This class is about issues in natural resource conservation.
Issue: A point or matter of discussion, debate, or dispute; A matter of public concern. The public, or at least portions of the public, are involved in the debate.
Issues in natural resource conservation usually cross disciplinary boundaries—involving sciences such as ecology, biology, chemistry, and engineering and social sciences such as politics, economics, and philosophy.Many, if not most, issues in natural resource conservation are wicked problems. Hal Salwasser’s article discussed wicked problems in natural resource management. He defined a wicked problem as the situation that occurs when there is disagreement both over the problem and over potential solutions to the problem.
People hold different values. We don’t believe the same things. And, in a democracy, we can voice all of our different values and try to influence government policies and societal norms. The result is, in Hal Salwasser’s words, a “value war.”
What problems are being debated in natural resource conservation?
Issues in natural resource conservation raise serious ethical questions.
Ethics: Rational arguments for determining appropriate or right human action in various situations.
How do humans make decisions about how to live and interact with each other and the natural world? What should we do? How should we live?
Ethics provide a systematic account of Moral Relations, namely to what or to whom do we have responsibilities, along with an explanation for how these responsibilities are justified. The goal of ethics is to articulate and defend rules and principles that can guide our behavior.
We all have beliefs, attitudes, and values about our everyday experiences. We all have beliefs about what is right and wrong. WHY we believe what we do?
There are many ethical systems in the world, and all are strongly influenced by human values, cultures, and religions. There are no absolutely “right” or absolutely “wrong” ethical systems. However, there are more or less convincing arguments for supporting certain courses of actions and behavior.
Ethics are strongly influenced by human values. What are human values?
There are two basic types of human values:
Because it’s so hard to talk about, compare, or prioritize intrinsic values, they are often left out of decision-making processes, including the management of natural resources. However, they have a strong influence on politics, and managers of natural resources can find themselves in unanticipated conflict when intrinsic human values are discounted or ignored.Many environmental concerns rest on the intrinsic values recognized in nature, values that are frequently ignored by policy makers and land managers because they are so difficult to articulate.
Ethics and human values affect natural resources.
Now I’m going to discuss some ethical systems that are important to natural resource conservation in US.
Your text book divides ethical systems into two opposing camps: frontier ethics and sustainable ethics.
Unfortunately, this presentation of ethics is overly simplified and does little to help us understand why people believe what they do. In fact, it fosters conflict, not collaboration. I would like you to have a deeper understanding of ethics, so I’m going to be describing some of the more influential ethical systems in natural resource conservation.
The dominant ethical systems in the US have originated from “Western ethical traditions.” Western ethical systems are all anthropocentric. Only humans have moral standing, meaning only humans are worthy of ethical consideration. In anthropocentric ethical systems, only humans have moral value and the environment is considered only in so far as it supports human well-being.
Natural law, as an ethical system, has had some influence on modern environmental ethics. Some environmental ethical systems follow and expand on Natural Law by equating “natural” (ie. untouched by humans) with “good”, having value and deserving of moral consideration.
There are arguments against Natural Law. For example, it’s not always clear that a thing or being has a specific purpose. What, for example, is the purpose of human beings? Second, just because a thing is “natural” doesn’t necessarily mean its “good.” For many people, this is just too great a jump in logic. Third, evolutionary theory negates (for some) a belief in a divine plan in nature.
RIGHTS are distinct from simply a desirable state of affairs—they are central and more important to human welfare. Rights are human creations that serve to protect certain human interests. Some human rights agreed upon by our society include equality, liberty, life, and property.
DUTIES are the obligations we have to other people to not infringe on their Rights.
The basic argument supporting deontology is this:
Justice is defined as the fulfilling of duties to other people. In other words, respecting the RIGHTS of other people, no matter the cost. In this ethical system, RIGHTS are more important than social utility and more important than “the greater good”.
Deontology, like other Western ethical traditions is anthropocentric, only humans have rights by virtue of their being the only beings held to be “rational”. There is no ethical obligation to any being that is not free or rational.
There are several criticisms of deontology. First, it offers no account of what is good, valuable, worthy, so long as it doesn’t violate the rights of other people. Another criticism is how do you know when is something a RIGHT versus a WANT? When a segment of society wants something bad enough, they may call it a RIGHT in order to legitimate their claim against the greater good.
The Right to Private Property is arguably the most important RIGHT affecting natural resources in the U.S. The ethical argument for a private property right was articulated by the English philosopher John Locke in the 17th century and goes as follows: Unowned land becomes owned when an individual “mixes” his or her labor with the land. Why?
What do you think of this argument? Is there “good and enough” land for everyone? Our society believes in the right of private property; do you think we are justified in this belief? How convincing is this argument?
Remember, ethics are just rational arguments for human behavior; they are not “truths.”
There are a number of criticisms of the argument supporting private property. Why, for example, would the mixing of labor with unowned land confer ownership and not vice versa. Why wouldn’t the person simply own the improvements made by their labor? What if someone wants to preserve the natural state of land; does that mean they can’t own it? What if a person’s labor worsens the quality of the land? For example, should the dumping toxic waste on natural land convey ownership? What about people who live communally or nomadically? Can they own land? Under Locke's definition of private property, indigenous people are denied rights to land.
The contemporary view of private property is that it is not a single right but a bundle of rights. This bundle idea is thought to be necessary because of the complexity that follows from trying to nail down the implications of property rights. Rights typically recognized in this bundle are the rights to “possess, control, use, benefit from, dispose of, and exclude others” from private property.
By viewing private property as a bundle of rights, property rights are no longer all or nothing. Some laws restrict some of the rights in the bundle without affecting others. Since private property is a RIGHT, it is only justified so long as this ownership does not violate the RIGHTS of other people. Remember, it is unjust to deny others their rights. So, the rights of other people restrict private property rights. The government does institute land use regulation in the name of protecting the rights (property and other rights) of other people.
Utilitarianism rests on two elements:
Therefore, the ethical status of an action or decision is judged by its consequences, namely whether or not it produces the “greatest good” for the greatest number.
Gifford Pinchot, the first director of the USFS, was a progressive and influential advocate of utilitarianism. He believed that natural resources should benefit all citizens, not just the wealthy who owned large tracts of land. He felt the role of the government was to prevent the waste of resources by limiting monopolistic control, providing economic opportunities for many, and keeping prices low.
The central idea of the Forester, in handling the forest, is to promote and perpetuate its greatest use to man. His purpose is to make it serve the greatest good of the greatest number for the longest time…
This is still the ethic of the Forest Service. For example, the Multiple-Use Sustained Yield Act (’60) requires the Forest Service to balance competing interests and try to make the most people happy.
Utilitarianism is an ethical justification for limiting RIGHTS.
There are several examples of laws and policies that have emerged from the utilitarian ethic. For example, The Clean Air Act (‘70) and The Clean Water Act (’72, ’77) shifted the burden from those threatened with harm from pollution to those who would cause it through an exercise of their “property rights”. In this case, the “greatest good for the greatest number”, the justification behind the limitation of property rights, is the human health of the public.
There is constant push and pull between utilitarian ethics and the ethics of deontology in US politics and environmental law. In the previous example, pollution control laws (based on utilitarian ethic) are in conflict with the deontological ethic of property rights, namely the Takings Clause of the 5th Amendment of the Constitution. “…, nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.”
Economic theories have been strongly influenced by utilitarian ethics. In particular, free market economic approaches to decision-making are based squarely on utilitarian ethics where the assumption is that the best way to determine what people desire (the greatest good) is to see what they spend money on. However, market economics have also been influenced by deontological ethic of property rights. In fact, market economic theory would have us extend private property rights much further than originally conceptualized to include water, air, and much more.
Ethical systems are not all or nothing. We often hold conflicting ethics within ourselves, and, at the level of society, in our laws, policies, and cultural norms, ethical systems are all jumbled together.
Of course, like the rest of these ethical systems, there are many criticisms of utilitarianism. First, it requires measurement and comparison in order to determine the right or good course of action. We must know what the “greatest good” for the “greatest number” is. But, what is a “good” is a largely qualitative question, not quantitative. Not all “goods” can be measured directly. Because “good” is difficult to quantify, utilitarians tend to make decisions about unmeasurable “goods“ (such as quiet, clean water, intact ecosystems, health) by substituting measurable categories. For example, how does one choose between different pollution control regulations if good health is the “good” we wish to maximize. Good health is difficult to measure, so we substitute other measures such as life expectancy and health care expenditures. Of course, one of the most easily quantifiable substitutes for GOOD is money. Because of this, debates tend to be framed in purely economic terms. For example, in the interest in maximizing “good health” policy makers will compare the costs of health care with the costs of closing a source of pollution.Second, because determination of right courses of action require measurement and comparison, decisions are largely left to experts. This aspect of utilitarianism alone has resulted in social conflict over natural resource management. Environmental issues involve human beliefs and values, not simply desires. Economics cannot measure these, and it can be a mistake to put a price-tag on them. When people say they want to preserve a natural environment for its aesthetic or symbolic value, they are not expressing a want or desire, they are stating a conviction about a public good, a conviction that can be accepted or rejected by others based on reasoning, but not based on “willingness to pay.”
Third, utilitarianism bases the ethical value of an action or judgment on its CONSEQUENCES, consequences that cannot always be known in advance. Furthermore, the consequences that matter are usually limited to the immediate spatial and temporal vicinity. Therefore, utilitarianism tends to ignore or discount consequences to future generations or people in other countries.
Environmental ethics are a new development in Western ethical systems, but not in other cultures!
Environmental ethics have emerged in response to contemporary understanding of the limits to natural systems’ capacity to produce clean air, clean water, food, topsoil, and other resources, to assimilate wastes, and to rebound from disturbances. These are understandings that have emerged from the study of ecology. The study of ecology has taught us that the relationships between organisms and their environment are extremely complex and interconnected and that humans are also part of ecological systems, not separate from them. This understanding had spurred a new examination of ethics and a new consideration of where human responsibilities and obligations might lie. Limits to natural production lead to the argument that humans must proceed with more humility and less arrogance for both our own sake and for the sake of future generations and other living beings.
In addition, the way the environment has been and continues to be treated offends many people’s spiritual, aesthetic, and cultural values. This reaction to the use of natural resources has also led to an examination and reformulation of ethical positions. Many people believe we are causing direct moral harm to natural beings and objects.
Typically, environmental ethics are NONanthropocentric, meaning they are ethical systems which grant non-humans (animals, plants, species) moral standing . For example, the Endangered Species Act rests on a nonanthropocentric ethic.
Some environmental ethics are also Holistic--meaning they grant moral standing to wholes or collections of relationships, rather than to individuals. Examples of wholes that are considered to have moral standing include species and ecosystems.
Environmental ethics come from the perspective that Western philosophical and religious traditions are both unsympathetic to the idea of direct ethical responsibility to the natural world and provide a rationale for the exploitation and dominance of natural beings and systems and are, therefore, partially responsible for our current environmental problems. For example, the directive in Genesis to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominance over…every living thing that moves upon the earth” establishes a moral hierarchy in which humans are higher than and separate from the rest of nature.
Environmental ethical systems are widely varied. There is no single encompassing environmental ethic, though your text would have you believe otherwise.
Some environmental ethics simply extend traditional ethical theories.
Natural Law —The ethic of preservationism is based on Natural Law. The argument is that everything in nature--animals, plants, perhaps even ecosystems--has teleos, a purpose, and is, therefore, good and deserving of “moral standing”.
Deontology —The creation of new RIGHTS and the granting of RIGHTS to future generations and to animals are extensions of deontology.
The day may come when the rest of animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognized that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that could trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but Can they suffer?—Jeremy Benthem
The history of man’s moral development has been a continual extension in the objects of his social institutions and sympathies.” Constitutional rights in this country were once only granted to white men who owned property. Gradually, these rights were extended to landless men, to women, and to people of different races and cultures. Perhaps it’s time to extend rights to future generations and other living beings.--Charles Darwin
Utilitarianism —Utilitarianism has also been used to address environmental considerations. The argument here is that an action is right and good if it provides the greatest number of humans, including future generations of humans, with the greatest good.
Many environmental ethical systems go beyond traditional Western ethical systems to include intrinsic values. Intrinsic values are more encompassing than moral “rights” or measurable “goods.” Intrinsic values include aesthetic, spiritual, and cultural values. In some environmental ethical systems, decisions that protect or enhance the intrinsic values associated with nature are deemed GOOD. Many environmental ethical systems are not and cannot be justified by self-interest because they are based on intrinsic rather than instrumental values.
Most environmental ethical positions reject utilitarianism for having too narrow a worldview, that what people desire and are willing to pay for should not be the sole consideration in the creation of natural resource policy. People that hold this ethic believe that natural resource policy should be resolved on qualitative grounds, not quantitative. Furthermore, they believe that not all desires and preferences are equal. Some need special consideration. For example, basic needs should have higher priority than luxury consumption.
As I stated earlier, most environmental ethical systems recognize that there are limits to natural system’s capacity to produce resources. This is fairly new recognition and one that requires considerable ethical consideration.
Holistic ethics: ethics that recognize the value of whole ecosystems.
To conclude, what appears to us as “truths” are based on our cultural and ethical world view. Other cultures have different (not worse or better) ethical and value systems. For example, the Indigenous world view includes non-human beings and natural object within one’s own family and therefore deserving of moral consideration. This view leads to very different conclusions about what is right and wrong action than Western ethics.
Moral Plurality refers to the diversity of ethical viewpoints expressed in our society, none of which are exclusively right or wrong, all of which are more than mere opinion.
Do you know what your ethics are?
Before rejecting another’s ethical position as being irrational, self-serving, greedy, overly romantic, sentimental, or even crazy, think through your own ethics with the recognition that they are composed of rational arguments and beliefs, not Truths. Your beliefs, values, and ethics have been shaped by your culture and your experiences. We’re all different. We think differently, react differently, make decisions differently.
As you work through natural resource issues this term, try to listen to others. Try to understand why the participants in these debates believe as they do. Try to find the commonalities in values and an understanding of the differences in ethical positions. You may find that an understanding of ethics can offer new ways of thinking and working through complex resource problems.