Environmentalism: Values and
Philosophy
• Views of Society, Environmentalists and
Environmentalism
• Environmental Ideologies & Link to
Environmental Management
Session Objectives
1. Understand the different classifications for
environmentalism
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Technocentrism
Ecocentrism
2. Identify some of the leading environmental
thinkers and activists associated with each of
the above typologies
Views of Society
• Society - the social organisation and associated
institutions that shape human behaviour
• Typically societies have rules of behaviour,
division of roles and punishments, dependent on
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–
–
–
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Gender
Age
Knowledge and skills
Control over means of production
Place of origin
Background
• Citizenship - “social and moral responsibility to
each other”
Societal Rules
Many forms of control vital to societal functioning
• Religion and creation mythologies
• Political Laws - social consensus
• Culture, customs and fashions
Usually controlled at national level by Institutions State, church, market and business, education,
police etc.
For individual / communities culture and social
values more important
Society - Environment Links
• How we perceive and behave towards the
environment is closely linked to societal norms • Religion – Creation story of one God creating the earth and universe
and then humans in his image (Judaism, Christianity &
Islam) => Envt to use and exploit
– Bhuddism & Hinduism - holistic view that sees
humankind as part of, & inseparable from the wider envt
- have animal and plant deities and sacred rivers …
– Indigenous cultures - often have plant and animal deities
and a feeling of ‘belonging’ to the land
Indigenous Philosophies &
Knowledge
• Inter-relationships between different env systems
and appreciation of processes central - “an
appreciation of the whole”
• Now recognised as having great env management
potential - offer insights lost due to the split
between academic disciplines and the search for
‘objective’ scientific facts
Environmentalist/ism
• A specialist in the maintenance of
ecological balance and the conservation of
the environment
– Collins Concise English Dictionary Definition
• The ‘green’ ideas about the relationship
between society and nature
– David Pepper, 1996
Many modern environmentalist
would prefer to believe that …
• The environmental crisis is obvious
• Scientific evidence objectively shows this to
be the case
• Provided enough of us realise this and see
the evidence we must and will recognise the
need to act differently
• Thus avoiding a messy ideological debate
Why ideologies are important
“Ideologies are sets of ideas that form the
basis of a personal or group ‘world view’: a
particular perspective on how the world is,
and ought to be”
Pepper, 1996, p.2.
They tell us about a person’s (individual) or
an organisation’s (collective) values, ethic,
morals, principles, beliefs
& thus decisions and actions
Task
• In groups of 3-4
• Take the environmental issue of biodiversity
• List as many reasons as you can for why
whales should be saved
• Can any of these reasons be classified into
themes or typologies?
Environmentalism has multiple
meanings
– Many ways of perceiving humankinds
relationship to the planet
– Many ways of understanding the problems
– Many competing solutions
“the environmental issue mean such different
things that in aggregate it quite literally
encompasses everything” David Harvey
Theocentric
• God centred argument
• Based on Judeo-Christian and Islamic
Faiths
• Nature and living species are divine
creations
• The human species has a stewardship duty
to protect and respect nature (Genesis 1:26
God grants man dominion ….)
Technocentrism
• Anthropocentric
• Based on scientific reductionism
• Human intervention and development can enhance
and improve nature
• Nature
– Is benign ‘capable of quick recovery from human
interference’
– Objectified
– There to serve human interests
– Only has instrumental value
Cornucopians
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•
•
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Optimistic faith in human ingenuity
Pro-growth (economic)
Faith in science and technology
Suspicious of widening public
participation
• Believe the economy will self-correct
Environmental Managers
• Pro-growth, but interventions
necessary to control & compensation
the worst excesses
• Allowance for wider consultation in
decision-making process
Ecocentrism
• Philosophical roots
– Romanticism: Thoreau, Whitman, Ruskin
– Eastern thinking: Buddhism, Taoism
• Nature
– has intrinsic value in its own right
– is a community not a commodity
– respect the utility and beauty of nature
– we should try to live in harmony with the
natural world
Self-Reliance / Soft Technologies
• Bioregionalism, small-scale local solutions
• Communitarian; linking of work and
leisure
• Importance of participation, recognition of
minority rights
• Appropriate Technology
• Materialism for its own sake is wrong
Deep Ecology
• Bio-ethics
• Ecological laws should underpin
human morality
• Biorights
• Distrust of large-scale technology,
elites, central state authority
• Materialism for its own sake is wrong
Task outside of the today’s session
• Read in greater depth about some of the
individuals that represent the technocentric
and ecocentric environmentalism
• Begin to understand the beliefs and values
that influences the way they frame the
environmental crisis and their preferred
solutions
Key References
Gandy, M. (1996) Crumbling land: the Post-modernity Debate
and the Analysis of Environmental Problems, Progress in
Human Geography, 20(1) pp.23-40.
Guha, R. (2000) Environmentalism: A Global History,
Longman, New York.
Huxham, D. (2000) ‘Why conserve wild species?’ in Huxham,
M. and Sumner, D. Science and Environmental Decisionmaking, Prentice-hall, Harlow.
O’Riordan, T. (1983) An Annotated Reader in Environmental
Planning and Management, Pergamon Press, Oxford.
Palmer, J. (2001) Fifty Key Thinkers on the Environment,
Routledge, London.
Pepper, D. (1996) Modern Environmentalism, Routledge,
London.