Environmental Politics and Philosophy

Biodiversity has become one of the most important conservation values that drive our ecological management and directly inform our environmental policy. This paper highlights the dangers of strategically appropriating concepts from ecological sciences and also of uncritically inserting them into conservation debates as unqualified normative landmarks. Here, I marshal evidence from a cutting-edge research
program in microbial ecology, which shows that if species richness is our major normative target, then we are faced with extraordinary ethical implications. This example challenges our well-received beliefs about biodiversity and it invites us to critically rethink the nature of this concept so that a more robust understanding of biodiversity and of its role in conservation policy could emerge.

— In 2008, Ecuador became the world's first country to include rights of Nature (RoN) in its constitution. The constitution presents RoN as a tool for building a new form of sustainable development based on the Andean Indigenous concept sumak kawsay (buen vivir in Spanish), which is rooted in the idea of living in harmony with Nature. While much is written on the ethical arguments regarding RoN (and buen vivir), few studies analyze how RoN might be implemented. We fill this gap by explaining why some efforts to apply Ecuador's RoN laws succeeded while others failed. We compare 13 RoN lawsuits using an original framework for analyzing the pathways and strategies RoN advocates (and their opponents) use to build (and counter) momentum behind judicial processes meant to buttress the enforcement of contested RoN norms. The case descriptions and analysis draw on primary documents and in-depth interviews conducted during 2014–15. Through process tracing, we identified key structural conditions and strategic decisions shaping the outcomes in each case. Our findings as of 2016 reveal unexpected pathways of influence involving a symbiotic process among civil society , state agencies, and the courts. Surprisingly, civil society pressure was the least successful pathway, as activists lost high-profile lawsuits. Nevertheless, they facilitated judicial momentum by working on less-politicized local cases and training lower-level judges. Instrumental use of RoN laws by the state produced unintended consequences, including establishing precedent and educating judges. Knowledgable judges are unilaterally applying RoN in their sentencing, even when neither claimants nor defendants allege RoN violations. Ecuador's cases demonstrate how ''weak " RoN laws can strengthen, providing important insight into the global contestation over sustainable development and the strategies and legal tools being used to advance a post-neoliberal development agenda rooted in harmony with nature.

What is “critical” about critical theory? I claim that, to be “critical enough”, critical theory’s future depends on being able to handle today’s planetary climate crisis, which presupposes a philosophy of nature. Here, I argue that Axel Honneth’s vision of critical theory represents a nature denial and is thus unable to criticize humans’ instrumentalization as well as capitalism’s exploitation of nature. However, I recover what I take to be a missed opportunity of what I term as the early Honneth’s original ecological insight which I reconstruct precisely as a philosophy of nature. Consequently, I identify what I describe as an ecological sensibility in Honneth. This refers to a bodily capability through which humans sensuously can resonate, communicate, and interact – and through that morally engage – with nature in its entire complexity. Furthermore, by virtue of this ecological sensibility, humans can recognize nature’s inherent moral value as a sensuously affected party. Then, the early Honneth’s original insight is recovered as a critical political ecology, which is needed facing today’s climate crisis.

This is a final draft of the article published in Environmental Ethics 11 (Fall 1989): 243-258. This assessment of  the Promethean dimension of Marx's thought is accurate, but though it mentions Marx's more dialectical side and its potential implications, this aspect is seriously neglected in the article . A more balanced assessment is presented in "Marx's Natures," a draft version of which can be found on this site. This article should be read in connection with the latter one.

In a discussion of the "rules of Gandhian nonviolence" Arne Naess proposes a number of hypotheses and norms that are highly relevant to recent debates in ecophilosophy. For example, he suggests that the "character of the means used in a group struggle determines the character of the results," and that one should "choose that personal action or attitude which most probably reduces the tendency towards violence of all parties in a struggle." One should not, he says, "act as a mere functionary, a representative of an institution or an underling, but always as an autonomous, fully responsible person." Mistrust, he suggests, "stems from misjudgement, especially of the disposition of [one's] opponent to answer trust with trust, mistrust with mistrust." One should "fight antagonisms, not antagonists" and "formulate the essential interests which [one] and [one's] opponent share and try to cooperate upon this basis." Furthermore, one should not "humiliate or provoke [an] opponent" or "judge [an] opponent harder than [one]self."

The philosophical tradition of liberal political thought has come to see tolerance as a crucial element of a liberal political order. However, while much has been made of the value of toleration, little work has been done on individual-level motivations for tolerant behavior. In this article, we seek to develop an account of the rational motivations for toleration and of where the limits of toleration lie. We first present a very simple model of rational motivations for toleration. Key to this model is an application of David Ricardo's model of trade to thinking about toleration. This model supports the claim that we always have reasons to be as tolerant as possible. We then explore why we do not always see tolerant attitudes in the actual world, and point to some potential preconditions for toleration that the initial model does not capture. Subsequently, we examine a more detailed model that allows us to investigate more carefully the conditions under which tolerant behavior can be rewarded. We conclude by arguing that a consideration of self-interested motivations for toleration is essential to the success of a robust theory of toleration for a diverse society, but that even this approach has its limitations.

For Heidegger, poetics is not merely a genteel pastime, extraneous to the real work of finding shelter, food and clothing as suggested by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Poetry has a more ‘essential’ role in human endeavour, bringing understanding of ‘Being’ from concealment and introducing it in original and originating ways into language. Language is, for Heidegger, the ‘house’ of Being. Heidegger regards poetics as a crucial means of rediscovering the appropriate relationship between ourselves and Being. In his early writings he tries to annihilate the ancient separation of the subject from the object which divorces humans as individuals from each other and from the earth. In the 1930s he discusses the ways that humanity becomes merely one object amongst all objects because of the technological enframing of everything as a consumable resource. In the light of reducing all beings to objects, nothing can be the subject of knowledge, and he acknowledges that there is some degree of significance to the age old separation of subjectivity. Poetics avoids the reduction of all knowledge to the objectification of technological enframing. Instead of constantly typifying all interaction, events, and objects as potentially consumable resources, poetics re-engages us with the task of what it is to be human – relating to beings as a whole. This paper explores the significance of poetics both in terms of the traditions of philosophical nominalism and in Heidegger’s schema of onto-theo-logy.

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This work, Chapter 4 from the "Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory" (2016), gives a historical overview of the intersection of liberalism with environmental political thought, distinguishing the "old liberalism" of the Lockean school from the expressive "new liberalism" that begins with John Stuart Mill. Examining the ways in which broadly environmental concerns have been intertwined with liberal political thought from an early stage, I identify the essence of liberalism with the value of individual liberty, argue for the supremacy of "new liberalism" over "old liberalism" in dealing with environmental problems, and conclude with an argument that attempts to defend the protection of nonhuman nature precisely by reference to its importance to the value of human liberty.

This chapter argues that attention to environmental action forces us to revise conventional democratic theory. Democratic theory depends upon suppositions exploded by environmental issues: on a discrete identifiable citizenry making decisions for itself, for example, or on the revisability of policy decisions. Democracy constrains environmental action while environmental challenges constrain democracy itself. The answer, however, is not less democracy, as there is no alternative to democracy if we seek justice in a plural world. Simple democratic assumptions are the best candidates for general adjudication of differences. Rather than turn away from democratic theory, we must return to its majoritarian essence.  Thus the chapter sketches a democratic approach that enables rather than constrains environmental possibilities by refocusing democratic theory on protecting majority interests and reframing environmental issues in terms of protecting majority interest in sustainability from minority interests in extraction.  In environmental political theory only the literature on environmental justice has understood that we must attend to real conflicts of interest among groups of human beings; building on work in environmental justice we can revise democratic theory to reflect people's interests in justice.

Political ecologists have long lamented the destruction of bioregions, ecosystems and communities by a rampant and rapacious capitalism. As daunting as the task may have appeared, the general outlines of the oppositional project have often seemed relatively clear. The nature of a truly ecological alternative to the dominant order has appeared much less clear. The art of creating a balance between flourishing human and natural communities is not something that emerges automatically out of the critique of and opposition to capitalist predation. We know from the history of classic revolutionary struggles that the quest to seize the means of production can often turn into a seizure by the means of production. As Nietzsche warned, when we fight monsters we might keep in mind the possibility of turning into them.

In the spring of 1987, Donald Davis, an environmental sociologist at the University of Tennessee arranged a talk there by Murray Bookchin. At the time, I was working very closely with Bookchin, and I went there to meet with him and Davis, who had been a student and staff member at the Institute for Social Ecology. During the visit, Bookchin showed me the proofs for an article entitled "Thinking Ecologically: A Dialectical Approach," a large part of which was an attack on deep ecology, systems theory, Asian thought, and the radical environmental organization Earth First! I was disturbed by what I read. I found it to be seriously lacking in careful analysis or nuance, and often to be unfair to the objects of attack. I suggested that he rewrite it, making sure that he did not over-generalize or misrepresent any positions. He replied, rather unconvincingly, that it was too late to make any changes, and he did not respond in any way to the content of my suggestions. 1 What I did not know at the time was that he had recently written a much more extreme attack on deep ecology, in which he had parodied, and, indeed, The Trumpeter

I connect nature experience to human liberty in a four part argument. Firstly, I discuss two pre-modern traditions of thought, agrarianism and sylvan liberty, in which nature experience was associated with the stimulation, construction and defense of human liberty, each tradition connecting to different concepts of human freedom and flourishing. Secondly I link these traditions to Bryan Norton’s work on sustainability and preserving options for human developmental growth, arguing that the transformative possibilities of nature experience may help defend the nonhuman world, thus connecting the continued existence and experience of nonhuman nature to a particular conception of human liberty. Thirdly, I then argue for an ontology of nature that avoids man/nature dualisms on one side and pure naturalism or social constructionism on the other, regarding naturalness as present in relative terms on a tripartite spectrum, defined according to the extent that an item or area has not been transformed in accordance with certain historically specific, objectifying and anti-naturalistic types of human instrumental rationality. Finally, I maintain that combining the liberty and ontology arguments shows the worth of some ontological conceptions of nonhuman nature in the Anthropocene, and reaffirms linkage between nature experience and human liberty.

2021. In this paper, the author is countering, through ecosophical cum eco-ethical means, the short-sighted "technical quick-fixes" offered by green-capitalism in subsuming a portion of the global environmental movement by asserting market fundamentalism without heeding the environmental variables. The author emphasizes the eco-ethos of Permaculture and highlights the sustainability ideal of "eco-swaraj", following the Deep Ecologists' Ecotopia and the Gandhian "Gram Swaraj", as well as Rabindranath Thakur's eco-philosophical underpinnings. In doing so, the speaker highlights the role of Urban Agriculture in obliterating the parasitic status of the modern city in the post-industrial era.

Increasingly recognized threats from climate change and the progressive sixth mass extinction require not only searching for new technological solutions, but also changing the perception of the world and the beings living in it. There is an urgent need to include individual practices; practices that are an integral part of integrated policies to protect habitats, the climate, and the homo sapiens itself. Eric S. Nelson, in his latest book Daoism and Environmental Philosophy. Nourishing Life introduces the reader to the environmental approach known to Chinese communities for centuries. In a comprehensive and accurate manner, the author presents the Chinese approach to life and development, the understanding and interpretation of which has changed over the centuries, invariably emphasizing man’s belonging to the world of nature. This review introduces the author’s assumptions presented in the book, combining them with relatively new thoughts and paradigms appearing in the 20th and 21st centuries in Western Europe and the United States.

Contemporary societies in Africa (like the rest of the world) are increasingly facing drastic environmental problems which, in most cases, are a direct consequence of man's anthropocentric attitudes toward nature. Since the dawn of the twentieth Century, multidisciplinary efforts to articulate a universal praxis for the environment have become frantic. In Philosophy, arguments in support of a paradigm shift led to the emergence of nonanthropocentric thoughts like Paul Taylor's theory of Respect for Nature. He rejects anthropocentrism and advocates for equality and moral significance among different life forms irrespective of different interests. Thus his biocentrism is egalitarian, and essentially, an extension of inherent worth from humans to other life forms. He thinks this paradigm shift in the way man views and treats nature can solve the crises. The main objective of this paper was to ascertain the applicability of Taylor's theory. In this direction, a
pragmatic approach was adopted. This methodology was preferred for its tendency of evaluating everything based on practicability. It was found that there were links between Taylor's
thought and Kant's notion of respect for persons; and that biocentric egalitarianism marked a major shift from traditional ethics. Furthermore, the theory was found tenable in areas like strategic planning for attitudinal change, policy design, law, administration, environmental remediation, reparations and environmental justice; which are practical ways of quelling
environmental crises. However, there were some conceptual, exegetical, and existential weaknesses within Biocentric Egalitarianism. The study concluded that Biocentric Egalitarianism is, in several ways, tenable in tackling contemporary environmental problems.

[Keywords: Biocentrism, Egalitarianism, Environmental Ethics,
Paul W. Taylor, Pragmatism, Pollution, Nonanthropocentrism]

Social geography is the study of how landscape, climate, and other features of a place shape the livelihoods, values, and cultural traditions of its inhabitants (and vice versa). Frenchman Elisée Reclus (1830Reclus ( -1905, a progenitor of the discipline, believed strongly in the rights and abilities of people to manage themselves in relation to their local bioregion, free from rule by a remote, centralized government. His approach to anarchy was unique in its emphasis on the environment -Reclus understood that a mindset that encourages one person or people's domination over another must, in the race to profit from natural "resources", also foster domination over nature. Like the social ecologists who have succeeded him, Reclus believed that solutions to ecological crises must involve restoring balance, equality, and a sense of interrelationship between humans and other humans, and between humans and the biosphere.