Environmental Value System Intro
What is meant by an Environmental Value System?
Read the questionnaire and answer the questions depending on how you feel about them.
Discuss with the person sat next to you and see if you have the same ideas. Do they have different ones? Why do you
think this is?
When thinking about a person’s environmental values what do you think are the inputs that affect their beliefs?
 Education
 Cultural influence
 Religious texts and doctrine
 The media
What would be the outputs (how would their beliefs manifest themselves)?
 Perspectives
 Decisions on how to act regarding environmental issues
 Courses of action
Social systems have flows of information, ideas and people.
Show them the diagram and ask them to draw three columns labelled “Ecocentric”, “Anthropocentric” and
“Technocentric”
Divide the class into three groups. Each groups will take one of the different Environmental Values and using the
diagram and the additional information put together a quick paragraph about what their Value means and how they
would try to solve environmental problems.
Using the information about the different values categorise the following words into one of the environmental
values. Don’t think too long about each one, go with your instinct.
Aesthetic
Animal rights
Authoritarian
Belief in technology
Capitalism
Centralist
Consumerism
Cooperative
Earth-centred
Ecology
Economy
Feminist
Global co-existence
Holistic
Human-centred
Individual
Intervening
Managerial
Manipulative
Nurturing
Participatory
Preservation
Reductionist
Seeking progress
Seeking stability
Utilitarian
Put a tick next to the words that best describe your environmental viewpoint. Put a cross on the diagram where you
think you are located. Keep the diagram and the cross to see if your ideas change throughout the rest of the course.
Students need to complete the following table but before they start give them a detailed explanation of what they
need to be including in each row.
Complete the table:
Environmental Value
System
Environmental
Management Strategies
Ecocentric
Anthropocentric
Technocentric
Environmental
Philosophies
Labels and
characteristics
Politics
http://www.tokresource.org/tok_classes/enviro/syllabus_content/7.1_value_systems/index.htm
Watch the 6 videos and decide where they are on the environmental philosophies continuum.