ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, Shibin Antony

Environmental Ethics

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 nonhuman contents. Environmental ethics is a branch of environmental philosophy, which studies the ethical relationship between human beings and the environment. Environmental ethics has given a new dimension to the conservation of natural resources. This covers: the challenge of environmental ethics to the anthropocentrism ,embedded in traditional western ethical thinking, the early development of the discipline in the 1960s and 1970s, the connection of deep ecology, feminist environmental ethics, and social ecology to politics, the attempt to apply traditional ethical theories, including  consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics, to support contemporary environmental concerns; and (5) the focus of environmental literature on wilderness, and possible future developments of the discipline.

Environmental ethics is the part of environmental philosophy which considers extending the traditional boundaries of ethics from solely including humans to including the non-human world. It exerts influence on a large range of disciplines including law, sociology, theology, economics, ecology and geography.

Environmental ethics is concerned with the issue of responsible personal conduct with respect to natural landscapes, resources, species, and non-human organisms. Conduct with respect to persons is, of course, the direct concern of moral philosophy as such. We are cutting down forests for making our homes. We are continuing with an excessive consumption of natural resources. Their excessive use is resulting in their depletion, risking the life of our future generations. Is this ethical? This is the issue that environmental ethics takes up Strictly speaking, "environmental ethics" could be interpreted more broadly to include questions of responsibility toward artificial environments, but such an interpretation is not directly our concern, and we will thus confine our attention to matters of moral significance regarding natural environments.

Most of the human activities lead to environmental pollution. As the population is exceeding the carrying capacity of our planet, natural environments are being used for human inhabitation. Thus human beings are disturbing the balance in the nature. The harm we, as human beings, are causing to the nature, is coming back to us by resulting in a polluted environment. The depletion of natural resources is endangering our future generations and our life as well. But environmental ethics brings about the fact that all the life forms on Earth have a right to live. By destroying the nature, we are depriving these life forms of their right to live. Because of this thrust by environmental ethics, this branch becomes so vital in today's world. Human beings have certain duties towards their fellow beings. On similar lines, we have a set of duties towards our environment. Environmental ethics says that we should base our behaviour on a set of ethical values that guide our approach towards the other living beings in nature.

Environmental ethics is about including the rights of non-human animals in our ethical and moral values. Even if the human race is considered the primary concern of society, animals and plants are in no way less important. They have a right to get their fair share of existence. We, the human beings, along with the other forms of life make up our society.