5.1 Approaches in environmental ethics for business and engineering  (Page 3/9)

Introduction

• In this module you will learn about the different approaches to environmental ethics. A table will summarize and classify the different approaches that have dominated the discussion for the last thirty years. These include extensionism, environmental virtue ethics, ecocentrism, biocentrism, and the land ethic.
• Another table will help you to analyze problems in terms of the priority of basic over non-basic interests and human versus non-human interests. This will help break the habits we have of automically favoring human over non-human interests when making environmental decisions.
• Byron Norton provides a Pragmatic approach to the environment that makes use of his considerable experience inside the Environmental Protection Agency. You will use a framework here that summarizes the different principles/values that he uses to define "sustainability."
• Forming the background of environmental decision-making are basic concepts and procedures outlines in the discipline of ecology. This module will provide some basic definitions of ecological concepts like ecosystems. It will also outline some of the intellectual history of environmentalism by sketching different approaches to ecology as set forth by historical figures like Clements, Gleason, and Tansley.
• Finally, an exercise section will help you integrate and practice these frameworks and concepts in the cases discussed above. When you finish this module, you will have a fuller, richer standpoint from which to make environmental decisions in the occupational and professional contexts.

What you need to know …

Environmental concepts

• Ecosystems : "Ecosystems--forests, wetlands, lakes, grasslands, deserts--are areas in which a variety of living organisms interacting in mutually beneficial ways with their living and nonliving environments."(Des Jardins, 166)
• Ecosystems : "Ecosystems are self-organizing systems that unfold on many scales and at many speeds; indeed, ecosystems exist on all scales from microhabitat to eco-region, so it is apparently irrelevant to ecological risks to identify at-risk individuls and count risks to them. (Norton, 9)
• Characteristics of Ecosystems : (1) Boundaries serve to separate and distinguish ecosystems. These boundaries are porous, and ecosystems interact with one another. (2)Niches provide organisms within ecosystems with roles and associated activities. These niches organize organisms and their activities. Then the niches, themselves, are coordinated and interact within the overall ecosystem. (3) Succession characterizes the tendency of ecosystems toward internal and external dynamic integrity. Internally, the activities of organisms within a niche are coordinated with one another, and theses niches, themselves, interact according to stable patterns. In the past ecosystems evolved by passing through a succession of intermediate states toward a climactic stage characterized by internal and external equilibrium. This climax phase represents the ecosystem in its most mature phase.
• Evolution : Charles Darwin "discovered" the theory of evolution and set forth its basic elements in his monumental work, "The Origin of Species." (1) The main thesis of evolution is that species, themselves, change, evolving in response to changes in the surrounding environment. (2) The main principle guiding the evolution of species is natural selection. Randomly produced variations embodied in the individuals that populate a species are, for the most part, not that important to survival. But occasionally a variation gives an individual a survival advantage that is perpetuated through this individual's increased ability to pass on these characteristics through reproduction. In this way, the surrounding environment filters out most random variations in individuals, allowing only those that provide a competitive advantage to be passed on. Over time, this leads to changes in the species itself. (3) Darwinism is important to environmental ethics because it provides a broader framework in which to understand the impact of human activities on the surrounding natural environment. Darwinism conveys both how dynamic the natural environment is and also how susceptible it is to the impact of human activities.