ENVIRONMENTAL
ETHICS
 Def 1: Environmental Ethics is the study of normative issues and principles relating to human
interactions with the natural environment.
Def 2. 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.
It is an important area of applied ethics, crucial for the guidance of agents such as individuals,
corporations and governments in shaping the principles affecting their lifestyles, their actions
and their policies across the entire range of environmental issues.
 Do human beings have moral obligations with regard to the environment?
 Asked differently, should human beings value the environment, if so in what sense?
In environmental ethics a distinction is made between instrumental value and intrinsic value (in the
sense of “non-instrumental value”).
Things have intrinsic value or worth (sometimes referred to as inherent value) when they have value
or worth in themselves.
 We value things that have intrinsic value for their own sake and not for what we can get or do with
them.
 Something has instrumental value if it is valued because of its usefulness for some other purpose and
for someone.
 Some environmentalists believe that trees, for example, have only instrumental and not intrinsic
value.
 They think that trees are valuable because of their usefulness to us.
 Other environmentalists believe that plants and ecosystems have value in themselves
ANTHROPOCENTRISM
The terms anthropocentrism and anthropocentric refer to a human-centered perspective.
 A perspective is anthropocentric if it holds that humans alone have intrinsic worth or value.
 According to the anthropocentric perspective, things are good to the extent that they promote
the interests of human beings.
 Thus, for example, some people believe that animals are valuable only insofar as they promote
the interests of humans or are useful to us in one or more of a variety of ways.
For traditional and religious views, some people believe that they were given dominion over
nature’s plants and animals to serve their needs.
According to an anthropocentric perspective, the environment or nature has no value in itself.
Instead, its value is measured by how it affects human beings.
Those people who hold an anthropocentric view also may believe that it is bad to cause animals
needless pain, but if this is necessary to ensure some important human good, then it is justified.
Humans ’greediness has lead over the decades to massive recognizable environmental crises the
world is facing today.
ECOCENTRISM
The ecocentric perspective holds that it is not just humans who have intrinsic worth or value, but
also such things as plants, animals, and ecosystems.
Ecocentrists hold that we ought rather to regard nature with admiration and respect because nature
and natural beings have intrinsic value.
Ecocentrists claim that the value or worth of a rock or a tree or water is not judged simply by the
ways that humans can use it.
 Instead, it's valuable because it plays a role in the greater environment.
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
Biocentricism
According to biocentrism, only living things have equal inherent value.
 Living things compose ecosystems, mutually supportive systems of life, in which each thing plays an
important role.
 Therefore, a tree and a human would be of equal inherent value, but both would be more morally
valuable than a rock or water.
 Living things matter more, and our moral obligations extend to protecting the living parts of nature
over the non-living parts.
Biocentric theories do not consider chemical and geological elements of the environment to be as
important as living beings in the way that ecocentric theories do.
 Biocentrists believe that all living things are equally important. For example, a tree's life would be
considered just as important as a human's life.
This is in contrast to an anthropocentric view in which the lives of humans are given the greatest
value