Environmental Ethics and Policy-Making

by Stenmark,Mikael

• ISBN13: 9780754605638
• ISBN10: 0754605639
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2018-03-05
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Environmental issues raise crucial questions. What should we value? What is our place in nature? What kind of life should we live? How should we interact with other living things? Environmental management and policy-making is ultimately based on answers to these and similar questions, but do we need a new ethics to be able to overcome the environmental crisis we face? This book addresses these important questions and explores the values that decision-makers often presuppose in their environmental policy-making. Examining the content of the 'ethics of sustainable development' that the UN and the world's governments want us to embrace, this book examines alternatives to this kind of ethics and shows how different environmental ethical theories support different goals of environmental management and generate different policies when it comes to population growth, agriculture, and preservation and management of wilderness areas and endangered species. Mikael Stenmark concludes that policy-makers must take more seriously the value assumptions and conflicts connected to environmental issues, and state explicitly on what values their own proposals and decisions are based. Those studying environmental issues or environmental philosophy will find this accessible text invaluable in presenting a clear understanding of environmental ethics and contemporary applications and policies.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Ethical Dimension of Environmental Problems

The limitations of science

Environmental ethics and views of nature

Anthropocentric Environmental Ethics

Basic values in the ethic of sustainable development

Holistic and intergenerational anthropocentrism

Instrumental value, intrinsic value and inherent worth

Dualistic and holistic anthropocentrism

The anthropocentrism of sustainable development

Our responsibility to future generations

Non-Anthropocentric Environmental Ethics

Biocentric ethics

Ecocentric ethics

Environmental Management

Aims and Policies

Human population policies

Wilderness preservation policies

Wilderness management policies

Policies regarding endangered species

Agricultural policies

The Relevance of Environmental Ethics

Bibliography

Glossary

Index

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