Ethics, Environment and Society

Arguing for the preservation of biodiversity or promoting sustainable development evidently builds on insights from biology and maybe economics, but it is at the core a value-based argument. Environmental ethics is about reasoned arguments regarding our handling of, dealing with, and behaviour towards nature and the environment.

Many of you are at university with the intent of pursuing a career in environmental science, policy, planning, management, research, or advocacy. As an applied field, environmental ethics acts as the bridge between practical problems and conceptual critical analysis analyzing the presuppositions of different kinds of arguments being used in environmental discourses.

The environment matters to us as society and individuals, yet it is place where different values clash. This is important as it means that as professionals studying and working with nature and environment you will often be faced with disagreement and dilemmas instead of clear-cut decision between e.g. protection of the natural environment in relation to the realization of human interests – or the interests of some humans at least. The aim of this course is bring the values embedded in discussions of nature to light by offering an introduction to environmental ethics: from theory to practice.

The course introduces concrete analysis ‘tools’ emerging from classical ethical theories and environmental philosophy; focusing on anthropocentrism and the various alternatives; the notions of nature and the natural, risk, equality and justice, value pluralism and the different needs for relating through nature in physical, aesthetical and existential ways. Using environmental ethical issues of contemporary concern as cases (e.g. climate change, animal production, biodiversity conservation, sustainability and human well-being, wildlife management, GM crops and ecological restoration) in a Euro-American as well as developing countries context, you are trained in uncovering, understanding and structuring relevant knowledge and ethical issues for addressing professional challenges related to environments viz a viz society.

The course examines sustainability looking at what it is, and what kind of value issues are embedded in advancing a more sustainable development.