Environmental Ethics: Human Interests, Intrinsic Value, and Radical Questioning

1. Human interests, intrinsic value and radical questioning: Three necessary aspects of environmental ethics as international action? Johan Hattingh

2. Overview • Environmental ethics • Practical enterprise • Theoretical enterprise • Three snapshots of environmental ethics as international action • Interpretation of these snapshots • Human interests • Intrinsic value • Radical questioning

3. Snapshot 1: Kyoto Protocol • 16 February 2005 – activated • Binds industrialized countries • Cut 6 key greenhouse gasses • 5% below 1990 levels • Commitment period: 2008 – 2012 • 128 signatories • Mechanisms to assist other countries

4. Main aim of Kyoto Protocol • To stem global warming by reducing greenhouse-gas emissions in the most cost effective manner, while addressing issues of environmental integrity and equity.

5. Main instruments • Emissions trading • Free market in Carbon Reduction Credits. • Credits earned by meeting reduction targets. • Surplus credits can be sold • The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) • Joint Implementation (JI)

6. Snapshot 2: World Summit on Sustainable Development • Johannesburg, 2002 [WSSD] • Assessment of implementation of Agenda 21 • Ten years after Rio de Janeiro (1992) the diagnosis is still pessimistic:

7. Global state of the environment • The global environment continues to suffer. Loss of biodiversity continues, fish stocks continue to be depleted, desertification claims more and more fertile land, the adverse effects of climate change are already evident, natural disasters are more frequent and more devastating and developing countries more vulnerable, and air, water and marine pollution continue to rob millions of a decent life

8. Other concerns of Johannesburg • Growing gap between rich and poor • Distribution and equity issues • Justice and equity = environmental issues • Causes: • Unsustainable production and consumption • A new commitment to sustainable development was adopted

9. Sustainable development • … is development that meets the needs of present generations without compromizing future generations to meet their needs • Two important provisos: • The needs of the poor are central • Only constraint on sustainable development is the state of technology and social organization in society

10. Snapshot 3: Millenium Development Goals • Protecting our common environment • Peace, security and disarmament • Development and poverty eradication • Human rights, democracy and good governance • Protecting the vulnerable • Meeting special needs of Africa • Strengthening the United Nations

11. Key values driving MDGs • Respect for nature • Freedom • Equality • Solidarity • Tolerance • Shared responsibility

12. New ethics of conservation and stewardship • Implementing Kyoto Protocol • Protection of all types of forests • Implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity, combat desertification • Sustainable water use • Reduce number and effects of natural and manmade disasters • Free access to info on human genome

13. Normative basis of practical environmental ethics • Ethics entails distinctions: • Right vs wrong • Good vs bad • What deserves respect vs what not

14. Right vs wrong • Duties of nations, corporations, professionals and individuals • To fight climate change • To reduce greenhouse emissions • To pursue sustainable development • To eradicate poverty • To ensure justice and equity • To improve the lives of people

15. Good vs bad • What we embrace as the good life • Dignity and justice for all • Peace and prosperity • Freedom from terror, diseases and manmade disasters • Prerequisites for such a life • Access to clean water • Access to information • Technology transfer between nations

16. What deserves respect & what not • What we can identify with as human beings; accept as source of our being • Caring for life • Our own lives • The lives of other humans • The lives of non-humans • The vulnerable and the poor • The victims of our own unwise decisions • Thinking and cautionary approach

17. Quality of our justifications • Kyoto Protocol • Preventing harm to people: living now and in the future • Johannesburg Summit on Sust. Dev. • Justice, human dignity, social development, caring about future generations • Millennium Development Goals • Cooperation to achieve freedom, equality, solidarity; to improve the lives of people

18. Three positions in environmental ethics • Human centered • Anthropocentric • Nature centered • Ecocentric • Radical positions • Root causes of environmental problems • Transformative agenda

19. The anthropocentric position • Conserve nature for the sake of humans • Enlightened self-interest • Nature is valued instrumentally • Nature is a means to human ends • Nature is nothing but a resource • Consumptive use of nature? • Non-consumptive use of nature?

20. 3 snapshots: anthropocentric • Kyoto Protocol, WSSD, MDGs • Overcome harm to humans • Promote human interests • Enlightened self-interest • We care for nature for the sake of humankind • Best place to start to engage governments, multinational corporations • What is good for nature is good for humans

21. Is this good enough? • Ecocentrists argue • Instrumental values are not strong enough to protect nature from humans • In trade-offs humans will always win • We need a stronger position • That change our attitude towards nature • That can stop us when we want to go too far

22. Intrinsic value • Whole or parts of nature has intrinsic value • Value in and of itself • Regardless of value to humans • Entities with intrinsic value should be • Treated with respect • Cannot do with them what we want • Moral duty to protect that intrinsic value;if not to promote it

23. 3 snapshots and intrinsic value • Kyoto Protocol, WSSD and MDGs • Move us away from a cynical and ruthless exploitation of nature • Take a few necessary first steps • But only ensure a weak protection of nature, and weak sustainability • We have to move on and find stronger measures to protect and promote intrinsic value

24. Radical environmental ethics • Try to understand root causes of our environmental problems and overcome them by transforming society • Root causes are found in • Structure of world’s economy • Distribution of political and economic power between and within countries

25. Radical questioning • Focus on social and cognitive structures informing organization of the world • Political economy of decision-making • Dominant conceptions of self and self-realization • Narrow egotistical self of consumer society • A logic of dualistic, hierarchical thinking that justify exploitation of nature, women and darker races

26. The value of radical questioning • Is total transformation not going too far? • Is the momentum of global consumerism not too strong? • But: • Are we happy with the images of self and self-realization that we see all around us? • Do we recognize ourselves in the mirrors held up to us by our cities, our shopping malls, our TV ads, our glossy magazines and fashion?

27. Radical questioning starts • When we start to feel uncomfortable with living in the world we see around us • When we do not recognize ourselves in it; seeing no future for our children in it • Wondering whether what we do is meaningful or not • When we realize that we are faced today with a crisis of character and culture

28. So, why this deep interpretation • To underline that our environmental predicament is more than: • A crisis of survival • A crisis of justice and human dignity • To underline that our environmental problems challenge us to ask serious questions about who we are and how we realize ourselves in this world on this earth

29. To underline that the Kyoto Protocol, Sustainable development and the MDGs are but first, initial steps that need to be followed up by stronger measures of protection, and that we have to take a harder look at ourselves and how we produce and consume in order to realize ourselves in this world

30. To underline that if we think that we have done enough by putting in place measures like the Kyoto Protocol, sustainable development and noble development goals, and not also question the root causes of global climate change, unsustainable development, and increasing poverty and human indignity in the world, we seriously fool ourselves

31. Conclusion 1 • To address environmental issues without humans benefiting from it would be futile • Measures like the Kyoto Protocol, sustainable development, MDGs should • Never increase world poverty • Never entrench current patterns of injustice and inequity in the world

32. Conclusion 2 • We need more than instrumental values to protect nature • Acknowledging intrinsic value, the value of entities for their own sake, regardless of their use value to us, is an effort to change our attitude towards nature – by thinking about it differently

33. Conclusion 3 • The state of the world today, of which the environmental crisis is but one symptom, confronts us with • A crisis of identity, of character and culture • Radical questions about who we are, what we define as meaningful, and how we realize ourselves in this world have to be asked

34. A last unconcluding word … • Human interests, intrinsic value and radical questioning are all necessary to look at our environmental crisis • Each make a valid contribution to our understanding of our environmental crisis, what it means, and how to start thinking about overcoming it • We need all three; we cannot ignore any

35. This is what I would like you to take to heart today • Speaking from my heart • And what I believe is at the heart of environmental ethics today, as a theoretical enterprise, as well as in the format of practical international action