.g., the biotic community) as a ‘metaorganismic’ entity ‘over and above’ its individual members. Based on Hume's reductionist account of the mind and his assimilation of the metaphysical nature of the mind to that of the community, I also argue that a Humean account of the community should be likewise reductionist. My conclusion is that Callicott's anti-reductionist holism is at least foreign to, and at worst incompatible with, Hume's philosophy.
Postmodernism, Value and Objectivity
Authors: Attfield Robin
Published: June 2007

The first half of this paper replies to three postmodernist challenges to belief in objective intrinsic value. One lies in the claim that the language of objective value presupposes a flawed, dualistic distinction between subjects and objects. The second lies in the claim that there are no objective values which do not arise within and/or depend upon particular cultures or valuational frameworks. The third comprises the suggestion that belief in objective values embodies the representational theory of perception. In the second half, a defence is offered of belief in objective intrinsic value. Objectivists hold that axiological properties supply interpersonal reasons for action for any relevant moral agent. The intrinsically valuable is understood as what there is reason to desire, cherish or foster in virtue of the nature of the state or object concerned. The concept of intrinsic value is shown to be instantiated, and defended against a range of criticisms.
The Indifference Curve, Motivation, and Morality in Contingent Valuation
Authors: Hart Rob , Latacz-Lohmann Uwe
Published: June 2007

Contingent valuation surveys have tended to yield results that seem to go contrary to what is standardly seen as ‘rational choice’. We argue that some of the inconsistencies arise because bids for public environmental goods in contingent valuation surveys are often (at least partly) motivated by moral considerations and ethical beliefs. We analyse the expected results of CV surveys given the existence of such ethical motivations, including the valuation of actions as well as states. It is found that we cannot expect bids made on this basis to reveal preferences which obey the rules commonly assumed in the theory of consumer choice. The two standard reactions to these anomalies have been to attack the validity of the method, or to urge greater rigour in survey design and application. By contrast, we conclude that the usefulness of the method for evaluating options concerning environmental public goods depends critically on the problem definition. The method should be used for the direct evaluation of realistic policy packages, rather than to try to extract abstract values for invaluable goods. The conclusion accords with current trends, including the move towards the use of deliberative methodologies.
Intrinsic Value and Care: Making Connections through Ecological Narratives
Authors: Preston Christopher J.
Published: June 2007

Vitriolic debates between supporters of the intrinsic value and the care approaches to environmental ethics make it sound as though these two sides share no common ground. Yet ecofeminist Jim Cheney holds up Holmes Rolston's work as a paragon of feminist sensibility. I explore where Cheney gets this idea from and try to root out some potential connections between intrinsic value and care approaches. The common ground is explored through Alasdair MacIntyre's articulation of a narrative ethics and the development of the notion of an ecological and evolutionary tradition.
Environmental Security and the Recombinant Human: Sustainability in the Twenty-first Century
Authors: Redclift Michael
Published: June 2007

Examining the concepts of ‘security’ and ‘sustainability’, as they are employed in contemporary environmental discourses, the paper argues that, although the importance of the environment has been increasingly acknowledged since the 1970s, there has been a failure to incorporate other discourses surrounding ‘nature’. The implications of the ‘new genetics’, prompted by research into recombinant DNA, suggest that future approaches to sustainability need to be more cognisant of changes in ‘our’ nature, as well as those of ‘external’ nature, the environment. This broadening of the compass of ‘security’ and ‘sustainability’ discourses would help provide greater insight into human security, from an environmental perspective.
Global Partnership, Climate Change and Complex Equality
Authors: Arler Finn
Published: June 2007

The prospect of climate change due to human activities has put the question of inter- and intragenerational justice or equity in matters of common concern on the global agenda. This article will focus on the question of intragenerational justice in relation to these issues. This involves three basic questions. Firstly, the question of which distributive criteria may be relevant in the distribution of the goods and bads related to the increasing greenhouse effect. A series of criteria are discussed in relation to different understandings of the problem. The second question is which kind of relationship the global partnership is or should be considered to be in issues of common concern. It is argued that various understandings of the global partnership can be expected to result in the use of different criteria. This diversity leads us to the third question concerning the possibility of identifying an overall social ideal which can be used in cases where several different criteria may be useful. I shall discuss one such ideal in particular, namely the ideal of complex equality. In the concluding remarks it is argued that a distribution of emission quotas to countries in accordance with population size is a reasonable starting point for an equitable solution, although it involves various problems of application.
In Search of Value Literacy: Suggestions for the Elicitation of Environmental Values
Authors: Satterfield Theresa
Published: June 2007

This paper recognises the many contributions to work on environmental values while arguing that some reconsideration of elicitation practices is warranted. It argues that speaking and thinking about certain environmental values, particularly ethical expressions, are ill-matched with the affectively neutral, direct question-answer formats standard to willingness-to-pay and survey methods. Several indirect, narrated, and affectively resonant elicitation tasks were used to provide study participants with new opportunities to express their values. Coded results demonstrate that morally resonant, image-based, and narrative-style elicitation tasks help respondents articulate a broader range of noncost and nonutilitarian environmental values. However, it was found that elicitations of this kind are most useful when presented in a affectively subtle and noncontroversial form. Several suggestions for synthesising these methods with more structured forms (e.g., surveys, constructed preferences, etc.) are offered.
Economics, Entropy and the Long Term Future: Conceptual Foundations and the Perspective of the Economics of Survival
Authors: Mueller Charles C.
Published: June 2007

The present paper is a survey of the economics of survival, a branch of ecological economics that stresses the preservation of the opportunities of future generations over an extended time horizon. It outlines the main analytical foundation of the branch – in which the concept of entropy is a major building block –, and its analysis of the interaction between the economic system and the environment. Regarding its outlook of the future, we see that the founders of the branch were mainly concerned with the consequences of a serious depletion of natural resources – particularly the energetic capital of the earth. More recently, however, emphasis is being placed on problems that stem from the fragility of the global ecosystem in face of the disturbances caused by the entropic acceleration imposed by mankind. It is feared that the ongoing expansion of the scale of the economy may bring about irreversible damages to vital environmental functions, such as protection against undesirable consequences of solar radiation, maintenance of temperature within a range that will support life, and preservation of ecosystem resiliency.
The Morality of Ecosabotage
Authors: Young Thomas
Published: June 2007

Environmental ethicists rarely discuss the morality of using illegal tactics to protect the environment. Yet ecosabotage (or monkeywrenching) is the topic of numerous articles and books in the popular press. In this paper I examine what I consider to be the three strongest arguments against destroying property as a means of defending the environment: the social fabric argument, the argument for moral consistency, and the generalisation argument. I conclude that none of them provides an a priori obstacle to a consequentialist justification of particular acts of ecosabotage. Then I sketch a version of constrained utilitarianism, which is capable, at least in principle, of justifying some acts of strategic ecosabotage in a democratic society.
Evaluating Callicott's Attack on Stone's Moral Pluralism
Authors: Domsky Darren
Published: June 2007

J. Baird Callicott is well known in environmental philosophy for his attack on Christopher D. Stone's moral pluralism. Although his attack has drawn attention from critics and has been labelled problematic for various reasons, I argue that it fails entirely. Each of Callicott's three distinct criticisms proves to be not only weak on its own terms, but, perhaps surprisingly, as effective against Callicott's own communitarian position as it is against Stone's pluralist one. I show that Callicott's attack is not only wholly ineffective in targeting Stone, but that even if it were so effective it would on every count be just as effective in targeting its own originator.
Can We Harm Future People?
Authors: Carter Alan
Published: June 2007

It appears to have been established that it is not possible for us to harm distant future generations by failing to adopt long-range welfare policies which would conserve resources or limit pollution. By exploring a number of possible worlds, the present article shows, first, that the argument appears to be at least as telling against Aristotelian, rights-based and Rawlsian approaches as it seems to be against utilitarianism, but second, and most importantly, that it only holds if we fail to view moral agents as individuals. The article also concludes that the argument has profoundly counter-intuitive implications.
A Green Fist in a Velvet Glove: The Ecological State and Sustainable Development
Authors: Lundqvist Lennart J.
Published: June 2007

Suggestions for transforming ecological sustainability into operative social choice mechanisms can be viewed through the bifocal lens of limits on, and opportunities for, the ecological state. Using lines of reasoning brought in from the comparative study of environmental policy, this article tries to stake out how far the ecological state can go in pursuing objectives of sustainable development without intruding on values and objectives fundamental to democracy. The article discusses social choice mechanisms in terms of the ecological state's authority, management capacities, effectiveness, and legitimacy, drawing up the image of the ecological state as a ‘green fist in a velvet glove’ with the ultimate objective of integrating ‘ecological’ evaluations into the public mind so that they become as ‘natural’ as those ‘economic’ criteria presently applied. Concluding that such ‘ecological’ consciousness involves a great leap in ecological information processing and dissemination within and throughout societies, the article invokes the sustainability and success of democratic social welfare states which base authoritative command on enlightened debate and deliberation as evidence that such a leap can be successfully made through processes of informed consensus.
Environmental Values and Adaptive Management
Authors: Norton Bryan G. , Steinemann Anne C.
Published: June 2007

The trend in environmental management toward more adaptive, community-based, and holistic approaches will require new approaches to environmental valuation. In this paper, we offer a new valuation approach, one that embodies the core principles of adaptive management, which is experimental, multi-scalar, and place-based. In addition, we use hierarchy theory to incorporate spatial and temporal variability of natural systems into a multi-scalar management model. Our approach results in the consideration of multiple values within community-based ecosystem management, rather than an attempt to maximise a single variable such as economic efficiency. We then offer two heuristics – one procedural and one evaluative – to guide a community toward shared goals, and to develop indicators to measure progress toward these goals. We illustrate our approach by application to environmental and developmental decisions in the Southern Appalachians.
A Constrained-Utility Alternative to Animal Rights
Authors: Frank Joshua
Published: June 2007

Numerous approaches have been taken in an effort to find a non-anthropocentric ethic that will lead to greater consideration of animals. Most of the recent approaches in this area have been rights-based. It is argued here that a rights-based approach alone fails both theoretically and in practical applications. It is shown that in theory these approaches can lead to unsound conclusions and cannot handle uncertainty. In addition, in practice the rules of the rights-based approaches will often be violated. A utility approach with unequal weighting for different species subject to certain rights or obligations is proposed as an alternative. This approach is intended to be operational rather than purely theoretical and therefore would be based on a negotiated consensus rather than a priori theory.
The Future – for Better or Worse
Authors: Partridge Ernest
Published: June 2007

Alan Carter correctly argues that Thomas Schwartz's ‘future persons paradox’ applies with equal force to utilitarianism, rights theory and Aristotelian ethics. His criticism of Rawls's ‘justice between generations’ is less successful, because of his failure (and perhaps Rawls's as well) to fully appreciate the hypothetical nature of the ‘original position’. Carter's attempt to refute Schwartz's argument by focusing on the individuality of moral action fails, since it evades the essential point of Schwartz's argument. The best response to Schwartz is to concede the essential validity of his argument and then to turn that argument into an ad absurdum refutation of his central premise, ‘the person affecting principle’.
The Goat-stag and the Sphinx: The Place of the Virtues in Environmental Ethics
Authors: Chapman Robert L.
Published: June 2007

Standard virtue ethics approach to environmental issues do not go far enough because they often lack significant attachment to local environments. Place provides the necessary link that enlarges the arena of moral action by joining human well-being to a place-based goal of wildness (Thoreau) or biotic harmony (Leopold). Place defines a niche for human activity as part of nature. Virtuous action, then, is understood as deliberation from a position of being in and of the natural world; respect and gratitude are examples of this type of deliberation.
Ethics in Wildlife Management: What Price?
Authors: Curtis John A.
Published: June 2007

This paper argues that there may be instances where assessing wildlife for monetary valuation might be quite reasonable and useful for public policy, even when there are strong arguments against valuation of wildlife and nature. A case of deer population management is considered where continued growth of the deer population will lead to more property damage and habitat loss. However, deer population control raises ethical questions on the rights of animals to exist and on the rights of humans to arbitrarily interfere. The contingent valuation methodology (CVM) is used to value preferences for deer management for the purpose of guiding public policy. The valuation estimates show that ethical concerns about killing deer affect the level of willingness to pay in a quite a logical manner. However, for individuals with rights-based preferences, CVM is not appropriate. The survey results also show that individuals with rights-based preferences are a small minority in this particular example.
Anthropocentrism, Artificial Intelligence, and Moral Network Theory: An Ecofeminist Perspective
Authors: Davion Victoria
Published: June 2007

This paper critiques a conception of intelligence central in AI, and a related concept of reason central in moral philosophy, from an ecological feminist perspective. I argue that ecofeminist critique of human/nature dualisms offers insight into the durability of both problematic conceptions, and into the direction of research programmes. I conclude by arguing for the importance of keeping political analysis in the forefront of science and environmental ethics.
‘Other Animal Ethics’ and the Demand for Difference
Authors: Aaltola Elisa
Published: June 2007

Traditionally animal ethics has criticised the anthropocentric worldview according to which humans differ categorically from the rest of the nature in some morally relevant way. It has claimed that even though there are differences, there are also crucial similarities between humans and animals that make it impossible to draw a categorical distinction between humans who are morally valuable and animals which are not. This argument, according to which animals and humans share common characteristics that lead to moral value, is at the heart of animal ethics. Lately the emphasis on similarity has been under attack. It has been claimed that the search for similarity is itself part of anthropocentric morality, since only those like us are valuable. It also has been claimed that true respect for animals comes from recognising their difference and ‘otherness’, not from seeing similarities. This paper analyses the new ‘other animal ethics’ by critically examining its basis and consequences. The conclusion is that despite the fact that other animal ethics is right in demanding respect also for difference, it remains both vague and contradictory in its theoretical basis, and leads to undesirable consequences from the perspective of animal welfare.
Ontology, Ethics, and Sentir: Properly Situating Merleau-Ponty
Authors: Clarke Melissa
Published: June 2007

Maurice Merleau-Ponty did not author an ethic, and yet it is possible to extend his ontological descriptions to an ethic similar to that espoused by post modern thinkers. It is even possible to distill an environmental ethic, or at least, one of consideration of the more-than-human, from his work. This paper attempts to do some preliminary work in light of this, and lays some groundwork for the future direction of an environmental ethic inspired by a Merleau-Pontian ontology. At the same time, it challenges the popularised view of Merleau-Ponty espoused by David Abram – viz., of Merleau-Ponty as an animist – and properly situates Merleau Ponty.
The Role of Customary Institutions in the Conservation of Biodiversity: Sacred Forests in Mozambique
Authors: Virtanen Pekka
Published: June 2007

Recently the role of customary local institutions in the conservation of biological diversity has become a topic of widespread interest. In this paper the conservation value of one such institution, traditionally protected forest, is studied with regard to its ecological representativity and institutional persistence. On the basis of a case study from Mozambique the paper concludes that traditionally protected forests do have a practical conservation value, especially as fire refuges and in the preservation of metapopulations of endangered species. However, it is also important to recall their spiritual aspect, which is crucial for their continuing appreciation and upholding. Even though customary institutions are still strong in the study area, they are subject to power struggles at both local and national levels. In the present context of political transition, any outside interventions regarding such local institutions as sacred forests, which have high symbolic value, should be considered carefully.
New Modernities: Reimagining Science, Technology and Development
Authors: Jasanoff Sheila
Published: June 2007

‘Development’ operates as an allegedly value-neutral concept in the policy world. This essay describes four mechanisms that have helped to strip development of its subjective and meaning-laden elements: persistent misreading of technology as simply material and inanimate; uncritical acceptance of models, including economic ones, as adequate representations of complex systems; failure to recognize routine practices as repositories of power; and erasing history and time as relevant factors in producing scenarios for the future. Failure to take these elements into account has led to inequality, injustice and unintended consequences in many development projects. Interpretive analysis of development tools and concepts is a much-needed corrective.
Forest Co-management as Science and Democracy in West Bengal, India
Authors: Sivaramakrishnan K.
Published: June 2007

This essay argues that important development and natural resource management initiatives that seek to expand meaningful participation by rural communities directly affected by such ventures can be usefully examined as democratic technologies. Drawing upon nearly two decades of experience designing, implementing, and researching forest co-management programs in India, the essay examines the analogous practices through which democracy and forest management science become contested regulatory ideals while creating the deliberative spaces in which post-Habermasian public spheres can be constructed. The analysis of disciplinary tendencies, bureaucratic transition, and emerging solidarities among historically marginalised groups responding to the performance of democracy and scientific forest management is used to offer revisions to the more sweeping critiques of technology as fundamentally anti-democratic.
Ranchers, Scientists, and Grass-roots Development in the United States and Kenya
Authors: Thompson Charis M.
Published: June 2007

Two initiatives in community-based biodiversity conservation are examined. I describe key aspects of the formation in the mid 1990s of the Malpai Borderlands Group of the Southwest US, and the reorganisation of the Kenya Wildlife Service during 1994–6 and their legacies since then. I review how history, ownership, membership, and valuation were appealed to, created, maintained, and contested in defining what should be saved, by and for whom, and how in each. I also suggest the central role of science and relatively mundane technologies in co-ordinating these parameters. Success or ‘best practice’ as applied to the conjunction of biodiversity conservation and development depends upon this work in contesting and establishing history, ownership, membership and valuation.
From Fieldwork to Mutual Learning: Working with PRATEC
Authors: Apffel-Marglin FréDérique
Published: June 2007

This paper places the work of a Peruvian NGO (PRATEC), with which the author collaborates, within a broad context of the theory of knowledge. The three members of PRATEC were engaged in different aspects of the development enterprise. Out of their perceived failure of that enterprise, they deprofessionalised themselves and founded this NGO. The author argues that within the professional academic disciplines it is impossible to produce a knowledge that can contribute to the procreative concerns of communities, that is, their concerns about their continuity and well-being. She does a brief historical review of the emergence of the modern University in the nineteenth century and the hidden political agenda of the new so called value-free knowledge it institutionalised. She ends up advocating a rejection of the double participation necessitated by professional academic disciplines.
Disaster, Development and Governance: Reflections on the ‘Lessons’ of Bhopal
Authors: Rajan S. Ravi
Published: June 2007

The paper firstly uses the case study of the Bhopal gas disaster to understand why many scholars and activists seek alternatives to ‘big’ development. Secondly, it critically examines the claims that have been made in this regard in the literature in political ecology, science and technology studies and environmental governance, and in doing so, articulates a framework of questions for the next generation of research and advocacy.
The Liberation of Humanity and Nature
Authors: Katz Eric
Published: June 2007

What does the ‘liberation’ of nature mean? In this essay, I use a pragmatic methodology to (1) reject the idea that we need a metaphysical understanding of the nature of nature before we can speak of nature's liberation, and (2) explain the sense of liberation as being the continuation of human non-interference in natural processes. Two real life policy cases are cited as examples: beach restoration on Fire Island and rock climbing in designated wilderness areas.
The State of Nature: The Political Philosophy of Primitivism and the Culture of Contamination
Authors: Smith Mick
Published: June 2007

The ‘state of nature’ could be understood in two senses; both in terms of its nature's current (sorry) condition and of that unmediated and pre-contractual relation between humanity and the environment posited by political philosophers like Locke and Rousseau and now championed by anarcho-primitivism. Primitivism is easily dismissed as an extreme, naïve and impractical form of radical environmentalism but its emergence signifies contemporary disaffection with the ideology of ‘progress’ so central to modernity and capitalism. This paper offers an ethico-political interpretation of primitivism's critical relation to modernity in terms of the dialectic between amorality (innocence) and immorality (guilt) within what is characterised as modernity's ‘culture of contamination’.
Incorporating Value Trade-offs into Community-Based Environmental Risk Decisions
Authors: Gregory Robin S.
Published: June 2007

Although much attention has been given to the role of community stakeholders in developing environmental risk-management policies, most local and national initiatives are better known for their failings than their successes. One reason for this continuing difficulty, we contend, is a reluctance to address the many difficult value trade-offs that necessarily arise in the course of creating and evaluating alternative risk-management options. In this paper we discuss six reasons why such trade-offs are difficult and, for each, present helpful techniques from the decision sciences along with case study examples of successful applications.
Gaia Infiltrata: The Anthroposphere as a Complex Autoparasitic System
Authors: Henrich Károly
Published: June 2007

This paper compares the heuristic potential of three metaphorical paired concepts used in the relevant literature to characterise global relationships between the anthroposphere and the ecosphere. Methodologically, the guiding question is whether and to what extent metaphorical theses can support an arrival at hypotheses which accurately reflect reality and possess explanatory force. The predator-prey mo del implies that the populations of two species in such a relationship in principle exhibit coupled oscillations, giving prey populations the possibility of periodic regeneration. For some time, however, the most important indicators of human destruction of nature have been showing a relentless upward trend which appears to render the tumour-host metaphor more appropriate. Another fact which favours this analogy is that a tumour develops within its host and from its host's normal cells, in a similar way to the emergence of the anthroposphere from within the biosphere. But the parasite-host analogy also allows the formulation of fruitful hypotheses, since ecological parasitology is equally familiar with varieties of autoaggressive interaction and provides a means of focusing particularly on the adelphoparasitic hierarchy within the anthroposphere.
Aesthetic Appreciation in the Artworld and in the Natural World
Authors: Fenner David E.W.
Published: June 2007

In this paper, I explore some parallels and dissimilarities between aesthetic appreciation that takes as its focus art objects and that which focuses on natural objects. I cover three areas. The first deals with general approach, whether a paradigm of engagement is more appropriate to environmental aesthetics than one of detachment and disinterest. The second theme is about preservation and whether the appropriate model is static or dynamic. The final theme is about environmental criticism and the application of aesthetic theory to arguments for preservation.
Talking about the Birds and the Bees: Biodiversity Claims Making at the Local Level
Authors: Morris Carol , Wragg Amanda
Published: June 2007

This paper adopts a social constructionist perspective to examine how the biodiversity ‘claim’ is constructed and contested at local level. A framework is deployed which is based on Hannigan's (1995) ideas that certain factors need to be present for an environmental claim to be legitimised within the international arena (i.e. scientific authority; popularisers; media coverage; symbolic and visual dramatisation; economic incentives and institutional sponsorship). Empirical research into the production and implementation of Oxfordshire's Biodiversity Action Plan and Farm Biodiversity Action Plans in England and Scotland is used as a vehicle to explore the legitimisation of the biodiversity claim at the local scale. The two strands of research highlight the current importance of biodiversity as a focus for environmental planning partnerships (although the extent of public ‘buy-in’ to the claim is unclear) and the way in which biodiversity as a ‘buzzword’ has been adopted by farmers with some reluctance and mainly for financial reasons. There is strong evidence that the scientific basis of the claim is crucial in terms of engendering support, and that the rhetoric employed at the local level is positive rather than a ‘rhetoric of loss’. However, the need for further popularisation of the biodiversity issue is identified. Potential future lines of research enquiry are also outlined.
Is Singer's Ethics Speciesist?
Authors: Fjellstrom Roger
Published: June 2007

To show favouritism toward humans has been considered a prejudice, otherwise known as ‘human chauvinism’, ‘anthropocentrism’ or ‘speciesism’. Peter Singer is one philosopher in particular who holds this view. In this paper I argue that there is a lack of coherence between his ethical ideology and his actual ethical theory. Singer's ethics in crucial respects exhibits favouritism toward humans, which is something he fails to justify non-partially and plausibly. It would thus be an instance of speciesism, in a sense of this term that he probably would accept. This, however, does not mean that his ethics should be rejected or is impossible to defend.
‘Getting Rich is Glorious’: Environmental Values in the People's Republic of China
Authors: Harris Paul G.
Published: June 2007

Pollution and overuse of resources in China have profound implications for the Chinese people and the world. Globalisation may be partly to blame for this situation, but it is hardly the only explanation. China has been overusing its resources for centuries. Traditional values appear to offer environmentally benign guidance for China's economic development, but they are largely impotent in the face of now-pervasive values manifested in Western-style consumption. Government policies go some way toward addressing this problem, but what may be required is a new set of values that brings self-interest and environmental protection into common cause.
Ideology, Bureaucracy and Aesthetics: Landscape Change and Land Reform in Northwest Scotland
Authors: Rohde Rick
Published: June 2007

Scottish devolution and land reform were high on the political agenda with Labour's victory at the general election in 1997. In the Highlands of Scotland, where disputes over the ownership and control of land have a long history, initiatives involving the community ownership of land were gathering pace, one of which was Orbost Estate in Skye. What began as an ‘experiment’ in building a new community with the intention of creating a model for land reform, by 2002 had become a symbol of community opposition and heavy-handed mismanagement by bureaucrats. The conflict between local objectors and the government-funded enterprise company that bought the estate, was fought on ideological, aesthetic and bureaucratic grounds. The discourse of conflict reflected opposing understandings of the social, historical and cultural environment – values that are associated with and ‘naturalised’ in the landscape. Rural development is increasingly subject to rigid planning guidelines based on notions of visual landscape aesthetics and imputed historical-cultural values associated with the area's tourist industry. In the absence of strong local democratic institutions, objectors and developers arrived at an uneasy compromise after several years of dispute, through the agency of the bureaucratic planning apparatus itself. This study illustrates how the multi-faceted concept of landscape mediates cultural, social and political issues, and is continually evolving in response to aesthetic, ideological and institutional agencies.
Themes in Latin American Environmental Ethics: Community, Resistance and Autonomy
Authors: Heyd Thomas
Published: June 2007

This paper seeks to answer the question how environmental ethics is approached in Latin America. I begin by discussing a suitable method for interpreting the question of whether there is a culturally based ethics, given that one may focus either on theory or on actually existing moral practices. Next, I consider some of the possible sources of Latin America's distinctiveness, namely its professional, cultural, and economic-historical particularities, followed by a discussion of the practice and theory of environmental ethics extant in the area. I claim that there is a concrete environmental ethics in Latin America, which can be described by the notions of community, resistance and autonomy, and suggest that this concrete ethic may be assessed both from a culture-internal and from a culture-external point of view. I close by proposing that Latin American environmental ethics may provide illuminating models for appropriate ways of acting in hybrid communities made up of human beings and nature.
The Role of Views of Nature in Dutch Nature Conservation: The Case of the Creation of a Drift Sand Area in the Hoge Veluwe National Park
Authors: Turnhout Esther , Hisschemöller Matthijs , Eijsackers Herman
Published: June 2007

Nature conservation requires choices about what sort of nature should be protected in what areas and includes value judgments on what nature is and/or should be. This paper studies the role of differing views of nature in nature conservation. A case study on the creation of a drift sand area in the Netherlands illustrates how nature conservation disputes can be understood as a conflict in views of nature.
An Institutionalist Approach to Environmental Valuation: The Regional Forest Programme of Southwest Finland as an Example
Authors: Hiedanpää Juha
Published: June 2007

This paper discusses the impacts of different formal and informal institutions upon the Regional Forest Programme of Southwest Finland (1997–2001). The divide between formal and informal institutions is a binary distinction: it is used as a discursive tool for identifying social structures and processes and for articulating their significance in development and environmental planning, valuation and decision-making. In the end part of the paper, there is a brief discussion of how normative and moral issues can be explicitly and more creatively integrated into the practice of environmental policy.
Environmental Risks, Uncertainty and Intergenerational Ethics
Authors: Ekeli Kristian Skagen
Published: June 2007

The way our decisions and actions can affect future generations is surrounded by uncertainty. This is evident in current discussions of environmental risks related to global climate change, biotechnology and the use and storage of nuclear energy. The aim of this paper is to consider more closely how uncertainty affects our moral responsibility to future generations, and to what extent moral agents can be held responsible for activities that inflict risks on future people. It is argued that our moral responsibility to posterity is limited because our ability to foresee how present decisions and activities will affect future people is limited. The reason for this is primarily that we are in a situation of ignorance regarding the pace and direction of future scientific and technological development. This ignorance reduces our responsibility in a temporal dimension because in most areas it is impossible to predict the interests and resource needs of future generations. In one area, however, we have fairly reliable knowledge about future people. It is reasonable to assume that future human beings will have the same basic physiological (physical and biological) needs as we have. On this basis, it is argued that we can be held responsible for activities causing avoidable damage to critical resources that are necessary to provide for future physiological needs. Furthermore, it is suggested that it is prima facie immoral to impose risks upon future generations in cases where the following conditions are fulfilled: (1) the risk poses a threat to the ability of future generations to meet their physiological needs, and (2) the risk assessment is supported by scientifically based harm scenarios.
Ontological Politics: Mapping a Complex Environmental Problem*
Authors: Carolan Michael S.
Published: June 2007

What is an environmental problem? Philosophers of science and sociologists of knowledge have been writing for more than a decade about the de-centred, multiple object. Yet what if this insight were applied to the realm of environmental problems? What would be revealed? These questions are explored in this paper by examining the ontology of environmental problems. Ethnomethodologists, social constructionists, and sociologists of knowledge have all painted a descriptive picture of a thoroughly sociological ontology; an ontology that is fluid, at times de-centred, and (at least potentially) multiple. Yet if ontology is social, and thus multiple, than it is also ultimately political. But multiplicity need not imply fragmentation. It can be coherent, but this requires both coordination and trust. To give further visual and conceptual shape to this argument a heuristic model is constructed. Through this model I ‘map’ a handful of environmental problems – in terms of their ‘complexity’ and ‘epistemological distance’ – and in doing so give focus to the ontologically diverse nature of environmental problems today. A case study involving a particularly contentious environmental dispute is then examined so as to give the argument additional focus and an empirical grounding.
Towards an Adequate Environmental Virtue Ethic
Authors: Sandler Ronald
Published: June 2007

In this article I consider four concerns regarding the possibility of an environmental virtue ethic functioning as an alternative – rather than a supplement – to more conventional approaches to environmental ethics. The concerns are: (1) it is not possible to provide an objective specification of environmental virtue, (2) an environmental virtue ethic will lack the resources to provide critique of obtaining cultural practices and policies, (3) an environmental virtue ethic will not provide sufficient action-guidance, (4) an environmental virtue ethic cannot ground constraints on human activities regarding the natural environment. Each of these concerns makes a claim about the poverty of normative resources at the disposal of environmental virtue ethics. I defend a conception of environmental virtue – as a character virtue with the same normative standing as the conventional personal and interpersonal virtues – that enables an environmental virtue ethic with the wherewithal to address each of the concerns.
The Precautionary Principle and the Concept of Precaution
Authors: Sandin Per
Published: June 2007

The precautionary principle is frequently invoked in environmental law and policy, and the debate around the principle indicates that there is little agreement on what ‘taking precautions’ means. The purpose of the present paper is to provide an improved conceptual foundation for this debate in the form of an explication of the concept of precaution. Distinctions between precaution and two related concepts, prevention and pessimism, are briefly discussed. The concept of precaution is analysed in terms of precautionary actions. It is argued that precautionary actions are implicitly assumed to be precautionary with respect to something, and that this assumption should be made explicit. A definition of a precautionary action involving three necessary and jointly sufficient conditions (intentionality, uncertainty and reasonableness) is proposed, and the implications of this analysis for the debate on the precautionary principle are discussed.
Climate Change, Economic Analysis and Sustainable Development
Authors: Padilla Emilio
Published: June 2007

This paper discusses the limitations, omissions and value judgements of the application of conventional economic analysis in the evaluation of climate change mitigation policies. It is argued that these have biased the result of the assessment models towards the recommendation of less aggressive mitigation strategies. Consequently, this paper questions whether they provide appropriate policy recommendations. The unequal distribution of rights implicitly assumed in conventional economic analyses applied to climate change is questioned and an alternative approach considering a distribution of rights consistent with sustainable development is put forward. Finally, the points that an analysis consistent with sustainable development should take into account are presented.
Private Property Rights, Moral Extensionism and the Wise-Use Movement: A Rawlsian Analysis
Authors: Reitan Eric
Published: June 2007

Efforts to protect endangered species by regulating the use of privately owned lands are routinely resisted by appeal to the private property rights of landowners. Recently, the ‘wise-use’ movement has emerged as a primary representative of these landowners’ claims. In addressing the issues raised by the wise-use movement and others like them, legal scholars and philosophers have typically examined the scope of private property rights and the extent to which these rights should influence public policy decisions when weighed against other moral considerations. Whether from an anthropocentric standpoint or from a perspective of moral extensionism, the key question seems to be the extent to which prima facie property rights are overridden by other moral interests, not whether such rights claims can reasonably be appealed to at all in public discussions of environmental justice. I argue, however, that a morally extensionist perspective not only introduces more potential defeaters of prima facie property rights, but actually strips appeals to private property rights of their moral significance. Hence, I argue on Rawlsian grounds that appealing to private property rights in the way that the wise-use movement does is unreasonable in a pluralistic society. In so doing, I show that a Rawlsian perspective may be more congenial to the interests of moral extensionists than is typically thought.
Environmental Pollution and Professional Responsibility: Ibsen's A Public Enemy as a Seminar on Science Communication and Ethics
Authors: Zwart Hub
Published: June 2007

Dr Stockmann, the principal character in Henrik Ibsen's A Public Enemy, is a classic example of a whistle-blower who, upon detecting and disclosing a serious case of environmental pollution, quickly finds himself transformed from a public benefactor into a political outcast by those in power. If we submit the play to a ‘second reading’, however, it becomes clear that the ethical intricacies of whistle-blowing are interwoven with epistemological issues. Basically, the play is about the complex task of communicating scientific (notably microbiological) data to lay audiences. This becomes even more apparent when we realise that Stockmann was a contemporary of real ‘microbe hunters’ such as Pasteur and Koch. The play's basic message is that epoch-making scientists (such as Pasteur and Koch) not only produced convincing and reliable data from a scientific point of view, but also acquired the skills and insights needed to enter into a dialogue with their cultural and societal environment.