THIS WILL HELP YOU A LOT..

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2.  Ethics or moral philosophy is the branch of
philosophy that involves systematizing,
defending, and recommending concepts of right
and wrong conduct
 Environmental ethics is the discipline in
philosophy that studies the moral relationship of
human beings to, and also the value and moral
status of, the environment and its non-human
contents
 They are moral principles governing the human
attitude towards the environment, and rules of
conduct for environmental care and
preservation.
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3.  Humans both the problem and solution for
the environmental crisis
 Human values can play a great role in solving
environmental issues
 Values can show a path to not exploit the
environment beyond the limits
 Famous Gandhi quote - 'There is enough for
everyone's need but not everyone’s greed’
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4.  Instrumental value -- the value of things
as means to further some other ends
 Intrinsic value - the value of things as ends in
themselves regardless of whether they are also
useful as means to other ends
 A certain wild plant may have instrumental value
because it provides the ingredients for some
medicine or as an aesthetic object for human
observers. But if the plant also has some value in
itself independently of its prospects for
furthering some other ends such as human
health, or the pleasure from aesthetic
experience, then the plant also has intrinsic
value
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 “The earth provides enough to satisfy
everyone’s need , but not every person’s
greed ”
֍Mahatma Gandhi Ji֍

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 Development ethic – based on individualism
or egocentrism
 Man is the “Master of nature”
 Humans have much to learn still from nature and
species
 Works towards a balance of resource use and
availability
 Rapid uncontrolled growth of population and
development is self defeating

8.  When environmental ethics emerged as a new
sub-discipline of philosophy in the early 1970s, it
did so by posing a challenge to traditional
anthropocentrism
 The questioning and rethinking of the
relationship of human beings with the natural
environment over the last thirty years reflected
an already widespread perception in the 1960s
that the late twentieth century faced a human
population explosion as well as a serious
environmental crisis
 Among the work that drew attention to a sense
of crisis was Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1963)
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9.  Anthropocentrism is the idea that the earth and its
resources exists for human consumption. People who
hold this view believe that we ought to protect the
earth for future generations. Anthropocentrism often
focuses on fixing the problem of limited resources
through the use of technology rather than a reduction
in consumption.
 Biocentrism views animals as important beings.
Stereotypically, biocentrics are against harming other
life forms for their own ends - many of them are
vegetarian’s or vegans
 Ecocentrism holds that humans are only one part of
the complicated system that is the earth.
Ecocentrism believes that everything has intrinsic
value and emphasized the interconnectedness of all
life.
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10.  Anthropocentrism is the position that humans
are the most important or critical element in
any given situation; that the human race
must always be its own primary concern
 Western tradition shows bias for humans
when considering environmental ethics
 Many argue that all environmental studies
should include an assessment of the intrinsic
value of non-human beings
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11.  Homocentrism holds that only humans have
intrinsic value
 For homocentrists, the environment only has
value insofar as it is useful to us. The
environment has no value of its own, only that
which is derived from its value to humans
 What brings together ideas of the homocentric
camp is the belief that humans and human
interests have a privileged moral status and
value higher than the environment
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12.  Biocentrism, on the other hand, holds that all
natural things have intrinsic value
 The environment is seen as an end in itself, and
not valued only as a means to human ends
 In the biocentric view, we have a moral duty to
protect the environment and living things even
when they do not affect our welfare or benefit
our interests
 What sets the biocentrist apart from the
homocentrist is the belief that humans are not
inherently superior to other living things, and
that human interests do not take precedence
over the natural world.
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13.  Biocentrism in a political and ecological sense, is
an ethical point of view that extends inherent
value to all living things. Biocentric ethics calls for a
rethinking of the relationship between humans and
nature
 The four main pillars of a biocentric outlook are:
 Humans and all other species are members of Earth’s
community.
 All species are part of a system of interdependence.
 All living organisms pursue their own "good" in their
own ways.
 Human beings are not inherently superior to other
living things
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14.  People who ascribe to an ecocentric philosophy
believe in the importance of an ecosystem as a
whole
 They attribute equal importance to living and
non-living components of ecosystems when
making decisions regarding their treatment of
the environment
 It is a holistic school of thought that sees little
importance in individuals; ecocentrists are
concerned only with how individuals influence
ecosystems as a whole
 The primary difference between ecocentric and
biocentric philosophies lies in their treatment of
the abiotic environment
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15.  The ontological belief denies that there are
any existential divisions between human and
non-human nature
 Ethical claim is for an equality of intrinsic
value across human and non-human nature
 It comprehends the Ecosphere as a Being
that transcends in importance any one single
species, including humans
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16.  Alan Marshall developed a postmodern
version of the Human–Nature
relationship, one that throws into doubt the
very concepts of 'Humanity' and 'Nature
 According to Marshall, three general ethical
approaches have emerged over the last 40
years: Libertarian Extension, the Ecologic
Extension and Conservation Ethics
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17.  Marshall’s Libertarian extension echoes a
civil liberty approach (i.e. a commitment to
extend equal rights to all members of a
community)
 In environmentalism, though, the community
is generally thought to consist of non-humans
as well as humans
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18.  Ecologic extension places emphasis not on
human rights but on the recognition of the
fundamental interdependence of all biological
(and some abiological) entities and their
essential diversity
 Whereas Libertarian Extension can be thought of
as flowing from a political reflection of the
natural world, Ecologic Extension is best thought
of as a scientific reflection of the natural world
 Ecological Extension is roughly the same
classification of Smith’s eco-holism, and it
argues for the intrinsic value inherent in
collective ecological entities like ecosystems or
the global environment as a whole entity.
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19.  Conservation ethics is an extension of use-value
into the non-human biological world
 It focuses only on the worth of the environment
in terms of its utility or usefulness to humans
 It contrasts the intrinsic value ideas of 'deep
ecology', hence is often referred to as 'shallow
ecology', and generally argues for the
preservation of the environment on the basis
that it has extrinsic value – instrumental to the
welfare of human beings
 Conservation is therefore a means to an end and
purely concerned with mankind and inter-
generational considerations
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20.  Greater the crisis more the urgency for EE
 Environmental ethics needs to be informed
by the politics to ameliorate environmental
problems
 The effectiveness of states and governments
in “getting there” will affect the types of
ethics that emerge
 For example, the Kyoto Protocol might be
regarded as the first real global attempt to
deal with the problem of climate change but
caught up in politics
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