ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

Environmental ethics has been described as having a conscience or moral that reflects one’s commitment and responsibility toward the environment as well as present and future generations of people. In essence it refers to human societies living in harmony with the natural world on which they depend for survival and well being.

With the increasing deterioration of ecological systems on which human beings rely and the aggravation of the environmental crisis, human beings have realized that we cannot rely on economic and judicial methods alone to solve the problems of environmental pollution and ecological imbalances; we must also appeal to humanbeings’ limitless internal ethical resources.

Environmental ethics is a new sub-discipline of philosophy that deals with the ethical problems surrounding environmental protection. It aims to provide ethical justification and moral motivation for the cause of global environmental protection. There are several distinctive features of environmental ethics that deserve our attention.

First, environmental ethics is extended. Traditional ethics mainly concerns intrahuman duties, especially duties among contemporaries. Environmental ethics extends the scope of ethical concerns beyond one’s community and nation to include not only all people everywhere, but also animals and the whole of nature – the biosphere – both now and beyond the imminent future to include future generations. Second, environmental ethics is interdisciplinary. There are many over lapping concerns and areas of consensus among environmental ethics, environmental politics, environmental economics, environmental sciences and environmental literature, for example.

Third, environmental ethics is plural. From the moment it was born, environmental ethics has been an area in which different ideas and perspectives compete with each other. Anthropocentrism, animal liberation/rights theory, biocentrism and ecocentrism all provide unique and, in some sense, reasonable ethical justifications for environmental protection. Their approaches are different, but their goals are by and large the same, and they have reached this consensus: it is everyone’s duty to protect the environment. The basic ideas of environmental ethics also find support from, and are embodied in, various well-established cultural traditions. The pluralism of theories and multicultural perspectives is critical for environmental ethics to retain its vitality.

Fourth, environmental ethics is global. Ecological crisis is a global issue. Environmental pollution does not respect national boundaries. No country can deal with this issue alone. To cope with the global environmental crisis, human beings must reach some value consensus and cooperate with each other at the personal, national, regional, multinational and global levels. Global environmental protection depends on global governance. An environmental ethic is, therefore, typically a global ethic with a global perspective.

The depletion of natural resources is endangering our future generations. The imbalance in nature that we have caused is going to disrupt our life as well. But environmental ethics brings about the fact that all the life forms on Earth have a right to live. By destroying the nature, we are depriving these life forms of their right to live. We are going against the true ethical and moral values by disturbing the balance in nature. We are being unethical in treating the plant and animal life forms, which co-exist in society.

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.’-Aldo Leopold

The four most critical issues that humans currently face are peace, population, development and environment. All are interrelated. Human desires for maximum development drive population increases, escalate exploitation of the environment and fuel the forces of war. Those who exploit persons will typically exploit nature as readily -animals, plants, species, ecosystems and the Earth itself. Eco-feminists have found this to be especially true where both women and nature are together exploited. The interests of environmental ethics done from perspectives of political ecology, sustainable development, bioregionalism, ecojustice, from an ethics of stewardship, or human virtues in caring, or a sense of place -all these tend to be humanistic and to recognize that nature and culture have entwined destinies.

Pacifism : Peaceful international order to foster cooperation among countries in dealing with the global environmental crisis.