Blackwell Reference Online

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In the sense intended by Environmental Ethics (EE), “environment” refers specifically to the natural world of which humans are a part. It includes landscapes which function according to evolutionary natural processes. However, since humankind has substantially altered many natural systems, the “environment” also includes areas manipulated for human use, including landscapes where agriculture, agroforestry, and cities are located. EE appears at first to be a species of applied ethics, like business ethics or bioethics, applying ethics to the problems of human interaction with the environment. Unlike those disciplines, however, EE goes beyond the appropriate application of familiar doctrines to a certain species of practical problems: it requires that we extend or transcend our accepted moral doctrines because it forces us to rethink the boundaries of the morally considerable. Whatever our moral persuasion, we must go beyond the “anthropocentric” paradigm (that is, the position that only humans are morally considerable and that they are at the “center” of our moral reasoning), to establish who or what might possess moral standing ( Van DeVeer, 1986 ). EE is broader, more inclusive than other practical ethics; hence it is, in some sense, a new ethic, addressing as it does totally new problems in many areas ( Callicott, 1984 ; Scherer, 1990 ; Westra, 1994a ). EE requires us to confront ... log in or subscribe to read full text