Andrew Light - Moral and Political Reasoning in Environmental Practice
Andrew Light - Moral and Political Reasoning in Environmental Practice
Andrew Light - Moral and Political Reasoning in Environmental Practice
Environmental Practice
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Moral and Political Reasoning in
Environmental Practice
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again, until everybody agrees with me. Of course, this would seem
wrong for philosophers to do. Philosophers who work in ethics or polit-
ical philosophy should only work through the question of whether some
view, X, is right. Once they have concluded that X is right then perhaps,
depending on their views on the role and importance of an understand-
ing of moral psychology in moral reasoning, they should turn to the
question of how to persuade others that X is right.2 At bottom though,
the commonly held view is that philosophy and rhetoric are separate
projects. According to this model, environmental ethicists should work
toward helping societies find out why X is right in relation to the envi-
ronment. They do so, however, because X is right, not because X is
popular or because they themselves desire to be popular.
But if philosophers only see their activities as a search for truth, they
may fail to have an impact on policies and practices. After all, the ques-
tions asked in everyday life often differ from the questions asked by
philosophers. If you want people to move from position A to position
B, from one state of consciousness to another, from acquiescing to injus-
tice to embracing justice, from ignoring rights to respecting them, you
often have to consider existing questions and not just supply new answers.
Such a view is found in the work of Kate Rawles, a philosopher who
has been heavily involved in environmental activism and work with
activists. Rawles believes that philosophers can help activists by offering
them systematic justification for their policies as a means of both legit-
imizing and guiding action. But she is cautious about a wholesale
endorsement of philosophical methods as they have traditionally been
practiced. The responsibility of an environmental philosopher is to con-
sider her motivations and activities more carefully so as not to obstruct
the creation of long- and short-term environmental change:
Consider the question of the metaphysical status of value in nature. The ques-
tion is of interest in its own right. But from the perspective of improving states
of affairs in the world, the complex and convoluted trail one embarks upon in
order to try to answer it seems, after a certain point, to become quite unrelated
to the starting point. If philosophy is to contribute to change, it needs a constant
pulling back to the question, how does this help?3
of proof to those who would want to harm it. Interference requires suf-
ficient justification for action under such conditions. A trade-off of one
kind of instrumental value for another is then deemed to be insufficient
justification for developing some bit of nature. Describing nature as
having intrinsic value presumably trumps any claim to its instrumental
utility.
But regarding Callicotts suggestion that the case for intrinsic value
needs to be persuasive, we must ask, to whom is it supposed to be
persuasive? Only other philosophers? Presumably Callicotts sights are
set broader than this. The reason they must be is because his compari-
son of different anthropocentric accounts of value (some in favor of
preservation of nature and others in favor of development) assumes that
the anthropocentric case for preservation can never win. But this is surely
not because Callicott thinks that the anthropocentric values we find for
justifying preservation of nature are not true or not better than the
anthropocentric reasons for development. It must be because he thinks
that the anthropocentric reasons for preservation can never compete
in the court of public inquiry against the anthropocentric case for,
as he puts it, lucrative timber extraction, agricultural conversion,
hydroelectric empoundment, mining, and so on.8
But if anthropocentric arguments for the preservation of nature fail in
this larger arena where persuasion matters, we must also test our intu-
itions about whether nonanthropocentric arguments for the intrinsic
value of nature will also be persuasive in this larger arena. And here we
have good reason to be skeptical. The underlying assumption of almost
all nonanthropocentrists is that nonanthropocentrism must be developed
as an alternative worldview because most people are anthropocentrists.
(This is in fact why many environmental philosophers feel there is a
philosophical dimension to environmental problems: the history of
Western philosophy has been successful in developing the faulty world-
views that assert that only humans have the kind of value that generates
moral obligations.) Thus, the nonanthropocentrist advocating the intrin-
sic value of nature cannot rest after making a persuasive case to other
environmental philosophers of the truth of his or her views. The case
must also be persuasive to people who do not count themselves as nonan-
thropocentrists. It must be a case compelling enough to persuade anthro-
pocentrists that they should accept the shift in burden of proof (or
Introduction 7
help make these cases, rather than simply demonstrating their ability to
joust with one another over the intricacies of value theory.11
And yet some philosophers still insist that although they have to be
accurate, consistent, and even strive to find the truth about their areas
of inquiry, they in no way should be responsible for persuading people
to support particular environmental projects. The assumption behind a
view like Callicotts, as Rawles puts it, is not that persuasion really
matters at all but that all normative disputes are in the end reducible
to disputes about facts. . . . As long as someone is not a psychopath, if
she genuinely understands and accepts that from an evolutionary per-
spective animals are kin and from an ecological perspective the land is
a community [which is Callicotts particular worldview], she will agree
that she has strong moral obligations toward land and animals and will
treat them accordingly.12 No persuasion is needed, only recognition of
the thick facts of the matter, as Callicott puts it, which will eventually
count as a sufficient reason to change ones ethical and political views
once one has accepted a worldview inclusive of these facts.
We are faced then with a strange puzzle. On the one hand there is a
common assumption in much philosophical work that there are two
spheres of reasoning: one that is purely academic, in every sense of the
word, and one that is practical. The former is the realm of philosophy
proper, including environmental philosophy; the latter is the realm of
activism or advocacy. Such a distinction hinders the ability to make
philosophy relevant to environmental activism. But on the other hand,
attempts by environmental philosophers such as Callicott to overcome
this divide claim that the former kind of activity, philosophy, ought to
be understood as activism proper. But such a view is similarly unhelp-
ful. If it were true, all philosophical activity would be a form of activism,
because all philosophical activity is aimed at least at discerning why one
view of some subject X is better than another view of some subject X,
and hence ought to be incorporated to some extent in the worldviews of
at least some persons. For after all, at a minimum, any area of philoso-
phy actually engaged in by someone is presumably of some interest at
least to the worldview of the philosopher undertaking the philosophical
investigation at hand.
But such a conclusion is absurd. It trivializes more formal areas of phi-
losophy by reducing their importance to their measured effect on world-
Introduction 9
This activity is reiterative in the sense that the philosopher does not
aim at putting forward the last word. Rather, she regards her theory as
new input to the moral discourse under reevaluation.22
If environmental philosophy is subjected to the debates and opinions
of the general public, and the general public will use and apply what-
ever moral theory is offered in actual cases, then Walzers contextual
reflective equilibrium is a promising philosophy. However, several ques-
tions arise: To what extent can the contextual model revise or change
the way people think about the environment? What if the theory devel-
oped by the philosopher is not relevant to the real cases at hand in a par-
ticular community? What if its arguments are consistent with each other
and the theory is coherent, but there are external tensions between the
theory and the way people think, behave, and justify their behavior in
real-life cases? Would the process of reflective equilibrium be valid? Will
it be accessible to activists? For example, a certain theory of intrinsic
value can be consistent and coherent, hence lacking internal tensions,
but it may not be at all relevant to the questions people ask themselves
when engaged in environmental activism. Indeed, as we have mentioned,
several activists have argued that when they face developers and try to
persuade them, it is useless to apply the theory of intrinsic value. This is
an external tension between the theory and the actual arguments that
people apply.
Our fear is that although contextual reflective equilibrium is a step
forward from the private method, it does not go far enough. For a theory
in environmental philosophy to avoid such external tensions, and to be
relevant to real cases (and the reasoning of activists in those cases), it
should also arise from the cases in question. The best way to achieve this
is to start with the activists and their dilemmas. Hence, an adequate envi-
ronmental philosophy should derive from extended sourcesthat is, not
only the contextual philosopher or anthropological explorer, but
the general public as well. A theory is required that reflects the actual
philosophical needs of activists seeking to convince others that their
standpoints are morally right by appealing to practical issues, and not
necessarily to the philosophical needs of the philosopher, who convinces
others by appealing to consistency and simplicity.
At this point two clarifications are needed. First, we do not mean to
say that activists are, or should be, interested in instrumental reasoning
Introduction 15
tal philosophers on this topic, such as that of Eric Katz and Robert Elliot,
has argued that ecological restoration does not result in a restoration of
nature, and that it may even create a disvalue in nature.24 In their most
famous interventions in this literature, Katz calls restoration the big lie
of the possibility that humans can restore nature, nonanthropocentrically
conceived, and Elliot refers to the practice as faking nature. While
Elliots more recent work on this topic has found a more positive role
for restoration, it is important to note that these criticisms stem directly
from the principal concerns and framework of environmental ethics just
mentioned. If the goal of environmental philosophy is to describe the
non-human-centered value of nature, one assumption of the field is that
nature can have a value independent of human appreciation of that
value. If nature is to be distinguishable from human appreciation of it,
presumably nature cannot be dependent on human creation or mani-
pulation. If nature was dependent on human creation, it would have an
irreconcilable anthropocentric (or anthropogenic) component. So, if
restorations are human creations, they cannot ever count as contain-
ing natural value on nonanthropocentric grounds. Restorations are not
natural in this view, and for Katz at least, they are merely technolo-
gically produced artifacts. To claim that environmental philosophers
should be concerned with ecological restoration is therefore to commit
a kind of category mistake: it is to ask that they talk about something
that is not part of nature.
But one cannot simply ignore the practice of restoration by pro-
nouncing restored areas to be unnatural. Restoration projects make up
a large portion of what counts as on-the-ground environmental activity.
The reason is simple: restoration makes sense because, on the whole, it
results in many advantages over mere preservation of ecosystems that
have been substantially damaged by humans. Through restoration, habi-
tats for endangered species can be created that help stem the tide of
the loss of biodiversity. Still further, an environmental philosophy that
ignores restoration for overstated theoretical reasons risks losing site of
another key facet of this practice: every instance of restoration represents
an opportunity to involve local communities more intimately in the
nature around them because most restorations present opportunities
for public involvement. For example, the cluster of restorations known
collectively as the Chicago Wilderness project, in the forest preserves
18 Andrew Light and Avner de-Shalit
The chapters in this book comprise three groups. Those in part I raise
general questions about our advocated shift in environmental reasoning
from metaethical questions and value theory to a more publicly respon-
sible political theory. The chapters in part II analyze new concepts and
methods of argumentation in environmental discourses, most of which
derive from activists, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and their
practices. The chapters in part III adopt something akin to the meth-
od of reasoning we have outlined above, arguing from cases though
often without explicitly endorsing the methodology of public reflective
equilibrium.
We begin with the question of how to work toward a more adequate
account of environmental practices. In chapter 1, Michael Freedena
prominent political theoristdives into the tumultuous water of envi-
ronmental reasoning by discussing how to relate environmental philos-
ophy to political theory and in turn to the broader political world. He
argues that the first step is to acknowledge that environmental thought
is political thought. Freeden claims that green thought is a particular
way of thinking about politics, not only about the environment. How-
ever, for Freeden, there is no single, correct green theory. Hence he main-
tains that we need to draw a new map of political ideologies which will
allow us to better understand arguments raised within the environmen-
tal movement.
As we have suggested, reasoning about the environment should involve
examining both the intuitions and theories of activists and finding a
reflective equilibrium. However, activists often put forward very pre-
liminary theories, if not simply the beginnings of intuitions. In chapter
2, Mathew Humphrey offers constructive criticism for how we have
thought about the role of intuitions in more traditional environmental
philosophy. Humphrey examines the role and place of intuition among
nonanthropocentrists (specifically, biocentrists), and puts forward a
critique of biocentric philosophys use of intuition, which raises the ques-
tion of how we know what to do when we have very good reasons sup-
porting contradictory environmental public policies.
If environmental philosophy is to marry more practical political
theory, environmental justice is likely to be critical to the success of their
20 Andrew Light and Avner de-Shalit
union. This notion was first introduced by activists, for example, at the
First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit and
only then taken up by philosophers and theorists.29 In chapter 3, David
Schlosberg provides an analysis of three different concepts of justice in
environmental justice theory and in the environmental justice movement.
He refines the theories of environmental justice put forward by activists
to make them a more accurate reflection of our intuitions regarding
equity in environmental matters. This is public reflective equilibrium in
practice.
Schlosbergs chapter leads us to part II, in which new philosophical
tools for environmental reasoning are put forward and analyzed. The
authors in this group of chapters discuss concepts that have been used
by the public, yet less so by environmental philosophers. In chapter 4,
Tim Hayward looks at environmental constitutional rights. Constitu-
tional environmentalism has not been a prominent topic of political
study, but in practice the phenomenon has been developing apace.
Accordingly, after clarifying the scope of potentially feasible environ-
mental rights, Hayward assesses the case for them in the light of four
critical questions: whether environment protection can be considered a
genuinely fundamental right, whether a new right is necessary for achiev-
ing that end, whether such a right is practicable, and whether pursuing
environmental ends by means of rights is democratically legitimate.
While presenting arguments for an affirmative answer on each score, he
also shows that the strength of the case ultimately depends on a number
of contextual issues.
Another new concept, already used by activists and politicians, but
analyzed next by William B. Griffith in chapter 5, is trusteeship. Griffith
makes a case for an increased use of trusteeship for justifying environ-
mental obligations to future generations. He surveys how the concept of
trusteeship is used in contemporary U.S. policy on environmental issues
and how that concept could be given more power by combining it with
notions of sustainability. Once again, this is a refinement of public
philosophy.
In chapter 6, Finn Arler takes us to another public debate. He reviews
the Danish experience with the practice of creating ecological utiliza-
tion spaces. Although focused on one countrys experience, the chapter
addresses broader themes about the limits of claims to value free scien-
Introduction 21
Where will all this end up? We do not wish to devalue the importance
of mainstream environmental philosophy. However, we want to suggest
that there is an urgent need for a parallel track in environmental rea-
soning, especially when it comes to environmental practice. We therefore
hope that this book will be of interest not only to academics and those
doing research in environmental philosophy, but to activists, politicians,
members of organizations, and all those to whom the environment is
dear.
Notes
15. There are some noteworthy exceptions that should not be overlooked,
although often, and not surprisingly, they come from theorists who for one
reason or another also work in strongly interdisciplinary environments (such as
Bryan Norton, a philosopher who holds a position in a School of Public Policy).
An impressive example, even though we do not concur with all of her theoreti-
cal positions, is found in Greta Gaards Ecological Politics: Ecofeminists and
the Greens (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998). Gaards book is a mas-
terful example of how to do environmental political philosophy with a broader
set of texts than most philosophers would ever use, including her own personal
interviews with activists. She does not simply pepper her theoretical narrative
with a few examples. The raw material of her work is the public record of how
activists have shaped their environmental priorities.
16. This notion was suggested in Avner de-Shalit, The Environment: Between
Theory and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 2836.
17. Norman Daniels, Justice and Justification (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), 2.
18. Michael Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1987).
19. Thomas Nagel, The Last Word (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 5.
20. See Bryan Norton and Bruce Hannon, Environmental Values: A Place-
Based Approach, Environmental Ethics 19, no. 2 (1997): 227245.
21. See Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 133.
22. Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad
(South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 5253.
23. This is not to say that no attention whatsoever has been paid to relation-
ships between environmental ethics and environmental policy or activism. Quite
the contrary. But we believe that much more can be done in this direction and
that the work that has been done was more top-down and insufficiently useful
for forming more coherent environmental policies. An example might be Irene
Klavers essay, The Implicit Practice of Environmental Philosophy, also in the
Marietta and Embree volume. Though an admirable and fascinating excursus on
the problems with separating theory and practice, going back to Heraclitus, the
discussion is one that only other philosophers (and only a fairly small subset of
philosophers) could even begin to engage with.
24. Eric Katz, Nature as Subject: Human Obligation and Natural Community
(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997); Robert Elliot, Faking Nature,
Inquiry 25 (1982): 8193, and more recently, Elliots Faking Nature (London:
Routledge, 1997). For exceptions to this view that have garnered much less
attention by the restoration community, see Alastair Gunn, The Restoration of
Species and Natural Environments, Environmental Ethics 13, no. 3 (1991):
291309; Holmes Rolston III, Conserving Natural Value (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1994); Donald Scherer, Evolution, Human Living, and the
Practice of Ecological Restoration, Environmental Ethics 17, no. 3 (1995):
359380; William Throop, The Rationale for Environmental Restoration,
Introduction 27
creativity. We can no longer rest content with Kant, who maintained that
not all activities are called practice, but only those realizations of a par-
ticular purpose which are considered to comply with certain generally
conceived principles of procedure.1 Practices, to the contrary, may
embody and generate theory.
Some of the ecological protesters claimed to act as guardians of those
trees right to life, perhaps evenif this is not overstating the caseto
dignified life. This argument by analogy sounds more familiar to advo-
cates of natural law, as well as to procedural rights theorists. According
to that argument the tree-sitters were, at different levels of articulation,
superimposing a set of fundamental philosophical beliefs drawn from
current debates onto their actions and the objects of their actions. They
were conferring on trees the status of honorary persons, with the enti-
tlements to respect and consideration that personhood entails. And they
were justifying civil disobedience in the name of those fundamental prin-
ciples, because a moral principle concerning ones obligations toward
trees had been violated, and civil disobedience is legitimated whenever a
higher moral principle is disregarded by a particular political authority.
But in the eyes of other observers, the practice in which they were engag-
ing was one of obstruction. These were tiresome faddists who were flout-
ing the law, at great expense to the welfare of the community, who would
therefore have to divert resources from other crucial social objectives in
order to remove the protesters.
The map of civil disobedience, however, whether such disobedience is
justifiable or not, is a poor one with which to explore the contours of
the practice. If it is the only map in town, we may find it difficult to make
our way through. The protesters were hugging trees in communion with
nature, interacting noninstrumentally with nonhuman objects. Conven-
tional political theory had not adequately prepared us for that. In the
realm of civil disobedience, the semantic field has been dominated by
concepts such as promising, voluntarism, and consent.2 But politics is
also an arena where strong emotion is expressed, and where group
dynamics play a central role. These too need to be incorporated into
political theory. One reason they have been excluded from the purview
of many political theorists is that hegemonic models of Anglo-American
philosophy have become dismissive of nonrational accounts of human
conduct. Such accounts, it is asserted, are irrelevant to constructing the
Political Theory and the Environment 33
them to add that well-being is the first virtue of the community. Neither
of these statements is incontestable, but they serve as good starting points
for broadening our view of political theory. I submit that these state-
ments run in parallel, that to assume societies need to choose between
them (on the lines of liberal right versus communitarian good) is a
methodological misconception, and that green political thought is
particularly well placed to utilize both standpoints. To begin with, green
political thought does not have the dual boundary problems constrain-
ing much political theory. It does not focus solely on human beings as
possessing the only attributes that political theory should consider, nor
does it focus solely on political space as constituted by the borders of
the nation-state (it has of course other boundary problems, of which
more later).
The substantive reason for the linking of state and community is the
interest green political theorists have in groups, wholes, collectives,
organisms, as well as biodiversity and sociodiversity, so thatas politi-
cal sociologists knowthe state is merely one aspect of a society, and
as feminists knowthe political cannot be encompassed in the activities
of the state alone. The methodological reason for linking the two is
crucial to the very nature of political theory itself. Let me put this in a
grossly oversimplified way to make the point. Anglo-American moral
philosophy is profoundly inspired by the power of logic, and its typical
manner of arguing is to validate or invalidate particular statements in
terms of their consistency with a foundational position, itself formulated
in order to promote optimally a moral maxim. Its grammar is cascaded
in terms of logical chains: it moves from A to B to C. Thus if we wish
to pursue justice, then we will need veils of ignorance and original posi-
tions, and then we will arrive at certain distributive rules, and so on.
Much of the debate is immanent: Is the path followed coherent, can it
be assailed by alternative cascades, andfar more problematic for those
who insist that there exists clear blue water between philosophy and
ideologydoes it conform to our moral intuitions?
But political theory is also constituted by its units, political concepts;
and political concepts are signified by words; and words are components
of language. And language is a structure of interdependency. Words and
the concepts they carry only make sense in complex clusters; by rejig-
ging the pattern of each cluster, we create different messages and apply
Political Theory and the Environment 35
Proposition No. 1
Proposition No. 2
than one moral intuition within the same ethic, or within the same
semantic field, may be validthat is, that political concepts lend them-
selves to multiple combinations, and that a convincing case can be made
for quite a few of those combinations. Even when such ideologies are
not at their qualitative best (and most ideological families do display
great sophistication in the structure of their conceptual arrangements),
that dimension of political thought provides a rich source material from
which to distill meaning, to understand the consequences of certain con-
ceptual decontestations that, though logically arbitrary, have crucial
cultural significance. If ideologies tend to stress difference, their analysis
emphasizes connections and sensitizes us to conceptual structure.
Political philosophers who are rude about ideologies and denounce
them as bad political theory often fall into a confusion about what we
should be studying as scholars. That happens because there is no notice-
able disjuncture between the methods of the political or moral philoso-
pher as scholar and the nature of the subject matter she or he explores.
The moral philosopher as scholar is indistinguishable from the moral
philosophers to which he or she refers. Both present and past philoso-
phers are engaged in a joint discourse, namely, that of morally philoso-
phizing. They often overlook that, by contrast, there is a considerable
difference between the formulators of ideologies and the students of ide-
ologies. The former focusas do moral philosopherson the politically
desirable, but their justifications rest on widely diverse bases of truth and
validity. Their thought practices do not necessarily occupy the same,
or even a broadly common, discursive space. They may range from the
largely rational to the largely irrational, from the absolutist to the rela-
tivist, from the assertive to the tentative. Students of ideologies, explor-
ing as they do ideologies and political language as a thought practice,
possess a different starting point. They are concerned neither with
advocacy nor with improving the practices and techniques of ideologists.
Their interpretations may vary from the functional to the contextual or
the morphological. The consequence is the production of a different kind
of theorizing about ideologies, which does not participate in the same
thought practices it analyses.7
Why, then, study bad political theory? First, because much of it is
not bad at all if we are prepared to be more tolerant about our criteria.
Most political thought falls far short of the technical, persuasive, and
38 Michael Freeden
Proposition No. 3
Proposition No. 4
One of the lessons of the above for green political theory is the precau-
tionary principle. According to the fourth proposition, excessive risk
aversion in political theory should not crowd out risk taking. Methods
adopted by political philosophers and by analysts of ideology often
employ parallel perspectives on the same subject matter, and the enthu-
siasm of either needs to be contained by the legitimate concerns of the
other. Some interventions in political thought may be irreversible; some
ideas may be irredeemably contaminated and lost to posterity. But some
of these losses may be desirablea view that, incidentally, few envi-
ronmentalists endorse when it comes to biodiversity, yet is the entire
environment equally deserving of blanket preservation just because it is
there? Death and decay are just as natural as life and growth. A young
discipline is an experimental one and therefore rightly risk-prone, but it
should not be risk-averse. Green political theory has developed by pro-
visionally positing certain goods and exploring value systems that may
secure them. This trial-and-error process is attractive from the standpoint
of a political theory that endorses conceptual polysemy and plural paths
of valid or justifiable argumentation and that eschews homogeneous
universalism.
The problems of universalization for green political thought are of
course those of holding time and space constant. Theories of justice,
some of which rely heavily on universalization and immunity to change,
40 Michael Freeden
Proposition No. 5
The final proposition maintains that human beings must abandon their
aspirations to control optimally their cultural as well as physical envi-
ronments. Green political theory contains the perceptive implication
that, all too often, excessive control has serious downsides in its inva-
siveness and its intellectualization of environmental concerns. Three
points follow. First, an agency cum autonomy cum purposive model of
human nature is ultimately grounded in the notion of reflective self-
control and self-criticism. It is echoed in many philosophers attempts to
control language through logic and persuasive argument. However, Paul
Ricoeurs notion of the surplus of meaning enables us to pursue alter-
native routes in exploring political and social thought.10 The deliberate
meanings we intend to convey are always accompanied by unintentional
ones; hence, the analysis of political messages imparted by political
actors cannot be reduced to examining the purposes of those messages
alone. The inevitable absence of complete control over meaning is pre-
cisely what a study of ideologies reveals; it opens up a different role for
the scholar as one who accepts linguistic usage and linguistic communi-
ties as given, though modifiable, rather than threatening or inadequate,
just as by analogy ecologists urge us to accept nature and to adjust it in
a sustainable way. If we want, contra Marx, to change the world through
reinterpreting it, we must, as professional thinkers, descend from the
Olympus of a specialized moral language and work with our subject
matter, human beings, using their ordinary tools of thought and language
as well as ours in our professional capacity. Environmental thinking
offers us a good example here.
Second, through the very fact that green political thought, as a family,
deals with unreflective as well as with reflective entities, it is well placed
to distance itself from the proclivity of some political theorists to dismiss
the unreflective altogether. And green political thought, because it
crosses the boundary between the human and the nonhuman, and locates
human beings in nature, is well placed to appreciate the physical and
42 Michael Freeden
Notes
based on a shared moral culture but not yet fully thought through.8 I
will go on to argue that the conception of intuition at the heart of the
epistemology of this type of environmental philosophy is unclear, and to
the extent that it is clear, it is unhelpful. The largest claim made for intu-
ition in this field is that all fundamental knowledge about the world is
intuitive.9 Fundamental knowledge here is knowledge about the order
of the natural world. Intuition is thus decontested as a cross-cultural
ability to discern important truths about the natural world.
At the opposite end of the epistemological spectrum comes the view
that intuition is a completely unreliable instrument for validating nor-
mative judgments about the relationship between human beings and the
nonhuman natural world: We cannot use our own, or anyone elses
moral intuitions as grounds for accepting or rejecting a theory of envi-
ronmental ethics.10 On this view, intuitions are culturally specific, unrea-
soned feelings about the world that arise from a process of socialization
into ones community from an early age. They possess no status inde-
pendently of that social setting and do no more than reflect a set of exist-
ing attitudes regarding, in this case, the correct relationship between
human beings and their environment. The grounds for rational accept-
ability (something that is itself interpreted in different ways by different
writers) are here seen as the only acceptable criterion for judging an envi-
ronmental ethic as valid.
For a significant number of biocentric environmental theorists, the
answer to the question Why should I believe that the ethical status of
the natural world is sufficient for us to have good reason to preserve it,
as you suggest? revolves around intuition.11 The theory we are offered
accords with the theorists deepest intuitions about the subject at hand,
and even if it is not conclusive, that is supposed to at least give us good
reason to accept their justifications for a biocentric approach. One puta-
tive advantage of such a strategy is that no intellectual opponent is likely
to disabuse you of the idea that you have a particular intuition. I might
try to show you that your intuition will lead to undesirable consequences
if enacted, or that its enactment would conflict with other deeply held
intuitions that you claim to cleave to, but I am unlikely to convince you
that you are in error with respect to holding the intuition itself.
However, such subjective epistemological certitude is bought at the
cost of an obvious set of accompanying problems, one of which is the
48 Mathew Humphrey
The central intuition of deep ecology . . . is the idea that there is no firm onto-
logical divide in the field of existence.15
The central vision of deep ecologists is a matter of intuition in Naess and
Worsters sense, that is, it is a matter of trusting ones inner voice in the adop-
tion of a value stance or a view that cannot itself be proven or disconfirmed.16
Thus, the idea that there is no firm ontological divide in the field of
existence both is itself an intuition and is realized through the intuitive
process of trusting ones inner voice.
To explore this idea further, we can turn to the account of the purpose
of ecosophy offered by Rothenberg in his introduction to Naesss
Ecology, Community and Lifestyle: The intention is to encourage
readers to find ways to develop and articulate basic, common intuitions
of the absolute value of nature which resonate with their own back-
grounds and approaches.17
This statement of intent contains a number of interesting features. First,
Rothenberg says that intuitions about the absolute value of nature are
commonalthough it is not clear whether he means common to us
all or common to many of us. Second, these common intuitions are
to be developed and articulated, suggesting that they are conceived in
their initial form to be underdeveloped and inarticulable. Moreover, the
development and articulation are to happen in ways that resonate with
peoples own (presumably differing) backgrounds and approaches. This
latter intention complements Naesss general foundational pluralism.
What is important to Naess is that one ultimately comes to support some-
thing like the eight-point platform of deep ecology,18 not the path one
takes in getting there. The reference to backgrounds in particular suggests
an acknowledgment not so much that intuitions vary with different cul-
tural backgrounds (which would hardly render them common), but
rather that their cultural source will vary. If this is so, it in turn suggests
a belief that different cultural backgrounds are capable of producing
common basic intuitions about the natural world.
All this still tells us very little about the basis and content of these
intuitions, or what the modes of development and articulation of them
may be. What theory of intuitionif anyunderlies the idea that pre-
rational or preverbal emotion and feeling can give access to valid infor-
mation about the world? Of course the claim may not be that intuition
gives access to unchallengeable truth, but rather that it leads to a
50 Mathew Humphrey
the human mind has been shaped precisely to fit the character of those things
with which it has to make contact.32
notion of intuition has in these works some or all of the following con-
ceptual components, which help grant each conception its distinctive
character:
1. A descriptive term for a belief about the world that is held on a
nonrational and pretheoretical46 basis, as a result of emotional attach-
ment or listening to ones inner voice, for example. This does not
of course entail that there cannot also be rational reasons for holding
such a belief.
2. The cognitive process by which beliefs of type 1 about the world come
to be held.
3. A cognitive faculty capable of setting in motion a cognitive process
of type 2 in order to gain beliefs of type 1.
4. Something like a first guess about an ethical or epistemological
question or problem, based on an already inculcated set of beliefs and/or
values. Such conjectures have yet to be tested against other beliefs, empir-
ical evidence, standards of coherence and consistency, and so on. Such
moral guesswork may alternatively be with regard to prioritizing con-
flicting moral principles rather than deriving them.
The important point about the first three distinctions is that it is pos-
sible to believe we can gain beliefs of type 1 without believing in any
particular process of type 2 or faculty of type 3. One can also accept
that there are beliefs of type 1 and/or a process of type 2 without believ-
ing that there is a particular faculty of type 3. The relevance of this will
become clear as we proceed.
work and feelings about nature, and the question of how Naess wants
to work his intuitionism up into a value system is relevant here. Naess
explicitly says, It is quite correct that outbreaks of feeling do not supply
an adequate guide to a persons system of value. In environmental con-
flicts, for instance, expressions of love of nature are not enough. . . .
What should count, are the norms and value priorities actively expressed
in conflict.47 What distinguishes these values in action from sponta-
neous feeling? According to Naess, Spontaneous positive or negative
reactions often do little more than express what a person likes or dis-
likes. Value standpoints are reflections in relation to such reactions: Do
I like that I like it? 48
So, we have come to the view with Naess that intuitions form the start-
ing point of an environmental axiology, and that these intuitions have
to be reflected on before they can be validated.49 What factors should
guide the reflective process? How can we know whether we should like
that we like it? Do we merely move up one order of intuition, in that
we have a feeling that it is acceptable to feel X? Naess seems to suggest
that what is necessary is something like rational reflection on felt pref-
erences. It is important, he says, to clarify the relationship between
spontaneous feelings, their expression through our vibrant voices, and
statements of value or announcement of norms motivated by strong feel-
ings but having a clear cognitive function.50 This suggests that the feel-
ings themselves do not have a cognitive function, a position that already
seems a little closer to Taylors. We have to clarify the relationship
between
1. Feeling
2. Voice
3. Values/norms
How can we do this? Naess says that we do not want to eliminate feel-
ings from discussion; they must instead be clarified, and made explicit
as the need arises.51 Idiosyncratic elements of ones arguments have to
be sorted out (presumably this means acknowledged as such, and
put to one side) if the debate is concerned with more or less general
norms.52
This is all somewhat sketchy, but Naess seems to be suggesting some-
thing like the following. We bring our intuitions about nature into a
62 Mathew Humphrey
Although the opening sentence suggests again merely the relational view
of rationality, the latter part, in which policymakers are urged to reason
from a maximally wide and deep perspective suggests that Naess wants
us to reason about basic norms.56 How does this relate to his idea that
basic norms are intuitive?
For Naess, just as descriptive and normative statements are bound up
together in gestalts, so emotive and reasoned arguments are also inti-
mately related: The activism of the ecology movement is often inter-
preted as irrational, as a mere emotional reaction to the rationality
of a modern Western society. It is ignored that reality as spontaneously
experienced binds the emotional and the rational into indivisible wholes,
Intuition, Reason, and Environmental Argument 63
by the attacks from within analytical ethical theory from the 1950s by
the likes of Toulmin and Nowell-Smith.59 As a result of their attacks an
appeal to intuition is seen as a failure in normal political discourse.60
The question is why it should, to complete the quote have a far more
positive role to play in ecological thinking.
The argument against moral intuitionism comes down to this. In treat-
ing intuition as a faculty, intuitionists treat moral properties as equiv-
alent to empirical propertiessomething that can be detected by the
faculties that human beings possess. But treating values as empirical
properties leads to absurd beliefs, such as that moral disagreement liter-
ally makes no sense. That is, if you know two people have the same sense
faculties and share the same language, it is just nonsense for them to dis-
agree over the color of a pillar-box (mailbox) observed under standard
conditions. It is not, however, nonsense (whatever else it may be) for
them to disagree about whether meekness is good. This difference
between values and properties is crucial; it is a difference between con-
tingent and necessary agreement.61 It also leads to paradoxical results.
Toulmin uses the following example: We have a man who all can agree
acts well; he is noted for his high moral character, kindness, incorrupt-
ibility, modesty, thoughtfulness, and so on. When asked if he is conscious
of observing any nonnatural property of goodness, he says he isnt.
He says he does what he does because there are good reasons to do it,
and that he isnt interested in any additional nonnatural properties of his
actions. To be consistent, the objectivist (i.e., intuitionist) will have to
say of this: He may know what things are good, he may know what it
is to be good, but he cannot know what goodness is.62 But this man
cannot be thought to be missing the one thing that really matters (knowl-
edge of what goodness is), this would be ridiculousall that we are inter-
ested in is that he comes by his actions for good reasons. If you are told
that someone does not know what goodness is, you would not expect
them to display the quality of consistently good actions. Conversely, A
philosopher who, out of fidelity to a theory, is driven into saying a thor-
oughly virtuous and upright man does not know what goodness is, is
assuredly up the garden path.63
One would write similarly of an environmentalist who behaved in
an exemplary green fashion but denied intuiting the intrinsic value of
nature, basing her behavior instead on a version of humanism. Such
66 Mathew Humphrey
attacks left intuitionism, which perceived moral truth as like yellow, yet
so unlike yellow as nothing but intellectual ruins, to employ Bernard
Williamss description.64 Can the evolutionary argument employed by
Goldsmith leave the building of deep ecology intuitionism intact, while
all around has been demolished?
What work would the evolutionary explanation of a faculty of intu-
ition have to perform in order to rescue conceptual component 3 from
the anti-intuitionist critique? It would have to offer a credible account
of why we could expect the detection of value to be an ability of the sort
in favor of which there would be natural selection through time. If the
evolutionary approach is to succeed, it has to show that there are good
reasons to think that the ability to detect value is the kind of genetically
endowed trait that would enhance survival chances sufficiently to have
an impact on reproductive success. Over a long run of time, this advan-
tage would not have to be enormous, merely sufficient.
It is worth noting that if such an argument can work for Goldsmith,
it may also have something to offer in solution of the epistemic crisis
that Holmes Rolston III claims that we in the West suffer. There has been
considerable debate about Rolstons own epistemology,65 but both his
critics and his supporters grant that his approach is value empiricist
and that he rejects intuitionism. This, however, can only be true if we
are prepared to grant Rolston a large assumption, which is that it is actu-
ally possible to be an empiricist with regard to value. That Rolston is
both realist and empiricist with regard to our perceptions of nature itself
is clear enough:
Yes, but nature is a category we invent and put things we meet into, because
there is a realm out there, labelled nature, into which things have been put before
we arrive. Leaks or not, we do catch things in our buckets that come from some
source out there. Nature is what is not created by the human mind. We can,
through various constructs of the human mind, find out things that are not
created in the human mind. Anyone who thinks that there is any knowledge of
the material world believes that.66
empirical epistemology with respect to value does not work, the envi-
ronmental ethicist might yet want to draw on the possibility of a faculty
of intuition as suggested by Goldsmith.
An evolutionary account would have to offer reasons as to why we
should have developed a faculty for detecting value, and thus why being
the type of organism that can detect value would offer an evolutionary
advantage. We should note, to begin with, that Goldsmith rejects the
modern neo-Darwinist account of genetically driven competitive evolu-
tion. In accord with his endorsement of the Gaia hypothesis, he sees evo-
lution as directive and biospherically controlled. The goal toward which
evolution is directed is the maintenance of the equilibrium of the bios-
phere itself. Life processes evolve for a purpose, which is that they have
a specific function in the biospheric systemthat of contributing to its
stability. Goldsmith is thus providing us with a functional explanation
of the evolutionary process, in which function is taken as cause. Setting
aside the problems with this account of the evolutionary process
(how did the tendency toward dysfunctional biospheric behavior that
Goldsmith thinks humans now engage in evolve?), we can ask whether,
in either this or the more common neo-Darwinist account of evolution,
we could expect an intuitive capacity for detecting the existence of value
in the world to emerge.
Goldsmith holds that the seat of our instincts, emotions, and values
lies in our primitive brain, with its intuitive capacity. These instincts and
emotions grant access to fundamental knowledge about the harmo-
nious unity of nature and the value of the biosphere, indeed for
Goldsmith they seem to be our only epistemological tools. Man is
not designed to act in a nonemotional way, and is thus incapable of
objective knowledge and rational behavior.70 This is as true of our sci-
entific endeavors as any other. Thus ecology is a faith, is subjective,
and reflects the values of the biosphere. Ecology informs us about
natural laws, and these natural laws should also form the basis of our
moral laws, as they did for traditional societies. What is of value in this
system is the correct functioning of the biospherethe life-support mech-
anism for all life on earth. Traditional peoples knew this intuitively,
but our overrationalized thinking processes have forgotten this and
instead adopted the modernist worldview, which holds that all that is
of value is human made.
Intuition, Reason, and Environmental Argument 69
political works that have engaged with intuition. It features for example
in much of Anglo-American analytical political theory, whereby putative
theoretical principles are tested against common intuitions in the process
of reaching something like a Rawlsian reflective equilibrium. In his
work on justice, Rawls thinks we have to begin with our intuitions, but
shares Taylors concern that our everyday conceptions of justice will
be strongly colored by custom and current expectations.72 These initial
judgments about justice may well conflict with (at least some of) a set of
theoretically worked-out principles.
In this case we have a choice. We can either modify the account of the initial sit-
uation or we can revise our existing judgements. . . . By going back and forth,
sometimes altering the conditions of the contractual circumstances, at others
withdrawing our judgements and conforming them to principle, I assume that
eventually we shall find a description of the initial situation that both expresses
reasonable conditions and yields principles which match our considered judge-
ments duly pruned and adjusted. This state of affairs I refer to as reflective
equilibrium.73
Conclusion
The main purpose of this chapter has been to bring some analytical
clarity to an explanation of the radically differing accounts of the status
and utility of intuitions in a selection of biocentric literature. The method
chosen to achieve this has been to break intuition down into its various
Intuition, Reason, and Environmental Argument 71
Notes
communities often face. Most academics and activists trace the begin-
ning of this movement to a 1982 protest against the dumping of PCB-
laden dirt in a new hazardous waste landfill in Warren County, North
Carolina. Warren County was not only one of the poorest counties in
North Carolina, but also had a population that was 65 percent African-
American. This part of the environmental justice movement was em-
powered and emboldened by studies in the 1980s and early 1990s that
showed not just connections between environmental risk and poverty,
but specific connections between race and environmental hazards.4
When one discusses environmental justice, the topic could be the
antitoxics movement, the race-based environmental justice movement,
or a combination of the two. There are certainly differences in these two
parts of the movement, and many authors treat them separately. The
antitoxics movement is discussed, for example, by Szasz as well as by
Gould, Schnaiberg, and Weinberg.5 Epstein argues that the differences
between the parts are crucial, even though she still wants to regard them
as one large environmental justice/toxics movement.6 I do the same in
my own previous work on the movement.7 I want to argue here that even
given some of the differences in the greater grassroots environmental
justice movement, there is a unity, of sorts, around the concept(s) of
justice. First, however, the theoretical terrain of the concept must be
explored.
Conceptions of Justice
Justice as Distribution
In the literature of political theory, justice has been defined almost exclu-
sively as a question of equity in the distribution of social goods. Rawls,
for instance, calls justice a standard whereby the distributive aspects of
the basic structure of society are to be assessed. Justice, then, defines
the appropriate division of social advantages.8 In his application of
justice to the environmental arena, Brian Barry insists that justice only
applies where distributive issues arise; other issues are merely questions
of right and wrong.9 Justice, in this reading, is the set of rules that govern
our distributional relationship. Justice as distribution is centered on
socioeconomic factors, rooted in the economic structure of society. This
conception of distributional justice is typically used to critique the
80 David Schlosberg
Justice as Recognition
In the past decade there have been numerous challenges to the traditional
way in which the concept of justice has been approached in the politi-
cal theory literature. Iris Young has made the most direct and forceful
challenge to a justice based solely on issues of distribution.13 Injustice is
not solely based on inequitable distribution, Young argues. In Justice and
the Politics of Difference, she describes injustices based on a lack of
recognition of identity and difference. Part of the problem of injustice,
and part of the reason for unjust distribution, is a lack of recognition of
group difference. Young begins with the argument that where social
group differences exist and some groups are privileged while others are
oppressed, social justice requires explicitly acknowledging and attending
to those group differences in order to undermine oppression.14 In this,
obviously, Young shifts the focus away from the more traditional terri-
tory of Rawls and other theorists of distributive justice, toward a focus
on the postmaterial demands of new social movements around race,
gender, and sexuality. For Young, distribution is not the only problem;
a concept of justice needs to focus more generally on the elimination of
institutionalized domination and oppression, particularly of those who
represent difference.
The basic thesis of the politics of recognition has been laid out by both
Taylor and Honneth.15 As Honneth argues, the key is a link between
recognition from others and our own human dignity: The language of
everyday life is still invested with a knowledgewhich we take for
grantedthat we owe our integrity, in a subliminal way, to the receipt
of approval or recognition from other persons.16 Taylor insists that in
this sense, due recognition is not just a courtesy we owe people. It is a
vital human need.17
Taylor distinguishes between two kinds of recognition: (1) the equal
dignity of all, and (2) the politics of difference, where everyone is
recognized for their particular distinctiveness: Everyone should be
recognized for his or her unique identity. . . . With the politics of equal
dignity, what is established is meant to be universally the same, an iden-
tical basket of rights and immunities; with the politics of difference, what
we are asked to recognize is the unique identity of this individual or
group, their distinctness from everyone else. This latter form of
82 David Schlosberg
Justice as Procedure
Material distribution and recognition are two absolutely key notions of
justice in the contemporary political realm. But a third focus on justice
as process, including demands for broader and more authentic public
participation, is often seen as the tool to achieve both distributional
equity and political recognition. For Honneth, one form of disrespect
or misrecognitionthe lack of rightsis directly linked to democratic
participation. Citizens are subject to a form of personal disrespect when
they are structurally excluded from the possession of certain rights
within a given society. . . . The experience of being denied rights is typi-
cally coupled with a loss of self-respect, of the ability to relate to oneself
as a partner to interaction in possession of equal rights on a par with all
other individuals.28 There is a direct link, for Honneth, between a lack
of respect and recognition and a decline in a persons membership and
participation in the greater community, including their right to partici-
pate in the institutional order.
Young makes this connection clear as well. For Young, a concept of
justice needs to focus more generally on the elimination of institutionalized
domination and oppression. To accomplish this, justice must focus on the
political process as a way to address a variety of injustices, including both
the inequitable distribution of social goods and the inequitable distribu-
tion of social recognition. In dealing with issues of justice beyond the dis-
tributive, Young insists on addressing justice in the rules and procedures
according to which decisions are made.29 She says that
the idea of justice here shifts . . . to procedural issues of participation in delibera-
tion and decisionmaking. For a norm to be just, everyone who follows it must
in principle have an effective voice in its consideration and be able to agree to
it without coercion. For a social condition to be just, it must enable all to meet
their needs and exercise their freedom; thus justice requires that all be able to
express their needs.
Hamilton, for example, notes that land-use decisions reflect class and
racial bias: Because they reflect the distribution of power in society, they
cannot be expected to produce an equitable distribution of goods.65 The
simple point is that there is a crucial link between a lack of recognition
and the inequitable distribution of environmental bads; it is a general
lack of value of the poor and people of color that leads to this distribu-
tional inequity. We can use Honneth, on the theoretical level, to examine
this link. One of the central notions of respect and recognition for
Honneth is physical integrity: The forms of practical maltreatment in
which a person is forcibly deprived of any opportunity freely to dispose
over his or her own body represent the most fundamental sort of per-
sonal degradation.66 While Honneth refers to how acts such as phy-
sical injury, torture, and rape deny recognition, we can certainly add
unwanted exposure to environmental risks as an example of seizing
control of a persons body against their will. Exposure to risk is a type
of physical abuse, especially given the direct health effects shown to be
produced by, for example, exposure to lead in urban housing or to
uranium-mine tailings on Native American reservations. Again, there is
a direct relationship between a lack of recognition and environmental
degradation. These events are not independent, nor should they be con-
sidered as such. Activists in the movement understand this linkage; hence
their interest in, and insistence on, both environmental equity and cul-
tural recognition.
In addition, one can certainly see a link between a lack of individual
or cultural recognition and a lack of valid participation in the political
process. Simply put, misrecognition due to racism and/or classism creates
real structural obstacles to political participation. Activists and aca-
demics alike in the movement criticize the mainstream environmental
movement for ignoring and devaluing the poor and people of color by
devaluing the environment they live in.67 The major groups in the United
States, the argument goes, are much more interested in wilderness or the
great outside than in urban environmental issues because they value one
understanding of environment over another. This is a form of disre-
spect. For Lee, self-determination and participation in decision making
about ones own environment is absolutely key to environmental justice;
it brings with it an appreciation of diverse cultural perspectives and an
honoring of cultural integrity. For Bullard, the reason for insistence on
98 David Schlosberg
Conclusion
The movement for environmental justice may not add anything to the
theoretical literature of the study of justice, but its analyses, practices,
and demands undoubtedly offer a real-world illustration of these theo-
retical concepts in political action. Certainly, and at the very least, it
should be clear that environmental justice means much more than a lack
of equity in the distribution of environmental ills. More broadly, what
the environmental justice movement demonstrates is the possibility of
addressing different conceptions of justice simultaneously, and bringing
numerous notions of justice into a singular political project. In this re-
spect, I would argue that the movement demonstrates that it is, indeed,
possible to incorporate both material and postmaterial demands in a
single and comprehensive political movement. As Pulido has noted, envi-
ronmental justice offers a positive example of how postmodern iden-
tity politics can be linked to concrete material struggle.73 The project
of environmental justice goes one further, however, combining elements
of economic and quality-of-life issues with identity politics within the
context of a struggle for political participation and real political power.
The concept of environmental justice illustrates that the theoretical argu-
ments about the nature of justice are more than academic exercises; the
issues surrounding a struggle for justice on all fronts has been brought
to life clearly and forcefully by a very active and passionate political
movement. Hopefully, the movement will achieve the justice it seeks in
political practice. And along the way, given the very real engagement
100 David Schlosberg
Notes
1. For overviews, see Bunyon Bryant and Paul Mohai, eds., Race and the Inci-
dence of Environmental Hazards: A Time for Discourse (Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 1992); Bunyan Bryant, Environmental Justice: Issues, Policies, and Solu-
tions (Covelo, CA: Island Press, 1996); Robert Bullard, ed., Confronting Envi-
ronmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots (Boston: South End Press, 1993);
Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground up: Environmental Racism
and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement (New York: New York Uni-
versity Press, 2001); Daniel Faber, ed., The Struggle for Ecological Democracy
(New York: Guilford, 1998); Richard Hofrichter, ed., Toxic Struggles: The
Theory and Practice of Environmental Justice (Philadelphia: New Society, 1993).
2. Previously the Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste (CCHW).
3. The National Oil Refinery Action Network (NORAN, at http://www.cbecal.
org/alerts/alerts_oil.htm), and the Campaign for Responsible Technology (CRT,
at http://www.svtc.org).
4. United States General Accounting Office, Siting of Hazardous Waste Land-
fills and Their Correlation with Racial and Economic Status of Surrounding
Communities (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1983); United
Church of Christ, Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Report
on the Racial and Socio-Economic Characteristics of Communities with
Hazardous Waste Sites (New York: United Church of Christ, 1987); Robert
Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality (Boulder,
CO: Westview Press, 1990); Bryant and Mohai, Race and the Incidence of
Environmental Hazards.
5. Andrew Szasz, EcoPopulism: Toxic Waste and the Movement for Environ-
mental Justice (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994); Kenneth
Gould, Allan Schnaiberg, and Adam Weinberg, Local Environmental Struggles:
Citizen Activism in the Treadmill of Production (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1996).
6. Barbara Epstein, The Environmental Justice/Toxics Movement: Politics of
Race and Gender, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 8, no. 3 (1997): 6387.
7. David Schlosberg, Challenging Pluralism: Environmental Justice and the
Evolution of Pluralist Practice, in The Ecological Community: Environmental
Challenges for Philosophy, Politics, and Morality, ed. Roger Gottlieb (London:
Routledge, 1997); Schlosberg, Networks and Mobile Arrangements: Organiza-
tional Innovation in the U.S. Environmental Justice Movement, Environmental
Politics 6, no. 1 (1999): 122148; Schlosberg, Environmental Justice and the
New Pluralism: The Challenge of Difference for Environmentalism (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999).
The Justice of Environmental Justice 101
42. Marianne Lavelle and Marcia Coyle, Unequal Protection, National Law
Journal 14 (1992): A16.
43. Bob Edwards, With Liberty and Environmental Justice for All: The Emer-
gence and Challenge of Grassroots Environmentalism in the United States, in
Ecological Resistance Movements, ed. Bron Taylor (Albany, NY: SUNY Press,
1995), 36. There are numerous arguments about the accuracy of these equity
claims; some studies have attempted to show no racial or class bias. Differences
in findings occur depending on the level of analysis (from state-level data down
to census tract) and the nature of the environmental problem (toxic releases,
incinerators, waste dumps, and so on). For a discussion of the criticisms of the
inequity approach, and a response from one of the researchers in the United
Church of Christ study, see Benjamin A. Goldman, What Is the Future of En-
vironmental Justice?, Antipode 28, no. 2 (1996): 122141. For constructive
overviews of the equity literature, see Andrew Szasz and Michael Meuser, Envi-
ronmental Inequalities: Literature Review and Proposals for New Directions
in Research and Theory, Current Sociology 45, no. 3 (1997): 99120; James
Lester and David Allen, Environmental Justice in the U.S.: Myths and Reali-
ties, paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science
Association, Seattle, 1999; William M. Bowen, Environmental Justice through
Research-Based Decision-Making (New York: Garland, 2001). While I person-
ally am convinced by the data, the empirical disagreements are immaterial to the
argument here regarding the overall conception of justice constructed by the
movement.
44. Laura Pulido, Environmentalism and Social Justice: Two Chicano Struggles
in the Southwest (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996), 13; Bullard, Con-
fronting Environmental Racism, 78; Celene Krauss, Women of Color on the
Front Line, in Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of
Color, ed. Robert Bullard (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1994), 262; Sylvia
Tesh and Bruce Williams, Identity Politics, Disinterested Politics, and Environ-
mental Justice, Polity 18, no. 3 (1996): 285305.
45. Quoted in Krauss, Women of Color on the Front Line, 267.
46. Cynthia Hamilton, Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles,
in Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color, ed.
Robert Bullard (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1994), 215; Magdelena Avila,
personal communication, 1994.
47. Pulido, Environmentalism and Social Justice, 25.
48. Mary Pardo, Mexican American Women Grassroots Community Activists:
Mothers of East Los Angeles, Frontiers 11, no. 1 (1990): 6, 4.
49. Lance Hughes, quoted in Trebbe Johnson, Native Intelligence, Amicus
Journal 14, no. 4 (1993): 12; Giovanna Di Chiro, Defining Environmental
Justice: Womens Voices and Grassroots Politics, Socialist Review 22, no. 4
(1992): 117.
50. Krauss, Women of Color on the Front Line, 267; John Bretting and Diane-
Michele Prindeville, Environmental Justice and the Role of Indigenous Women
104 David Schlosberg
In short, the time is ripe to assess the merits of the case for substan-
tive constitutional environmental rights. In what follows I present the
case in favor of constitutional environmental rights and analyze its prob-
lematic aspects. After a preliminary clarification of the scope of the right
under consideration, I go on to address four sorts of questions bearing,
respectively, on the validity, necessity, practicability, and desirability of
pursuing environmental protection by means of constitutional rights. In
the course of doing so I will identify various issues that warrant further
research in a UK and European context, and in the conclusion I indicate
some associated tasks for political scientists and theorists.
The scope of the right under discussion is basically that proposed in the
Brundtland report: All human beings have the fundamental right to
an environment adequate for their health and well-being.5 A similarly
worded right is now found in many of the national constitutions pro-
mulgated or revised since the reports publication. In choosing as the
criterion of environmental protection the adequacy of the environment
for human health and well-being, this right clearly does not capture all
aspects of environmental concern. Its most obvious application would
be with respect to pollution, waste disposal, and other sorts of toxic con-
tamination, since the most immediate threats to health and well-being
concern contamination of air, water, and food. However, depending on
how health and, particularly, well-being are construed, many other issues
could ultimately be brought under this rubric, including aspects of envi-
ronmental concern that touch on the quality of life in aesthetic, cultural,
and spiritual terms.6
Nevertheless, the right under consideration may be thought vulnera-
ble to the more radical criticism that it is thoroughly anthropocentric,
because it considers the environment only under the aspect of its
contribution to human health and well-being: no provision is explicitly
sought for the nonhuman beings that coexist within our environment,
and no mention at all is made of the environment for its own sake. I
will not offer a detailed response to this line of criticism, because I have
already dealt with it at length elsewhere.7 Here I think it suffices to make
the following points. The first is that constitutional environmental rights
Constitutional Environmental Rights 111
(for humans) are not offered as a panacea for all of the problems arising
from our interactions with nonhuman nature; they are proposed as just
one, albeit significant, approach to dealing with them. This approach
does not preclude others, and may indeed serve to support them and to
enhance their potential for success. After all, even when environmental
concern focuses on the good of nonhumans, its success depends on the
political, economic, and legal resources available to the humans press-
ing the case. These, I believe, are on the whole more likely to be enhanced
than hindered by certain entrenched rights. Furthermore, there is reason
to believe that once a basic right is established, practical jurisprudence
and wider social norms will develop progressively to support more ambi-
tious aims.
One further point to clarify is the scope of the rights corresponding
duties. Constitutional rights are typically held by individuals against the
state. For some purposes, theorists distinguish between positive and
negative obligations on states; furthermore, rights can also give rise to
duties of individuals or other nonstate actors, thus having horizontal
as well as vertical effect. For the purposes of this chapter, however, I
will make the simplifying assumption that the duties at issue are pri-
marily those of the state to implement and enforce laws that secure to
the individuals the enjoyment of what is intended as the substance of
the right.
At the international level, evidence that they can is not conclusive, but
it is encouraging. A recognition in international forums that environ-
mental law and human rights have many significant areas of overlap has
been steadily growing over the past three decades. The link between
human rights and environmental protection was first clearly established
by Principle 1 of the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment
of 1972, and given a further impetus with the Brundtland report of 1987,
which presented the basic goals of environmentalism as an extension of
the existing human rights discourse. More recently, the UN Commission
on Human Rights commissioned a special report on human rights
and the environment. The resulting Draft Declaration of Principles on
Human Rights and the Environment,8 suggests Popovic, might serve as
a vehicle for development of a formal, binding international legal instru-
ment that protects environmental human rights.9 Furthermore, there
have also been regional agreements providing environmental rights,10
and, particularly significantly, an almost universally ratified treaty, the
1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, provides, in Article 24,
a right of the child to the highest attainable standard of health, whose
implementation requires taking into consideration the dangers and risks
of environmental pollution.
So, while it cannot yet be confidently asserted that international law
recognizes a human right to an adequate environment, there have been
significant moves in this direction. It would appear, therefore, that from
the standpoint of jurisprudence there is no insurmountable obstacle to
adding an environmental right to the existing catalog. For effective
implementation, though, it is crucial that the right be given the force of
a constitutional provision.
Procedural Rights
Procedural rights relevant to the civil, political, and legal possibilities for
environmental protection include rights to information, rights of legal
redress, and rights of participation. The potential of these rights has long
been recognized, and it was given a significant additional impetus by
The Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in
Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters,
generally known as the Aarhus Convention (1998). The Aarhus Con-
vention, developed under the auspices of the UN Economic Commission
for Europe (ECE), was signed, in June 1998, by 35 countries from this
region, which covers the whole of Europe as well as parts of Cen-
tral Asia, the United States, Canada, and Israelalthough the North
American countries opted out of the process.
At present a good deal of attention is focused, and quite appropriately,
on the right to information. Article 10 of the European Convention
116 Tim Hayward
Thus procedural rights can also cut both ways, since parties who object
to proposed action by the state to protect the environment also have a
right to challenge such action. Moreover, historically, as well as currently,
environmentalist claims of individuals have sometimes been supported
by prevailing views of the public interest and sometimes pitted against
it.23 Such considerations can reasonably be argued to point to the need
for a substantive environmental right that stands above any potential
political and legal contestation.
Of course, giving the right that high status in relation to other social
goals raises critical questions regarding both its practicability and its
legitimacy, which are the topics for the next two sections respectively.
That is, if environmental quality has fallen below the threshold of pro-
tection that citizens have a right to have maintained, the responsible
authority has a duty to take appropriate action (e.g., implementing new
regulations or better enforcing existing ones). This approach will indeed
involve working with some hypotheses about causation, but it would not
need to identify causes with the same degree of precision as would be
required in a civil or criminal suit against an alleged polluter. In fact, a
strength of the rights approach is that it would underpin courts powers
and duties to deploy the precautionary principle and the principle of pro-
portionality so that lack of evidence of harm is not automatically equated
with evidence of no harm.
Of course, the uncertainty factor also means that courts may face for-
midable problems of knowledge, but courts routinely have to deal with
testimony from experts in order to arrive at judgments, and if environ-
mental cases really do prove too complex, a solution might be to estab-
lish a specialist environmental court.25
Another objection is that if the proposed constitutional right were
made fully justiciable, it would open the floodgates of litigation,
placing unworkable demands on the courts.26 However, it would be a
mistake to take this as a knockdown argument,27 and while accepting
that it is in no ones interest for courts be deluged with unfulfillable
claims, we should nevertheless appraise the different means for averting
a possible flood. One is simply not to grant the right in the first place,
but given the moral case for the right, there is no principled justification
for that. Another is to restrict standing to press the right in courts. Again,
however, this would contravene the moral principle that everyone should
have equal access to the means for redeeming the right. A third possi-
bility, representing a less drastic compromise of principle, but no loss of
efficacy compared to the other two, is to specify what counts as a justi-
ciable case in terms that would keep the potential volume of litigation
proportional in relation to competing social values. In fact, most social
rights at the constitutional or European level already are hedged in by
appropriate qualifications of this sort, and if the restrictions and quali-
fications are reasonable, the right can still fulfill its purpose.28
Nevertheless, the right could still be unenforceable for other reasons.
A particularly significant problem, according to some critics, is that
courts just do not have the necessary powers to enforce it. This
Constitutional Environmental Rights 119
A Democratic Deficit?
Conclusion
Taken as a moral proposition, the claim that all human beings have the
fundamental right to an environment adequate for their health and well-
being is, I believe, unimpeachable. This fundamental right is also gaining
ground as a norm of international law, is receiving explicit recognition
in authoritative international documents, and has arguably already
come some way to becoming an enforceable legal right in international
treaties. Its progress in this direction is underpinned by the fact, which
is also independently significant, that the right is explicitly provided in
many national constitutions. Moreover, the appropriateness of at least
some form of constitutional provision for environmental protection
is even more widely accepted, and the case for procedural environ-
mental rightsto information, participation, and redressis all but
unanswerable.
Where there is room for debate at the constitutional level, however, is
over the question whether the moral right should necessarily be trans-
lated into a substantive right, rather than receive indirect protection
by means of procedural rights and/or statements of policy principle.
Whether a substantive right is necessary, practicable, or democratically
desirable depends on a range of factors, the influence of each of which
will vary according to different constitutional contexts. Focusing on the
context of the United Kingdom, within the European, a number of the
factors identified by legal theorists have a distinctly political dimension
requiring analysis in its own terms.
Whether a constitutional environmental right is needed is not simply
a question of whether there is a distinct area of environmental concern
previously untouched by existing rights and environmental law. Other
relevant questions are whether interpretations in practice are coherent
with aims in principle, and whether implementation and enforcement
are adequate; these questions invoke criteriacoherence and ade-
quacythat make implicit reference to basic social values that are polit-
ically chosen. At present, UK environmental law as a whole lacks a
coherent set of principles and rights. Thus, in cases not clearly falling
124 Tim Hayward
icant role for judicial activism,45 others, and not only conservatives,
are critical of the scope this gives for blurring the separation of powers,
and of the practical problem that judicial innovation can be quite
selective. However, the issue is perhaps best addressed not as one
of either judicial activism or passivismsince it is undesirable for
judges either to exceed or to fail fully to exercise their constitutionally
conferred powersbut rather as one of clarifying the values underpin-
ning judicial interpretations. A constitutional environmental right could
establish values that, without it, judges would quite properly be resist-
ant to invoking.
Of course, constitutional environmental rights are not a panacea for
all environmental problems. Indeed, new issues may be generated. For
instance, enhancing environmental rights in rich industrialized countries
could have the net effect of displacing environmental problems and
further diminishing environmental rights in poor countries. So while an
international regime of environmental rights would arguably be more
robust if those rights are constitutionally recognized by state powers that
are most influential in developing international law, the empirical ques-
tion of whether enhancing environmental rights in rich countries would
exacerbate existing environmental injustice requires research in interna-
tional political economy and international environmental politics. Mean-
while, though, I would suggest that issues of balancing different peoples
rights (and also international obligations) should be addressed as that
as issues of balancing rightsrather than as possible reasons for not rec-
ognizing the rights in the first place. Moreover, at present, the most
expansive constitutional environmental rights are found in constitutions
of poorer and less influential states; as long as this remains the case, the
view that these rights are mere aspiration will be encouraged.
Finally, to accord environmental protection the status of a fundamen-
tal right is not to give it absolute priority over other important social
values, but it is to put it on more of an even footing with other
especially economic and propertyrights. The most basic question is that
of how the fundamental values and interests of a society are balanced
against one another. Whatever view one ultimately takes of the proposal
for a constitutional environmental right, a sufficient reason for serious
consideration of it is that it brings that basic question into the open.
126 Tim Hayward
Notes
10. In addition to the European agreements discussed below, see the 1981
African Charter on Human Rights and Peoples Rights, Art. 24, and the 1988
Additional Protocol to the Inter American Convention on Human Rights, Art.
11.28.
11. Art. 130r2 of EC treaty as amended by Treaty of Union 1993.
12. See C. Miller, Environmental Rights: European Fact or English Fiction?,
Journal of Law and Society 22, no. 3 (1995): 374397, esp. 388389.
13. On whether the precautionary principle generates rights, see Miller, Envi-
ronmental Rights, 389; on controversies concerning the meaning of the pre-
cautionary principle, see, for example, D. Hughes, Analysis of Duddridge
Case?, Journal of Environmental Law 7, no. 2 (1995): 238244.
14. Direct effect has a variety of meanings, according to C. Boch, The Iroquois
at the Kirchberg; or, some Nave Remarks on the Status and Relevance of Direct
Effect, Jean Monnet Working Paper no. 6, Harvard Law School, 1999. Most
generally it refers to the fact that Community law is part of the national legal
systems and can be invoked before national courts, but it can also refer to the
capacity of a specific Community provision to be applied directly, as it stands;
then again, it can refer to the capacity of a Community provision to confer rights
on which individuals may rely. See also Miller, Environmental Rights, 382f;
D. Shelton, Environmental Rights in the European Community, Hastings
International and Comparative Law Review 16 (1993): 569ff; R. Caranta,
Governmental Liability after Francovich, Cambridge Law Journal 52 (1993):
272297.
15. See Robin Churchill, Environmental Rights in Existing Human Rights
Treaties, in Human Rights Approaches to Environmental Protection, ed. Alan
Boyle and Michael R. Anderson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 90.
16. S. Weber, Environmental Information and the European Convention on
Human Rights, Human Rights Law Journal 12, no. 5 (1991): 177185.
17. Churchill, Environmental Rights in Existing Human Rights Treaties, 103.
18. For background to the case, see A. Rest, EuropeImproved Environmen-
tal Protection through an Expanded Concept of Human Rights?, Environmen-
tal Policy and Law 27, no. 3 (1997): 213216.
19. See, for example, G. Handl, Human Rights and the Protection of the Envi-
ronment: A Mildly Revisionist View, in Human Rights, Sustainable Develop-
ment and the Environment, ed. E. D. Weiss et al. (Brazil: Instituto Interamericano
de Derechos Humanos, 1992). Environmental campaigners also often tend
toward this view, yet when pressing for procedural rights they may make their
case on the basis of a substantive claim. See, for instance, Charter on Environ-
mental Rights and Obligations of Individuals, Groups and Organisations,
attached as an appendix to David Rehling, Legal Standing for Environmental
Groups within the Administrative SystemThe Danish Experience and the Need
for an International Charter on Environmental Rights, in Participation and
Litigation Rights of Environmental Associations in Europe, ed. M. Fhr and G.
Roller (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1991), 154.
128 Tim Hayward
20. Robyn Eckersley, Greening Liberal Democracy: The Rights Discourse revis-
ited, in Democracy and Green Political Thought: Sustainability, Rights and
Citizenship, ed. Brian Doherty and Marius de Geus (London: Routledge, 1996),
230.
21. See M. Fhr and G. Roller, eds., Participation and Litigation Rights of Envi-
ronmental Associations in Europe (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1991); Sven
Deimann and Bernard Dyssli, eds., Environmental Rights: Law, Litigation and
Access to Justice (London: Cameron May, 1995); S. Grosz, Access to Environ-
mental Justice in Public Law, in Public Interest Perspectives in Environmental
Law, ed. David Robinson and John Dunkley (Chichester: Chancery Law
Publishing, 1995).
22. See, for example, S. Douglas-Scott, Environmental Rights in the European
UnionParticipatory Democracy or Democratic Deficit?, in Human Rights
Approaches to Environmental Protection, ed. Alan Boyle and Michael R.
Anderson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996): 119120; also Shelton, Environ-
mental Rights in the European Community, 575577.
23. See, for example, E. Brubaker, Property Rights in the Defence of Nature
(London: Earthscan, 1995).
24. James Nickel, The Right to a Safe Environment, Yole Journal of Interna-
tional Law 18, 1 (1983): 285.
25. For a precedent, see P. Stein, A Specialist Environmental Court: An
Australian Experience, in Public Interest Perspectives in Environmental Law,
ed. David Robinson and John Dunkley (New York: Wiley Chancery, 1995).
26. See, for example, J. B. Ruhl, An Environmental Rights Amendment: Good
Message, Bad Idea, Natural Resources and Environment 11, no. 3 (1997):
4649, esp. 48.
27. A. J. Roman, Locus Standi: A Cure in Search of a Disease?, in Environ-
mental Rights in Canada, ed. John Swaigen (Toronto: Butterworths, 1981), notes
that it is based on a conjecture that ignores the reality that litigation is far
too expensive, traumatic and inconvenient ever to become a popular pastime
(p. 17); see also Stein, A Specialist Environmental Court.
28. This was illustrated in the case of Lopez-Ostra discussed above. Worth
noting in the UK context is that the reasonable balancing of human rights against
other social goods will require our courts to employ the concept, which is fun-
damental to the Convention, of proportionality. See Hunt, Using Human Rights
Law in English Courts; R. Singh, The Future of Human Rights in the United
Kingdom: Essays on Law and Practice (Oxford: Hart, 1997).
29. Cass Sunstein, Against Positive Rights, East European Constitutional
Review 2 (1993): 37.
30. Concerns about debasing the currency of human rights have also been voiced
by M. Cranston, Human Rights, Real and Supposed, in Political Theory and
the Rights of Man, ed. David D. Raphael (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1967); Philip Alston, Conjuring Up New Human Rights American Journal of
International Law 78 (1984): 607621. Handl, Human Rights and the Protec-
tion of the Environment.
Constitutional Environmental Rights 129
31. H. Schwartz, In Defense of Aiming High: Why Social and Economic Rights
Belong in the New Post-Communist Constitutions of Europe, East European
Constitutional Review 1 (1992): 2529.
32. See, for example, Henry Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and US
Foreign Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980), esp. 3553; also
Singh, The Future of Human Rights in the United Kingdom, esp. 5258.
33. C. P. Stevenson, A New Perspective on Environmental Rights after the
Charter, Osgoode Hall Law Journal 21, no. 3 (1983): 390421, esp. 420.
34. Eckersley, Greening Liberal Democracy, 220.
35. Stevenson, A New Perspective on Environmental Rights after the Charter,
397.
36. Jeremy Waldron, A Rights-Based Critique of Constitutional Rights,
Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 13 (1993): 1851, esp. 20.
37. Waldron, A Rights-Based Critique of Constitutional Rights, 20.
38. James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987), 439.
39. Franois Du Bois, Social Justice and the Judicial Enforcement of Environ-
mental Rights and Duties, in Human Rights Approaches to Environmental Pro-
tection, ed. Alan Boyle and Michael R. Anderson (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1996), 158.
40. Eckersley, Greening Liberal Democracy, 229.
41. See Tim Hayward, Ecological Thought: An Introduction (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 1995), 130136.
42. Joseph L. Sax, The Search for Environmental Rights, Journal of Land Use
and Environmental Law 6 (1998): 97.
43. Sax, The Search for Environmental Rights, 101.
44. Sax, The Search for Environmental Rights, 100.
45. See, for example, R. K. Gravelle, Enforcing the Elusive: Environmental
Rights in East European Constitutions, Virginia Environmental Law Journal
16, no. 4 (1997): 633660; Du Bois, Social Justice and the Judicial Enforce-
ment of Environmental Rights and Duties; Michael R. Anderson, Individual
Rights to Environmental Protection in India, and Martin Lau, Islam and
Judicial Activism, both in Human Rights Approaches to Environmental Pro-
tection, ed. Alan Boyle and Michael R. Anderson (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1996).
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5
Trusteeship: A Practical Option for
Realizing Our Obligations to Future
Generations?
William B. Griffith
Only in the last three decades of the twentieth century did there begin
to develop a fairly widespread awareness that the centurys immense
worldwide growth in human population, in the development of indus-
try, in the use of energy and other natural resources, and in the genera-
tion of vast volumes of waste products, were having widespread
detrimental effects on our physical environment.1 Even more recent has
been the (somewhat less widespread) recognition that at least some of
our systematic activities and institutional practices were creating poten-
tially irreversible, long-term deleterious effects, very likely to put at great
risk the environment and natural resources available to future genera-
tions.2 In this chapter, I assume that awareness of such large potential ill
effects of our collective behavior will imply, in most contemporary ethical
frameworks, that the present generation stands under a significant moral
obligation to take such probable effects of its acts into account, to the
extent possible. However, while philosophers argue strenuously as to
how best to understand the grounds of such duties, I do not wish to
bring these abstract philosophical issues into focus here. Rather I attempt
to respond to the following stance implicit in the lack of attention to
these philosophical arguments: it does not matter whether or not one
agrees we have obligations to future generations, since no one has a good
argument as to what such acceptance would commit us to doing dif-
ferently. So the questions I wish to raise concern what such duties, if
accepted, would require in the way of practice. That is, how can we best
understand and articulate concretely the content of such duties as we
may have to future generations, not abstractly but by proposing institu-
tional arrangements by which we might take steps to satisfy them? My
intuitive idea is that many of us might be willing to take such claimed
132 William B. Griffith
will. In our context, one would be left with the necessity of interpreting
the divine willnot a task most contemporary philosophers are well
prepared to take on.
Philosophically, the attractions of the intuitive idea of trusteeship may
be seen by recognizing here an example of a second-order strategy
to improve decision making over a long term.9 One such strategy is
precommitmentthat is, taking steps to make it less likely that one will
make a bad decision at a later time by constraining the latter decision
making in some way. Another such strategy for dealing with future deci-
sions is delegating authority to make them, to someone we expect will
be in a better position to do so when the time arrives. Thus, imposing
on our present and future decision making the constraints of facing such
decisions as trustees restricts our freedom by virtue of our fiduciary rela-
tionship, but also puts us in the position of requiring only that as agents
we must make a good faith effort to do the best at any given moment
for beneficiaries, without attempting to specify in advance exactly what
those actions should be.
The philosophical suggestions above have largely remained at the level
of intuitive guidance, and what is needed now is a clearer articulation of
them. But notice that these suggestions have a couple of advantages
helpful for our specific purposes. First, in making use of the analogy of
a trust relationship, which is ordinarily initiated by a voluntary decision
to protect certain properties on behalf of others, this position bypasses
the problem of motivation and/or ground for such a decision (benefi-
cence or duty), to focus on what is entailed by the relationship. Second,
reliance on the instrument of trusteeship enables us to avoid excessive
and difficult speculation as to what future generations (by which one
normally means descendants considerably distant from us) will need and
want, to concentrate on what we should do today, to act responsibly
and prudently as a trustee should, to protect the assets under our con-
trol and pass them along to the immediate next generation at least un-
diminished, and if possible enhanced in value.
The intuitive idea that we might protect those who cannot look out for
their own rights by charging another with the moral responsibility for
138 William B. Griffith
managing affairs for them, has been most elaborately worked out insti-
tutionally in Anglo-American common law.10 In what follows, I first set
out what might be called the standard model of a trust, then give an
account of the key institution by which the moral obligation of the
trustee was enforced by society in an effective way by the courts of
equity. This in turn gave rise to several variants on the basic or para-
digm concept of the trust.
trustee would have, and yield up any gains from fraud, manipulation, or
coercion to the victims benefit.
than the public) owned these lands, but not in a propriety way, to
dispose of as wished, but rather held them in trust for the public, to
use for navigation, fishing, and the like. (There is some reason to think
this is inherited in slightly changed form from Roman law antecedents,
designating similar natural assets as res communes, but the historical
picture is far from clear.17) The application of the doctrine in the United
States is presumed to be a consequence of the adoption of British
common law by the new states of the union. Parallel rights then passed
by parity to other states as they joined the union. Thus runs the usual
summary account in a large range of law review articles.18
However, when this doctrine was nudged into greater prominence,
usually credited to law professor Joseph Saxs highly influential 1970
article, as a suggested legal tool that could be used for much greater pro-
tection of environmental resources, the origins, status, and reach of this
ancient doctrine quickly became quite contentious.19
But given the slow pace at which such judicial intervention proceeds,
it would appear that a new tack is needed if the potential of the basic
idea of generational trusteeship is to begin to be realized.
Can we see how to rework this traditional doctrine, to better serve the
aims of realizing our obligations to protect environmental and natural
resources for future generations? In this section I hope to show how we
might extract, from our discussions above of the trustee concept in envi-
ronmental ethics, the law of private trusts, and the traditional Public
Trust Doctrine, an expanded reach and scope for the concept of gener-
ational trusteeship of important natural and environmental resources.
The discussions of these complex ideas in the sections above have been
necessarily somewhat sketchy and incomplete. My hope is that they
will provide the basis for further scholarly exploration of these ideas, so
as to make them clear, concrete, and flexible enough that they might
provide a theoretical/conceptual framework for environmental practi-
tioners to organize their efforts around. I would particularly like to stress
the point that what environmental philosophers, lawyers, and econo-
mists probably cannot expect to do effectively while remaining within
the bounds of their own disciplines, might be achieved by moving across
disciplinary lines. I believe there is convincing evidencefor example, in
the uneven development of environmental ethics and policythat we
need to make better use of both highly theoretical thinking and very prac-
tical work, if we are to advance in such a new and staggeringly complex
field.
Much scholarly work surely needs to be done, by both philosophers
and legal scholars, to better understand what it might mean for the
present generation to serve as trustee of natural and environmental
resources for future generations. For example, the historical origins,
development, and original justifications of the Public Trust Doctrine need
much more careful study, because the authority and exact articulation
of legal ideas is so rooted in their provenance. Similarly, I think we have
only begun to take seriously figuring out what it might mean to try to
150 William B. Griffith
Notes
An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the conference on Moral and
Political Reasoning in Environmental Practice, June 2792, 1999, at Mansfield
College, Oxford University. The research reported here represents the belated
continuation of work begun in 199495 but left dormant due to the press of
other obligations. The original motivation was a U.S. Department of Energy con-
tract with the National Academy of Public Administration and the Battelle Insti-
tute to study the federal governments obligations to future generations with
respect mainly to the disposal of nuclear waste. I owe thanks to Bayard Catron,
Research Director, who asked me to join that project, in conjunction with which
I prepared a background paper on this general topic: Protecting and Providing
for Future Generations: The Present Generation as Trustee, in Deciding for the
Future: Balancing Risks and Benefits Fairly across Generations: Issue Papers, B.
Catron, ed. (Washington, DC: National Academy of Public Administration/
Battelle Institute, 1994). I also am indebted to a young attorney, John Hartung,
then a doctoral student in public administration, for assistance with the legal
research involved.
1. J. R. McNeill offers an excellent overview of what he calls this gigantic
uncontrolled experiment on the earth, of heedlessly altering ecosystems with
great intensity and speed, and of social reactions to it, in Something New under
the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century World (New York:
Norton, 2000).
2. Bryan Norton has called the recent discovery of such potential long-term
effects a third wave of environmental problem recognition, in Towards Unity
among Environmentalists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
3. Hans Jonas, Technology and Responsibility: The Ethics of an Endangered
Future, a 1972 address, reprinted in Responsibilities to Future Generations, ed.
Ernest Partridge (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1981), pp. 26, 28. Brian Barry
eloquently expresses similar views (We scan the classics in vain for guidance on
this question) in Justice between Generations, in Law, Morality and Society,
ed. P. M. S. Hacker and Joseph Raz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977),
reprinted in Barry, Democracy, Power, and Justice (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1989), 494. For a good discussion of the omitted problem of motivating
regard for future generations, see Norman Care, Future Generations, Public
Policy, and the Motivation Problem, Environmental Ethics 4 (1982): 195213.
4. A leading defender of this viewpoint is Paul Taylor, Respect for Nature
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986); other important figures
arguing along similar lines include Holmes Rolston III, Environmental Ethics:
Duties to and Values in the Natural World (Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 1988).
5. For an exposition of this view, see Joel Feinberg, The Rights of Animals and
Unborn Generations, in Philosophy and Environmental Crisis, ed. William
Blackstone (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1974). This view has by no
means been universally welcomed by philosophers; see, for example, Ruth
152 William B. Griffith
16. Molly Selvin, This Tender and Delicate Business: The Public Trust
Doctrine in American Law and Economic Policy 17891920 (New York:
Garland, 1987), 1.
17. Selvin, This Tender and Delicate Business, 1726. There is no unanimity
among interpreters as to whether ownership of trust assets rests in the public,
with the state acting as its agent, as Selvin indicates in the quotation, or whether,
as stated below, the state is viewed as owning the assets but as trustee.
18. For examples, see two law journal symposia devoted to the Public Trust
Doctrine: U.C. Davis Law Review 14 (1980), and Environmental Law 19,
no. 3 (1989).
19. Joseph L. Sax, The Public Trust Doctrine in Natural Resource Law,
Michigan Law Review 68 (1970): 473492. This is widely viewed as one of the
most influential law journal articles ever published, having stimulated an extraor-
dinary flood of follow-up studies. For various views of Saxs influence, see the
symposium in Ecology Law Quarterly 25 (1998), especially the valuable critique
by C. Rose, Joseph Sax and the Idea of the Public Trust, 351362.
20. Illinois Central R.R. v. Illinois, 146 U.S. 387 (1892).
21. Sax, The Public Trust Doctrine in Natural Resource Law, passim, and the
huge number of follow-up articles, many of which are cited in the Symposium
mentioned in note 19 above.
22. For representative criticisms of the doctrine, see for example R. Lazarus,
Changing Conceptions of Property and Sovereignty in Natural Resources:
Questioning the Public Trust Doctrine, Iowa Law Review 71 (1986); J.
Huffman, A Fish out of Water: The Public Trust Doctrine in a Constitutional
Democracy, Environmental Law Review 19 (1989). The best discussions known
to me of its roots and status are in C. Wilkinson, The Headwaters of the Public
Trust, in Environmental Law 19 (1989) and Z. Plater, R. Abrams, and W.
Goldfarb, Environmental Law and Policy, 2nd ed. (St. Paul, MN: West, 1998),
chap. 22.
23. See Alabama v. Texas, 347 U.S. 272 (1954).
24. See C. J. Lewis, The Timid Approach of the Federal Courts to the Public
Trust Doctrine, Public Land and Resources Law Review 19 (1998), for an
example of the first view; for the second, see G. R. Scott, The Expanding Public
Trust Doctrine: A Warning to Environmentalists and Policy Makers, Fordham
Law Review 10 (1998): 1.
25. See Lucas v. So. Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003 (1992). Hope
Babcock argues for the doctrines potentially increased usefulness in the after-
math of the Lucas decision, in Has the U.S. Supreme Court Finally Drained the
Swamp of Takings Jurisprudence?, Harvard Environmental Law Review 19
(1994). For other enthusiastic arguments for the doctrines general usefulness,
see Plater, Abrams, and Goldfarb, Environmental Law and Policy, chap. 22
for example, their discussion of the Mono Lake case, Nat. Audobon Society
v. Superior Court of Alpine County (Supreme Ct. of Calif.), 33 Cal. 3d 419
(1983).
154 William B. Griffith
26. The most extensive proposal I have found is in Rick Applegate, Public
Trusts: A New Approach to Environmental Protection (Washington, DC:
Exploratory Project for Economic Alternatives, 1976). Other less ambitious but
similar suggestions are found in (among others) G. Meyers, Variations on a
Theme: Expanding the Public Trust Doctrine to Include Protection of Wildlife,
Environmental Law 19 (1989), and A. Rieser, Ecological Preservation as a
Public Property Right: An Emerging Doctrine in Search of a Theory, Harvard
Environmental Law Review 15 (1991).
27. See Mark Dowie, Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close
of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995).
28. This case law is too complex to summarize here, but for details, see the dis-
cussion in Plater, Abrams, and Goldfarb, Environmental Law and Policy, chap.
24: The Public Lands.
29. This section borrows from two of my papers that are not yet published:
Public Lands, Property Rights, and Intergenerational Justice, presented at the
Seventh Annual Meeting of the Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary
World, Fort Estes, CO, July 2000, and The Reach of Property Rights When
Environmental Effects Are Not Local, forthcoming in Values in an Age of Glob-
alization: Selected Proceedings of the 28th Conference on Value Inquiry, April
2000, ed. K. Dobson.
30. Such instructions are formulated in Multiple Use, Sustained Yield Act of
1960, 16 U.S.C.A. Sec. 528 et seq., and reiterated in various other statutes such
as Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, 43 U.S.C.A. Sec. 701-
1782. The latter act even mentions the long-term uses of future generations
(S.1702), but this has been generally lost sight of.
31. This concept emerged into prominence with the publication of Our Common
Future, by the World Commission on Environment and Development (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1987). Excellent discussions from a philosophical stand-
point are found in Andrew Dobson, ed., Fairness and Futurity: Essays on Envi-
ronmental Sustainability and Social Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999). Economic studies are plentifulfor example, see Sylvie Faucheaux, David
Pearce, and John Proops, eds., Models of Sustainable Development (Cheltenham:
Elgar, 1996).
6
Ecological Utilization Space:
Operationalizing Sustainability
Finn Arler
not find helpful and inspiring in our personal lives. Nobody else should
be able to determine our personal priorities and life choices. This is our
own business. We may all be seeking happiness and the good life, but
we despise paternalistic individuals who intrude in our affairs and
attempt to dictate how we should live our lives. We want to do things
our own way.
Consequently, we are all keen on establishing and preserving individ-
ual rights of noninterference. Neither the central state nor our fellow cit-
izens should be allowed to intrude in our lives against our will, nor
should they have the right to require us to live in accordance with values
and ideals that we do not share, or that we have not accepted volunta-
rily. We simply want them to stay off our backs. This is a two-way street,
of course. As long as other people are not interfering with our lives, we
will not interfere with theirs. They are allowed to have a free sphere,
too, similar to our own, where they can act in accordance with their per-
sonal values and ideals. If we want to, we can combine our spheres of
activity, form friendships and voluntary associations, and live a common
life together with other people. We do not want to be forced into any-
thing, however. We want to share our lives with the people we love and
care for, or share values and ideals with, and nobody should be able to
order us to do anything else. Nor will we order other people to live their
lives in ways they would never choose for themselves.
In this sense, we see each other as equals, as human beings whose indi-
vidual freedom, autonomy, or self-determination cannot be considered
as just one more particular value among many others. It must be seen
as a transcendental value, the impersonal prerequisite for all personal
values. It is therefore overriding in comparison to all the specific values
related to the particular conceptions of the good life. The protection of
individual freedom always comes first. Nothing can overrule it, because
no specific earthbound values can move upward into the transcendental
realm, where the basic rules of the game are settled. Protection of the
right, the moral law of noninterference, is always a prerequisite to the
enhancement of any kind of good.
If no reasons can be given for deviations from equality in the tran-
scendental realm of rights, individuals of future generations must be
given the very same status as those in the present generation. It does
not seem possible to state any impersonal reasons for granting special
Ecological Utilization Space 157
Let us take a look, then, at these definitions. In the Wuppertal report the
concept is introduced in the following way: The amounts of energy,
water, land, non-renewable resources and forests which can be used
without reducing the possibilities of future generations is called the eco-
logical utilization space. The report continues a little later: Principles
of equality and social justice are incorporated into the concept ecolog-
ical utilization space per person by distributing the permissible use of
resources equally among everybody.3 Both neutrality and equality are
thus maintained in the definition. The distribution is based on simple
equality, and concepts like possibilities and uses are employed in a
way that leaves no trace of values.
Every fourth year the Danish Ministry of Environment and Energy
publishes a broad exposition or statement of the results from the pre-
ceding years and of the plans for the years to follow. In the 1995 edition
the concept of ecological utilization space was given a fairly prominent
place. The definition of the concept was quite close to the one in the
Wuppertal report: The ecological utilization space [kologisk rderum]
is definedfrom a global point of viewas the amount of natural
resources (air, water, land, minerals, energy sources, nature areas, plants,
animals, and so on) that can be used per year without preventing future
generations from having access to the same amount and quality. Every
human being shall have a right to his or her part of the ecological uti-
lization space. The statement then continues with the following sen-
tence, which gives the concept a somewhat different meaning, and which
I will return to later: Everybody should have a chance to reach the level
of material welfare that the ecological utilization space and the techno-
logical capacity allow.4 In the first part of the definition we find the
same insistence on equality as in the Wuppertal report, and even though
the loaded term quality is applied, the standards against which the
quality is to be evaluated are not made clear, so the neutrality demand
cannot be said to have been violated.
Ecological Utilization Space 159
One can, accordingly, find two basic points behind both approaches
to the concept of ecological utilization space. The first is epistemologi-
cal. It is assumed that politically neutral experts using value-free natural
science methods can specify the ecological utilization space. In the
Danish governmental exposition it is explicitly seen as a virtue of the
concept that it defines a possible way of operationalizing the environ-
mental demands of sustainable development.5 We need natural science
to tell us exactly how far we can go before we begin to act unsustain-
ably. It is like walking on the edge of a cliff on a foggy day: one wrong
step and we fall, and only scientists can see where the edge really is
through their instruments. Society is sustainable as long as it stays within
the proper limits. If it moves beyond these limits, future generations will
end up on a lower plateau with fewer resources where they have less
free scope than present generations. This way it seems possible to avoid
value questions. The only presumed value is the transcendental value of
autonomy. Everybody can behave as they please, in accordance with
their own personal values, as long as they stay within their own ecologi-
cal space. This space is defined by natural scientists without reference to
any particular conception of the good.
The second assumption is ethical. It states that the distribution of
natural resources ought to be based on a principle of (simple) equality,
because value-free, deontological ethics cannot discriminate between
people. In the Wuppertal report this is stressed several times. It is a sep-
arate goal to secure just and equal access to the resources for all human
beings,6 now and in the future. The report refers explicitly to Kants
categorical imperative as the philosophical basis of the claim. The Danish
exposition agrees on this point: each and every human being should have
an equal right to his or her share of the ecological utilization space. We
must leave the same amount and quality to future generationsa
distant echo of the Lockean proviso to leave enough and as good for
others, but not quite the same, as we shall see shortly. This is all very
much in line with the story of modern life. If there is no common con-
ception of the good, and if there is only a limited amount of goods or
resources, it makes sense to say that we should supply each person, now
and in the future, with an equal right to utilize the same amount of each
and every kind of resource as everybody else.
160 Finn Arler
Let us take a closer look at the two assumptions. We begin with the
epistemological assumption that natural science by itself, and in a
value-free way, can determine the limits we have to stay within in
order to remain sustainablethat is, in order to leave similar resources
for future generations to use. The best way to test the assumption is to
see how well it works in the specific analysis of different kinds of
resources.
Nonrenewable Resources
There are various kinds of resources. A basic distinction is the one
between renewable and nonrenewable resources. In the first case the limit
is set by the flow per unit of time; in the second case the limit is set by
the total stock. The distinction is somewhat blurred, but we do not have
to worry about that here.7 Let us just stick to the well-known distinc-
tion, and begin with the nonrenewable resources. Can natural science
tell us how much we can use in order to leave the same amount and
quality for future generations? It does seem that we face a serious dif-
ficulty right from the start. If these resources are nonrenewable, and if
human beings are going to stay on earth for a long time, how can we be
entitled to use anything at all? As long as we do not know how much
longer humans will exist (and even natural science cannot answer that
question), we cannot set the limit. If we assume that there will be humans
alive thousands and thousands of years from now, from the stated prem-
ises we will have to conclude that we cannot use anything at allat least
not relatively limited resources like fossil fuels. (We did not need much
natural science to reach that conclusion.)
A bad start, indeed, but let us change the premises a little. Instead of
talking about the same amount and quality, let us make use of the
Lockean proviso and say that there should be enough and as good
left. In this case we have an extra opportunity: if we (now or within the
foreseeable future) can fully replace a limited resource with another one,
we are allowed to use all of the resource up. In this case, enough means
enough until a substitute is found that is just as good. For instance, if
there are other energy sources that are just as good as fossil fuels in every
important respect, we are entitled to use the fossil fuels without disre-
Ecological Utilization Space 161
garding future generations (at least as long as we are only talking about
fossil fuels as a resource question).
Can we now leave it to the natural sciences to operationalize the
concept of sustainability? Before we accept the offer, we should consider
a couple of disturbing problems. The first problem is the word good,
which is included in the Lockean proviso. If we are to avoid the discus-
sion of values, what are we going to do with good? This is obviously
one of those four-letter words we are told not to use. When we dropped
the phrase same amount and quality, the reason was that it imposed
too many limitations, and we replaced it with enough and as good,
because this allowed us to make various substitutions. In each case,
however, we will have to ask whether the substitute is good enough. This
is a major problem.
Let us look at alternatives for fossil fuels, for instance. Which other
energy sources would count as good enough? Is nuclear power good
enough, even though we will be leaving radioactive waste, which will be
potentially dangerous to human beings and other living creatures for
thousands of years? Is hydraulic power good enough, even if we have to
flood some beautiful or historically significant valleys and block the
salmon pathways? Are windmills good enough, even though some people
find that they disturb the scenery? Is natural science really capable of set-
tling such issues on its own? Of course, it is not. There are obviously
value questions involved of the kind, which were transported to the free
scopes of individuals in the story of modern life.
A similar problem turns up when we try to estimate the total amount
of nonrenewable resources. Figure 6.1 depicts the so-called McKelvey
box, used by the U.S. Geological Survey (and many other geological insti-
tutions around the world) to classify resources. The disturbing issue is
not only that there is much uncertainty about the total amount of a
certain nonrenewable resource (the x-axis problem), but even more that
the estimate depends on factors foreign to natural science (the y-axis
problem). The question of how much can be used how quickly without
disregarding future generations cannot be answered without answering
a couple of other questions, which are difficult to deal with via the
methods of natural science.
The estimates depend on two factors. First, there is a technological
factor. When technology improves, more resources will be discovered
162 Finn Arler
Demonstrated Inferred
Economic RESERVES
Figure 6.1
The McKelvey box, classifying mineral resources (U.S. Geological Survey/Bureau
of Mines)
and more will become accessible. Estimates are made from a specific
point in history, however, and it is impossible to predict future techno-
logical improvements. Second, there is an economic factor, or, to be more
precise, a priority factor: some potential resources will never be used
because they are too costly to extract and utilize. Too costly is an
expression of estimates, however, which lies beyond the scope of natural
science. These estimates have to be imported from types of discourse that
lie beyond ordinary natural science. In the McKelvey box, the estimates
are imported from economics. We will see later that this choice of con-
ceptual framework can hardly be called accidental. Still, the basic point
is that we are faced with weightings including value judgments, which
cannot be arrived at using the ordinary methods of natural science.
Renewable Resources
Let us now turn to the renewable resources and see if natural science is
able to do any better here. In contrast to the nonrenewable resources, it
is not the total stock of resources that sets the limit, but the potential
flow per unit of time. We cannot utilize more resources than those
flowing through the system. We may thus be able to establish some
general demands that should not be violated. First, the exploitation rate
should never be higher than the regeneration rate. Forests should not be
utilized beyond their net production, fish should not be caught more
Ecological Utilization Space 163
quickly than the shoals can regenerate, and so on. Second, emissions
should never be so great that the ecosystems receiving the emissions
cannot neutralize them. CO2 emissions should never exceed the sinks
absorption capacity; the release of nitrogen from agriculture should
never exceed the denitrification rate, and so on. In economic terms, the
capital stock should not be reduced, wherefore the rate of exploitation
should never exceed the rate of regeneration, which can be compared
with the rate of interest.
In some cases, however, we can move beyond the rate of regeneration
for some time. We may, for instance, for a period of time catch more fish
than the rate of reproduction seems to allow, as long as the shoal does
not disappear altogether. For a number of years there will be fewer fish
to catchin other words, a smaller flow of resourcesbut the trans-
gression of the regeneration rate is possible for a while. In other cases,
unfortunate side effects may occur, but this does not make transgressions
impossible. Eutrophication of lakes and watercourses results in unfortu-
nate changes, but there is nothing absolute about this process. We can
live with lower water quality, even if the salmon cannot. There are a few
cases, of course, where we simply cannot move even temporarily beyond
the limit. For instance, there is only so much solar energy coming in
through the atmosphere, and we cannot possibly transgress the upper
limit. We cannot live without the benefits solar energy brings us, and we
cannot replace solar energy with anything else either. However, there are
only a few similar cases (if any), and these cases do not seem to be among
the most urgent ones.
Can natural science set limits here without making value judgments?
The answer cannot be anything but negative. We will be facing exactly
the same kinds of difficulties as in the case of nonrenewable resources.
Some resources can be replaced, whereas tampering with others may lead
to unfortunate consequences, but these unfortunate consequences are
seldom so damaging that we cannot live with them. There are definitely
some upper limits (we could not keep on living, for instance, if we were
the only species left), but there are lots of reasons to react long before
we even get close to such limits. Or, if the word reasons is not consid-
ered acceptable in relation to value, let us just say that there are enough
value preferences around to motivate reactions long before we get even
close to these absolute limits.
164 Finn Arler
Figure 6.2
The possibility of transgression of limits in relation to the different kinds of
resources
Ecological Utilization Space 165
without putting the survival of our own species at risk), but this is only
a minor problem. What I hope to show is that only a few resources
have to be included in the column where the transgression of limits
is absolutely impossible.
My conclusion is that it is not possible to operationalize the concept
of sustainability by the use of natural science methods alone. There are
too many value judgments involved. We may not be able to conclude in
general that there is no way at all to operationalize the concept, but it
seems obvious that it cannot be done by the ordinary methods of natural
science.8 There may be other possibilities, and I will deal with one of
them below. Before I do that, though, let us take a look at the second
assumption behind the idea of determining an ecological utilization
space: the ethical assumption that the utilization space should be dis-
tributed on an equal basis.
Let us begin with the second premise, the equality of resources, which
seems to be the easiest one to deal with. We do not have to think very
far about consequences before we realize that it is quite absurd to claim
that we should leave each and every kind of thing in exactly the same
state and amount in order to be able to let future generations have (access
to) exactly the same potential resource for their activities, not knowing
which kinds of tastes the future will bring. First, it is simply impossible
to fully comply with the claim. Natural changes inevitably occur that we
cannot control, and we cannot even function ourselves if we are forced
to keep everything in exactly the same state forever. We have no alter-
native but to give priority to the resources we consider most important,
and to leave others in a state of constant change.
Second, when trying to establish priorities, we have to recognize that
some resources, or potential resources, are simply too worthless to pre-
serve, or even less desirable than that. Theoretically we could imagine a
world, of course, where people would get a kick out of getting, say,
malaria, or where it would be a status symbol to have chemical waste
barrels piled up in the backyard. These scenarios are not likely, however,
and I must confess that, like Avner de-Shalit,9 I find it difficult to see
myself committed to leaving those hypothetical individuals the necessary
resources for their peculiar, unpredictable, and probably short-lived kind
of lifestyle. There may be fewer tons of a specific kind of toxic bacteria
in the world than there are of gold, but my hope and my guess is that
future generations will be grateful to us for leaving them the gold, not
the bacteria.
To avoid these absurd consequences without leaving the story of
modern life with its demand for operationalization, we have to find a
neutral way of dealing with valuations of resources. The solution usually
chosen by people eager to operationalize sustainability is to let money
become the common standard,10 thus letting economics get in through
the backdoor. I will return to some of the consequences of this approach
in the next section.
Until then, let us return to the first of the two premises, the equal right
of persons to the same amount of each and every resource, which they
can use in accordance with their private conceptions of a good life. Is
this a reasonable claim? First of all, it does not seem very sensible to give
everybody exactly the same kinds of things, if they have different needs
Ecological Utilization Space 167
they include, nor whether the individuals will be different when differ-
ent decisions are made.11 Furthermore, the choice of distributive criteria
would be more open within each single generation: the simple equality
criterion could be supplied with criteria like merit, needs, abilities, luck,
and so on.12
One of the disadvantages, however, when seen from the standpoint of
the story of modern life is that there is no guarantee that each indi-
vidual will receive a share that can be considered equal, or at least equi-
table, as compared with those of others. In fact, there is an obvious
problem of measuring equality: how are we to compare the relative value
of different resources, if everybody has a unique set of preferences? This
problem could be solved, though, if we changed the original claim and
said that, instead of an equal share, the average future individual would
only be entitled to an equal opportunity to have an average share.
Another disadvantage is that the inevitable valuationsthat is, the deter-
mination of what can be considered enough and as goodwill have
to be made on the communal level, if we choose to focus on the com-
munity only. But this would run counter to the story of modern life,
which only allows private valuations.
Both these problems can be solved most easily, though, if we accept
a second possible change in the equality claim: letting economics in
through the backdoor again, and saying that all individuals should not
have an equal right to the same amount of all the particular resources,
but only an equal opportunity to obtain the same amount of generalized
resourcesthat is, money, which they can exchange for whatever kinds
of goods and services they prefer. This way of changing the claim is very
much in line with the second part of the definition of ecological utiliza-
tion space in the statement from the Danish government: Everybody
should have a chance to reach the level of material welfare that the [now:
common] ecological utilization space and the technological capacity
allow.13 Material welfare can thus be interpreted as just another term
for generalized resources, or money to spend. This can also be seen to
be in line with the Wuppertal report, which recommends that the price
system should be changed in a way that makes it possible to reflect the
true value of environmental resources.14 In a system where everything
is valued at its true price, there does not seem to be any need to pre-
serve and distribute each and every resource separately.
Ecological Utilization Space 169
In this case, the claim is that every individual now and in the future
should have an equal opportunity to reach the same average level of
material welfarethat is, to acquire the same amount of money (or eco-
nomic value)as the average person in the current generation. This does
not imply anything like the utopian demand that every single person in
the future should be granted the right to have and to keep the same
amount of money as the average person of today, no matter what his or
her priorities are, but only that average future individuals should have
the same opportunities as current average individuals, leaving it up to
them whether they are interested in taking advantage of these opportu-
nities or not.
This is evidently a flexible clause that can be interpreted in quite a few
ways, but one fairly obvious interpretation would be to combine both
of the two previously described ways of changing the equality claim, and
thus continue talking about communities as well as of economics. We
are then left with the claim that the community as a whole should con-
tinue to be as well off economically as today (or maybe that the average
future individual should have at least the same opportunity as current
average individuals to obtain average portions of the common pie).15 This
way, however, the demand to operationalize the concept of sustainabil-
ity turns into exactly the kind of claim that neoclassical welfare econo-
mists prefer. In the next section, I will consider where this will take us.
Letting Economics in
just virtual or indirectly estimated prices, ways of getting all goods into
the market should be considered insofar as possiblefor example,
through privatizing goods that are still common property, or by issuing
marketable pollution or utilization permits, marketable preservation
bonds on threatened species and ecosystems, and so on.
Although various welfare functions can be described, most welfare
economists would argue that common decisions should be oriented
toward obtaining the greatest amount of utility, or preference satisfac-
tion, or welfare as measured in economic terms. Or the decisions should
comply with the Pareto or Kaldor/Hicks optimality principlesthat is,
all the projects should be promoted that can make somebody better off
economically without making anybody else worse off, or, if some people
do suffer a loss, it should, in principle, be possible to offer them eco-
nomically appropriate compensation that does not eat up all of the extra
benefit. Or they should comply with the principle behind Coases
theorem: in all situations with potentially conflicting interests, the one
solution should be sought (through negotiation or otherwise) that gives
all affected parties the greatest advantage and, in principle, nobody any
disadvantages. If all goods and services were privatized, and all benefits
and costs therefore had specified prices, the market would deal with this
problem automatically. Consequently, there would be no significant dif-
ferences between the various criteria.
There is yet another important feature connected to this way of oper-
ationalizing sustainability: future goods have to be discounted in accor-
dance with the present market rate of interest. Otherwise suboptimal
decisions will be made, giving inappropriate priority to projects that
bring fewer economic benefits than the more profitable ones. Without
discounting, environmental investments will replace other and more
profitable investments to an unreasonable degree: The criterion for
optimal social and economic development is that the marginal total ben-
efits from the different investments should be equal regardless of what
the investments are aiming at. In other words, the social discount rate
should be equal for all investments. . . . Discounting is necessary in order
to compare costs and benefits at different time periods. Attempts to avoid
discounting or to apply a different discount rate for climate measures
[or other environmental investments] than for other investments will
inevitably result in an inefficient policy.27
Ecological Utilization Space 173
Operationalization Reconsidered
forced to set priorities in preserving the relics of the past. The heritage
of the ancient world is so extensive that not all of it can receive the care
it deserves. People may even have to sacrifice part of their heritage in
order to be able to afford the good life themselves. The past can some-
times be a too heavy burden to maintain, as Nietzsche pointed out in the
second part of his socalled untimely reflections.32 If it hampers life, it
may be necessary to release the burden.
However, the more sacrifices we are forced to make, the more dis-
turbing our reactions are likely to be. We begin to realize that there are
values we cannot sell without suffering an identity crisis, where we no
longer seem to know who we really are and what is truly important to
us. Goods and values exist that cannot be conceived of as mere means
to the satisfaction of casual whims. Without these goods and values, we
would lose the bedrock of our lives. If we have any sense of identity at
all, there are things so important to us that we are willing to make major
sacrifices for them, or, to put it more aptly, there are things we are willing
to devote a significant part of our lives to, without first calculating
whether this will bring us more money or satisfactions.33
In figure 6.3, I have tried to show the differences between the three
kinds of resources. Exchangeable (or easily replaceable) resources are
related to values that are soft in the sense that they are easier to do
without than the hard-core values, to which the two other kinds of
resources are related. Critical resources are basic in relation to hard-core
values like physical health and survival, whereas the various kinds of
unique resources are important in terms of identity. Critical resources
like (sufficiently) clean water and air will be needed in all kinds of soci-
eties, while the unique resources tend to be more specifically related to
a particular culture or tradition. This does not mean that they can only
be understood and appreciated by a very local culture. The temples of
the Acropolis, for instance, do have a specific significance to the people
of Greece, but this does not prevent others from acknowledging their
significance or from considering them an important part of the common
heritage of Europe and of humankind as well.
There are areas of overlap between the three kinds of resources, of
course. It is not completely obvious, for example, where and when clean
water can be considered an exchangeable resource, and when it turns
critical. For some people the critical line appears much earlier than for
Ecological Utilization Space 177
Exchangable resources
Soft values: e.g., fossil fuels, consumer
temporary goods, all kinds of ordinary
individual objects
preferences
Figure 6.3
The three kinds of resources: exchangeable, critical, and unique
If it is true that such unique resources exist, we will have to make revi-
sions in the story of modern life. Individuals can no longer be described
exclusively in terms of their personal preferences, nor can we see the role
of government agencies simply as that of ensuring that individuals are
able to satisfy these preferences. We have to find a place for identity as
a more stable element in life than the ever-changing preferences.
I find it difficult not to closely associate the questions of identity with
the presence of a community. When we grow up as individuals we always
do it as part of a community. Our identity, the way we understand our-
selves, the conceptional resources we use when we try to come to terms
with the various ingredients of the good lifeall of these things origi-
nate from a communal source. No matter how one chooses to define it,
no community is without factions, of course, and as we grow older we
all end up with a unique combination of values and preferences. But still,
we cannot understand ourselves without the conceptual and behavioral
resources we have inherited from the community. We share our most
basic traditions with those around us.
Does this mean that we have to skip the whole story of modern life,
and let go of the theme of individualism? Not at all, but we have to
realize that the storys conception of individuals is much too one-sided.
It cannot tell the whole truth if it ignores the communal side and only
informs us about the private dimension. It becomes one-sided, too, when
it focuses only on a limited range of individual rights. To the extent that
it is concerned only with the individual, it can only consider the rights
to a private sphere of activity. It is unable to see individuals as citizens
with the right to participate in deliberations about common affairs. Thus
the concept of autonomy becomes one-sided as well.36 The only place
autonomy is sought is in the private sphere, whereas the political sphere
is either deserted or occupied and taken over by experts trying to
180 Finn Arler
Notes
1995), 27. In the English summary of this statement (Denmarks Nature and
Environment Policy 1995: Summary Report (Copenhagen: Danish Ministry of
Environment and Energy, 1995)), the presentation of the ecological utilization
space (or ecological scope) is much more vague than in the full statement.
5. Natur- og miljpolitisk redegrelse 1995, 57.
6. Mod et bredygtigt Europa, 9.
7. First, some of the nonrenewable resources can be reused over and over again.
There is a limit, though, in that there will always be a certain loss of the resource
every time it is recycled. It may not disappear altogether, but it will be dispersed
in the environment in tiny amounts, which cannot be brought back into the recy-
cling processat least not without using a disproportionately large amount of
energy. Second, some resources considered renewable may actually be used up.
Clean water, for instance, is a renewable resource as long as there is enough of
it, and as long as it stays clean. If it is used too quickly, there may be nothing
left, and if it is heavily polluted, it may no longer be usefulat least not for a
considerable amount of time. Similarly, when a desert is spreading, the renew-
able resources that used to be therethe trees and shrubs, for examplemay
not be able to regenerate. Or, to take one last example, an endangered species is
renewable; if it becomes extinct, it is not.
8. Similar conclusion were reached in a report sponsored by the Danish Min-
istry of Environment and Energy (kologisk rderumen sammenfatning [Eco-
logical Utilization SpaceProject Summary], Miljprojekt no. 433 (Copenhagen:
Danish Ministry of Environment and Energy, 1998)), as well as in the Nether-
lands Scientific Council for Government Policys evaluation of the use of the
notion of environmental utilization space in Dutch environmental policy (Sus-
tained Risks: A Lasting Phenomenon Report to the Government no. 44 (The
Hague: Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, 1995)). (I thank
Robin Attfield for bringing the Dutch report to my attention.)
9. Avner de-Shalit, Why Posterity Matters (London: Routledge, 1995).
10. This is not just the case in the sustainability debate, of course. For instance,
the first thing Ronald Dworkin does in his discussion of equality of resources is
to let the inhabitants of his thought experimentthe survivors of a shipwreck,
washed up on a desert islandinvent local money and set prices on all goods at
an auction (Ronald Dworkin, What Is Equality? Part 2, Equality of Resources,
Philosophy and Public Affairs 10, no. 4 (1981): 283345). Instead of money,
one could use manna, like Bruce Ackerman, or some other kind of apparently
neutral utility chip.
11. Thus we avoid Derek Parfits Non-Identity Problem, as well as the Repug-
nant and other Counter-intuitive Conclusions, and so on; see Derek Parfit,
Reasons and Persons, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987).
12. See also Andrew Dobson, Justice and the Environment: Conceptions of
Environmental Sustainability and Dimensions of Social Justice (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998), 130.
13. Natur- og miljpolitisk redegrelse 1995, 27.
182 Finn Arler
found in David Pearce, Environmental Values and the Natural World (London:
Earthscan, 1993), 48, 55f, as well as in many other similar books and articles.
21. Solow, Sustainability, 181.
22. Arrow et al., Intertemporal Equity, Discounting, and Economic Efficiency,
140, 141n6.
23. Pearce, Environmental Values and the Natural World, 50. Some economists
do say that this is only true up to some point, where trade-offs between cultural
and natural capital cannot be continued, because some fundamental natural serv-
ices would be irreversibly damaged (for example, David Pearce and R. Kerry
Turner, Economics of Natural Resources and the Environment (New York:
Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990), 24f, 56f). Others would argue that there is no
limit that cannot be seen from the market if everything is priced properly.
24. Pearce, Environmental Values and the Natural World, ix.
25. A couple of good overviews of these valuation techniques can be found in
Pearce, Environmental Values and the Natural World, appendix II, and in David
Pearce and Dominic Moran, The Economic Value of Biodiversity (London:
Earthscan, 1994), chap. 5.
26. Pearce, Environmental Values and the Natural World, 5.
27. M. Munasinghe et al., Applicability of Techniques of Cost-Benefit Analy-
sis to Climate Change, in Climate Change 1995: Economic and Social Dimen-
sions of Climate Change, ed. James P. Bruce, Hoesung Lee, and Erik F. Haites
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 166. The question of discount-
ing is a matter of much controversy, of course, and many economists do argue
that the discount rate should be reduced to zero, whenever the time horizon lies
beyond a couple of decades. A good overview of the arguments for and against
the use of positive discount rates can be found in John Broome, Counting the
Costs of Global Warming (Cambridge: White Horse Press, 1992), chap. 3.
28. Alex Dubgaard, Bredygtighed og forsigtighedsprincippet [Sustainability
and the principle of precaution], in Fremtidens pris. Talmagi i miljpolitikken
[The price of the future: Number magic in environmental policy], ed. Henning
Schroll et al. (Copenhagen: Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke/Det kologiske Rd,
1999), 291. Similar illustrative examples of the absurdities of economic calcula-
tions when driven outside a fairly narrow scope can be found, for instance, in
C. W. Clarks famous article about the economic sense in killing all blue whales
in the ocean and transferring the profits to growth industries (C. W. Clark, Profit
Maximization and the Extinction of Animal Species, Journal of Political
Economy 81 (1973): 950961), and in Peter Wenzs calculation that discount-
ing at a 5 percent rate would make one life today worth more than 16 billion
lives in less than 500 years (Peter Wenz, Environmental Justice (Albany, NY:
SUNY Press, 1988), 230).
29. Alan Holland has referred to this as a Cambridge change; although
nothing has happened to an area, its exchange value may change radically, or,
conversely, although the aggregated exchange value of unspoiled nature areas is
not diminishing, the areas in themselves may be changing in the most radical
184 Finn Arler
35. Even though the Danish governments proposals for a strategy for sustain-
able development put much focus on the economically defined concept of true
savings (see note 17), they also stress the need to involve other measures. The
following sentence appears on page 3 in the former as well as in the new gov-
ernments proposals: We shall avoid critical effects on environment, nature and
health, and we shall protect and preserve special and unique natural values,
which cannot be regenerated if they disappear. Formulations like these indicate
that the strategy is best understood as a compromise between one position,
represented by the Danish Economic Council with its focus on true savings
in economical terms (see note 17), and another position, until recently repre-
sented by the counterpart, the so-called Nature Council (Naturrdet), which is
more oriented toward the critical and unique resources (Naturrdet, Dansk
naturpolitik. Visioner og anbefalinger [Danish Nature Politics: Visions and Rec-
ommendations], (Copenhagen: Naturrdet, 2000)). However, the new liberal-
ist/conservative government has recently abolished the Nature Council and set
up a new (economic) environmental evaluation agency with the skeptical envi-
ronmentalist Bjrn Lomborg as director, so the balance has changed now in
favor of an economic position with a more positive view on the replacement of
resources.
36. See also the discussion of autonomy and the necessary combination of
liberal, republican, and procedural rights in Jrgen Habermas, Faktizitt und
Geltung (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992).
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7
The Environmental Ethics Case for Crop
Biotechnology: Putting Science Back into
Environmental Practice
Paul B. Thompson
understood at scales that vary from the local to the global and from
the genome to population levels. It could include issues in environmen-
tal justice, such as situations where poor or marginalized groups are
placed at differential degrees of risk from environmental hazards. In
fact, the focus of the chapter will be to argue that biotechnology
does not involve environmental hazards that differ from those associated
with other forms of agriculture. It follows that issues of environmental
(as well as social) justice should be addressed through a comprehensive
philosophy of agriculture, rather than through a conceptual approach
that construes transgenic crops as involving a singular type of threat. As
such, issues of social or environmental justice, as well as issues of food
safety, animal welfare, or consumer choice, fall outside the scope of the
discussion.
Even this narrowed focus is far too broad for a single chapter. A
major part of the dispute over the environmental risks of crop bio-
technology cannot be resolved without empirical confirmation of
contested claims. Philosophy can play only a limited role in such a res-
olution, hence my discussion will focus on the role of philosophical
assumptions that frame the debate over ecological risks from transgenic
crops. Accordingly, I will review four philosophical arguments that
find fault with transgenic crops on environmental grounds. The first is a
preservationist argument that asserts the impurity of genetic manipula-
tion. The second is a teleological argument that interprets transgenic
organisms as an affront to the order implicit within nature. Third is a
precautionary argument that applies the precautionary principle in a
general indictment of genetic engineering. Finally, there are risk analo-
gies that involve the judgment that crop biotechnology is similar to some-
thing else that is justifiably viewed in a prejudicial way. I will argue that
all of these arguments fail to make their case against genetically engi-
neered crops.
After disposing of the philosophical arguments against crop biotech-
nology, what can be said in its defense? In the interests of giving readers
what the title advertises, the chapter includes a brief discussion of
possible environmental benefits from crop biotechnology, followed by a
brief and illustrative (rather than exhaustive) discussion of biological
approaches to the evaluation of environmental risks. My intent in dis-
cussing benefits and risks is not to suggest that classical risk-benefit
190 Paul B. Thompson
reason, responsibility requires that we avoid any action that might con-
tribute to such an outcome, without regard to the likelihood of the sce-
nario. This means that when one can robustly imagine how technology
might threaten the existence or quality of human life, one may not make
cost/risk/benefit comparisons that incorporate an estimate of the proba-
bility that given events will occur. One must shun the technology in ques-
tion entirely. Jonas clearly had several kinds of technology in mind.
Foremost was nuclear energy, which through the development of nuclear
weapons threatens the annihilation of all humanity. Jonas also feared
technologies of behavior modification and social control. Such tech-
nologies threaten not the body but the soul, and it was the autonomous
freedom of the moral agent that Jonas wished to enshrine. Jonas men-
tions that genetic engineering could become implicated in such a threat,
but provides no details.18
Recent writings on the precautionary principle deviate substantially
from Jonass original argument. First, Jonass precautionary principle had
an implicitly anthropocentric orientation. It was activated by threats to
a morally significant form of human consciousness. Certain kinds of dev-
astating depletion of the natural order trigger the precautionary princi-
ple, but only because they threaten the annihilation of the human species.
This restriction does not reflect a general anthropocentrism in Jonass
thought. He leaves open the possibility for duties to animals, ecosystems,
and broader nature, but these duties do not follow from the precau-
tionary principle, nor does his formulation of the precautionary princi-
ple apply to them. Second, Jonas limits the precautionary principle (he
calls it the principle of responsibility) to risks of the most extreme and
irreversible sort. Presumably, some sort of trade-off logic would continue
to be used in evaluating the acceptability of technology that harms indi-
viduals (human or not) as well as ecosystems but that does not threaten
the extinction of autonomous reason.
More recently, appeals to the precautionary principle apply its logic
to a host of unwanted outcomes that fall short of annihilation, includ-
ing detrimental impacts on nonhuman species and ecosystem integrity.
Such applications suffer from one new problem and another problem
inherited from Jonas. These recent applications weaken Jonass approach
in that they frame the precautionary principle as a general moral norm,
one that would be applicable to virtually every action a moral agent
198 Paul B. Thompson
Risk by Analogy
Some of the legitimate risk issues associated with transgenic crops will
be discussed in the following section, but we probably would not waste
a lot of time thinking about risks if we did not have some presumptive
reasons to think that plant biotechnology could do some good. What
follows immediately is a brief conceptual and speculative discussion of
some environmentally beneficial applications of gene transfer. The intent
here is not to assert that such products are forthcoming or even that they
are likely to be developed. In the case of benefits linked to products cur-
rently being used, the intent is not to suggest that they justify the use of
these products, or to rebut criticisms based on their risks. Making either
kind of argument would involve far more empirical detail than I care to
provide. The point here is simply to give readers a picture of some of the
reasons an environmentalist might find the prospect of transgenic plants
appealing. Any adequate evaluation of these reasons would, of course,
involve a great deal more discussion and debate.22
Indigenous farmers in the tropics have long tried to control insects by
pulverizing the carcasses of dead individuals and distributing their
remains on their crops. It works to the extent that it does because it redis-
Environmental Ethics Case for Crop Biotechnology 203
tributes a virus that killed one generation of insects to the next. It is con-
sidered a form of sustainable agriculture because such viruses are gen-
erally quite specific to a particular species and have no detectable effect
on other organisms. However, even relatively poor farmers are switch-
ing to chemical agents because they provide a more reliable form of in-
sect control. Biotechnology is currently being used to identify the DNA
sequence of these insect viruses. It will be possible to insert that DNA
into crop plants, though it is not clear that it will be an effective pest
control agent. If it is, there will be no need for chemical pest control
agents, and tropical farmers will have a more effective method of pro-
tecting their crops from insect damage than saving bug carcasses. There
may also be applications in industrial agriculture, where chemical use
continues to be rampant.
Although a handful of scientists are working on this approach to pest
control, there is not yet any published work suggesting that this is a tech-
nology on any discernable horizon. And just imagine how a crop engi-
neered to contain an insect virus would play on the evening news. Similar
work has been proposed for scorpion toxins that may also be adapted
for very specific applications, but a rumor circulates among crop pro-
tection researchers that a large corporation supporting scorpion toxin
work pulled the funding because public relations officers did not relish
the idea of defending this work in the media. This company will con-
tinue to invest its research dollars in chemical pesticides. It would be
critical to do extensive risk work before bringing either of these ap-
proaches to the field, and it is entirely possible that their promise would
not be realized. But the point here is that environmental philosophers
should be supporting work to replace or avoid the adoption of broad-
spectrum chemical pesticides, rather than opposing it unilaterally
because it happens to involve biotechnology.
Another example is work to reduce lignin in woody plants that are to
be used for paper products. Lignin must be removed from wood pulp,
and its removal creates a significant environmental burden in the form
of pollution and energy consumption. Again, it is neither certain that this
can be done, nor that doing it will be compatible with environmental
goals. What is relevant here is that lignin reduction could result in
substantial improvement of environmental quality when compared to
current practices.23 Other scientists have suggested applications of tree
204 Paul B. Thompson
quickly. Plantings of Bt cotton (but not maize) are also associated with
a reduction in total insecticide use.29
We know that this is not the end of the story with either herbicide-
tolerant or Bt crops. The most common type of herbicide-resistant crops
are Round-Up Ready, meaning that they are intended for use with the
well-known Monsanto weedkiller. Round-Up is generally considered to
be among the most environmentally benign herbicides, but as Round-Up
Ready crops have become popular, other manufacturers have lowered
the price of more toxic competitors. This may ironically be leading
to an increase in the use of environmentally undesirable chemicals.
Thus the net environmental impact of Round-Up Ready technology is
an extremely vexed question, as is the matter of whether environ-
mental effects brought about through such indirect economic causality
really count against biotechnology on environmental grounds. Certain-
ly similar kinds of economic causality would be observed if organic
methods became effective competitors to chemical herbicides. It is thus
important that this discussion of environmental benefits not be inter-
preted as an attempt to prove that current transgenic crops are unequiv-
ocal environmental winners. The point, rather, is simply to make a
presumptive case for environmental benefits, one that would need to be
followed up with empirical arguments that go far beyond the scope of
this chapter. What the case of Round-Up Ready crops does illustrate
is the way ecological and economic causes interact so as to make the
assessment of environmental impacts and sustainability in agriculture
exceedingly difficult.
The Bt case is also complex. As is well known, spreading insecticides
throughout a field hastens the pace of acquired pesticide resistance, and
can result in the creation of new and uncontrollable plant pests. This
happens whether the insecticide is distributed by spray or by engineer-
ing the plant to synthesize the chemical in its own tissues. One problem
is simply that pesticides become less effective as they are used. In the case
of Bt toxin, which occurs in natural ecosystems, the rise of resistant
insects could precipitate a cascade of ecological reactions that truly
cannot be foreseen. Since we do not understand what ecological func-
tion Bt may be performing in natural ecosystems, it is impossible to
predict what would happen if species of butterfly and moth acquire
206 Paul B. Thompson
Estimating the probability and degree of ecological harm from the intro-
duction of a new crop or crop variety involves a complex mix of art,
philosophy, and science. The complexity has already been illustrated in
connection with varieties of maize that have been modified to produce
the Bt toxin. These crops were introduced in the late 1990s and have
been grown extensively throughout the United States since 1998. In
1999, a short paper documented the fact that pollen from Bt maize harms
the larvae of Monarch butterflies.30 The paper sketched a clear mecha-
nism for environmental risk from Bt crops. Although Monarch butterfly
larvae do not feed on maize, pollen from these crops could be consumed
inadvertently. This discovery was widely covered in the press and often
cited by opponents of crop biotechnology, but what was most important
was the way it provided a conceptual basis for first estimating and then
reducing the chance that this unwanted outcome might actually occur.
Such a response required several bits of knowledge that were either
wholly unknown at the time that Bt maize appeared, or that could not
be documented through published studies. One was the question of how
pollen from Bt crops would move through the environment, and another
was whether this pollen was likely to contaminate common food sources
for Monarch larvae. Yet another was the general relationship between
the life cycle of Monarch butterflies and maize production throughout
the United States. A September 10, 2001, article in the New York Times
reported that empirical research conducted since the 1999 paper by
Losey, Raynor, and Carter was published indicates that Bt maize does
not pose a significant risk to Monarch populations in the wild. One
expects ecological risk issues to be addressed in this way: an initial
description of a possible mechanism is followed by research to determine
Environmental Ethics Case for Crop Biotechnology 207
degree of risk. Had the empirical results been different in the Bt pollen
case, action would be called for. That action might involve regulatory
withdrawal, but in the case of Bt crops, one of the possible actions uses
biotechnology: it is possible to regulate the expression of the Bt gene so
that Bt is produced only in plant tissues consumed by larvae of the
European corn borer, the main pest for which Bt maize was devel-
oped to control, but not in pollen.
A more developed literature exists for the question of whether trans-
genic crops should be regarded as invasive organisms, and it is thus a
better example of how biologists respond to potential risks. Jane Rissler
and Margaret Mellon argued that risks from transgenic plants are com-
parable to those of invasive organisms. The key risk mechanism identi-
fied in their argument is that gene flow to other plants could transfer
characteristics that would make them become weedy (i.e., invasive).
There is also the possibility that the crop itself could become weedy,
though agricultural crops are almost without exception much less able
to survive and reproduce without human assistance than wild types,
which have considerably greater genetic diversity. While lay readers may
have imagined the kudzu and zebra mussel scenarios alluded to above,
the real significance of Rissler and Mellons claim is that APHIS subjects
all plants classified as noxious weeds to fairly strenuous regulatory
review. Thus the underlying issue in this debate is whether APHIS
regulators have adequately assessed the risks of invasiveness associated
with currently commercialized transgenic crops.31
A U.S. National Academy of Sciences report (NRC 2002) addresses
this question in detail. It notes that a number of hypotheses and specific
traits have been proposed for evaluating a given species potential for
invasiveness in a given ecosystem, but that there is still a significant
degree of debate among biologists as to the adequacy of these hypothe-
ses, as well as their applicability to transgenic crops. Nevertheless, this
literature has provided a basis for experimental evaluation of ecological
risks associated not only with transgenic crops, but also with crops pro-
duced through conventional breeding. One experimental study indicates
that currently grown transgenic crops have displayed no tendencies
toward invasiveness, though the interpretation of data from these exper-
iments is itself open to dispute.32 In the present context, invasiveness itself
is less critical than the question of whether the regulatory process,
208 Paul B. Thompson
plant breeding can have and have had detrimental ecological effects,
especially when plant breeding occurs in conjunction with the develop-
ment of other production technologies. In fact, conventional methods are
capable of introducing a very high degree of genetic novelty into plants.
When techniques such as radioactive bombardment and embryo rescue
are included in the conventional category (and these techniques have
been used for some time), it is not even true to say that products of con-
ventional breeding contain only genes previously extant within a given
plant family.
The second formulation is troublesome in that any given transgenic
crop implies a statement that that is almost certainly too broad. Some
transgenic crops may be too dangerous to grow under all but the most
exacting conditions. Crops that will be used to produce toxic industrial
materials, for example, should only be grown under conditions where
we can be sure that the potential for gene flow is miniscule, if they should
be grown at all.
The third formulation suffers from a similar kind of conceptual
problem. On the one hand, scientists who make this sort of claim may
be presuming that biotechnology will soon be utilized simply to increase
the efficiency of breeding, hence many if not most uses of biotechnology
will accomplish plant modifications that might have been done through
plant breeding. If such a practice became routine, this third formulation
might turn out to be true. On the other hand, if biotechnology is only
used to accomplish what cannot be done through plant breeding, the
class of transgenic crops will have a very different profile of phenotypic
traits from that of conventional crops. The ecological risks may turn out
to be incomparable in that event. The irony here is that public opposi-
tion to biotechnology may be leading plant researchers to avoid using it
to accomplish things that might have been done (though in a more costly
manner) through conventional methods. Hence the reason that products
of crop biotechnology may be unlike those of crop breeding may depend
more on social causality than on biology.
It is actually the fourth and fifth interpretations of the just like plant
breeding claim that tell us most about the risks of crop biotechnology.
Crop development can be characterized as involving two stages. The first
is the introduction of a new, desired trait into the crop germplasm.
Whether recombinant DNA methods are used, the typical result is a plant
210 Paul B. Thompson
that is far from being useful to farmers. The second stage consists of
backcrossing with established varieties and test plantings that are needed
to develop and prove that one has a genetically stable and agronomically
desirable variety containing the new trait. Biotechnology differs from
classical approaches to crop development only with respect to the first
of these stages. A transgenic crop can be judged comparable to a con-
ventionally bred variety because, as with any conventionally bred variety,
the process of backcrossing and test planting through six or more gen-
erations allows the research team to determine whether the crop is gen-
etically stable, and whether phenotypes display any obvious unexpected
traits (variations in color, foliation, height, fertility, and the like). This
does not mean that when grown in an ecologically vulnerable area (near
wild relatives, already disturbed ecosystems) or in conjunction with other
agricultural technologies (pesticides, irrigation), the crop will not have
unwanted environmental effects. It just means that what is needed (and
this is what environmental philosophers should be working toward) is a
general approach to the assessment of environmental impact from agri-
cultural production practices, rather than an approach that singles out
biotechnology.
There are biologists who dispute the just like plant breeding view.
Writing for informed laypersons in the Chronicle of Higher Education,
Stephen R. Palumbi argues that conventional breeding transfers not only
the single functional gene (along with its promoters) but also a complex
of genes that regulate the expression of the gene in different biological
settings. All of the currently commercialized transgenic crops are single-
gene transfers of the type Palumbi calls brute force genetic engineer-
ing.33 If Palumbi is right, even the fourth and fifth interpretations listed
above have to be qualified. But even so, Palumbi (who is not a plant
scientist) calls not for a ban on crop biotechnology but for a stage
for culling and sorting. Arguably, such a stage is already in place:
the second phase of crop development described above. Many plant
scientists would rebut Palumbis claims by making two arguments. First,
he may overstate the genetic stability of conventional breeding. Wide
crosses can produce exceedingly dysfunctional plants. Second, problems
in gene regulation become evident during the second phase of crop devel-
opment, irrespective of the way novel traits were introduced. But in any
case, readers must take note: this dispute between biologists is a sub-
Environmental Ethics Case for Crop Biotechnology 211
stantially different kind of argument than the ones with which the
chapter began.
Sometimes the objections turn out to be less substantive. Jane Rissler
and Margaret Mellon also take the just like plant breeding claim to
task in their book on ecological risks of transgenic plants by suggesting
that transgenic crops could become invasive. In fact, Rissler and Mellon
repeatedly cite research on conventional crop breeding in documenting
the biological mechanisms that can create an environmental pest. Yet the
inference they draw from this is not that all nonindigenous agricultural
plant varieties can have environmental outcomes that deserve scrutiny,
but that transgenic seeds in particular pose that risk. In effect, Rissler
and Mellon insert the adjective transgenic into sentences that truthfully
describe ecological risks of applied crop science in broad terms. Since all
transgenic crops are examples of applied crop science, this inference pre-
serves its truth value, but it would be equally permissible (and equally
vacuous) to insert adjectives such as green or perennial. The most egre-
gious instance of such adjectival insertion occurs in an extended quota-
tion from a 1990 article titled Gene Flow in Squash Species. Rissler
and Mellon render Hugh Wilsons prose as follows: Gene flow from
[transgenic] cultivars to other elements of its gene pool, both domesti-
cated and free-living, could provide a marked selective advantage to indi-
vidual recipients . . . , with the brackets appearing in Rissler and
Mellons text. Wilsons original statement offered as a general claim
about gene flow in squash certainly applies to transgenic products of
biotechnology, and indicates biological mechanisms that are highly rele-
vant to the ecological risks of any nonindigenous plants. Rissler and
Mellons alteration makes it seem as if biotechnology contributes
uniquely to this event.34
Although Rissler and Mellon call for regulatory responses to the risks
of genetically engineered crops, their book actually presents the argu-
ment for regulatory attention to the ecological risks of all new crops
having traits that would confer reproductive advantages on their progeny
(or wild relatives) in unmanaged ecosystems. As with Palumbis objec-
tions, rather than opposing crop biotechnology on environmental ethics
grounds, we are now engaged in a much more focused discussion of
protocols for developing and regulating transgenic plants. This is a
debate that presupposes the central claim that I wanted to establish in
212 Paul B. Thompson
The topics and goals of agricultural research have been contested since
the very beginnings of organized agricultural science, and philosophy
plays a large role in framing the controversy. Rather than being ap-
preciated as crucial to our collective future, the debate over research
allocations has resonated within lay publics, including environmental
philosophers, as a source of mistrust in scientific institutions, generally.
It is almost as if people think that to even talk about allocating dollars
for technology development makes one venal and impure. Of course if
one mistrusts plant scientists, one would quite rationally tend to regard
their assurances about the ecological risks of transgenic plants with sus-
picion. Ironically, those assurances might even become the primary basis
for judging the technology to be risky. The justification or defeat of this
pattern of inference is a key normative issue for the risk politics of late
industrial society.
Following suggestions made in Andrew Feenburgs book Questioning
Technology, I submit that the most useful role for environmental philoso-
phers is to take a more serious interest in the political economy of tech-
nology development.35 This means that they should be engaged in
networks with agricultural researchers who want to pursue environ-
mental goals but who may lack either the right conceptual underpinnings
or the right sociopolitical philosophy to do so effectively. One could go
on and on documenting the weaknesses in scientists worldview that con-
tribute to failure here, but one example must suffice. An article by three
University of North Carolina biologists concludes by remarking that
scientists must become more proactive in the public debate if agricul-
tural biotechnology is to make a long-lasting and sustainable impact on
improving food and fiber production and human health.36 Unfortu-
nately, they seem to think that this responsibility is fulfilled by talking
to news reporters and publishing discussions of misconceptions and
public perception in journals such as BioTechniques. They say noth-
ing about networking with people in environmental studies (including
philosophers) at their own universities, or with members of environ-
mental or sustainable agriculture groups. There is apparently no need to
talk with the people who actually care about the environment, or who
are teaching and writing for students and informed lay audiences.
However, the issue in the present context is to prevent environmental
philosophers from making a complementary mistake. Democratic,
214 Paul B. Thompson
ness with which scientists and regulators have taken the ecological risks
of crop biotechnology. Couched within a philosophical commitment to
redeploy recombinant technology more resolutely in pursuit of ecologi-
cal goals, such debate would be very healthy. But that is not the current
context. After nearly twenty years of debate on the risks of agricultural
genetic engineering, it would appear that our collective capacity to
understand and discuss these risks is at an all-time low. Environment-
al philosophers should take the lead in refocusing that debate. To do so,
they must understand that there is an environmental ethics case for crop
biotechnology.
Notes
8. Anne Rossignol and Phillipe A. Rossignol, A Rift in the Rift Valley, Reflec-
tions: Newsletter of the Program for Ethics, Science, and the Environment,
Oregon State University 5, no. 2 (1998): 2, 7.
9. See M. Rogoff, and S. M. Rawlins, Food Security: A Technological Alter-
native, BioScience 37 (1987): 800807.
10. Dennis T. Avery, Why Biotechnology May Not Represent the Future in
World Agriculture, in World Food Security and Sustainability: The Impacts of
Biotechnology and Industrial Consolidation, NABC Report 11, ed. Donald P.
Weeks, Jane Baker Segelken, and Ralph W. F. Hardy (Ithaca, NY: National
Agricultural Biotechnology Council, 1999), 97109.
11. Gary L. Comstock, Vexing Nature: On the Ethical Case against Agricultural
Biotechnology (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), 183215.
12. Jeremy Narby, Shamans and Scientists, and Jochen Bockemhl, A
Goethean View of Plants: Unconventional Approaches, both in Intrinsic Value
and Integrity of Plants in the Context of Genetic Engineering, ed. David Heaf
and Johnannes Wirz (Llanystumdwy, UK: International Forum for Genetic
Engineering, 2001), 2631.
13. Laura Westra, Living in Integrity (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield,
1997).
14. See note 1.
15. See Paul B. Thompson, Risk, Ethics and Agriculture, Journal of Envi-
ronmental Systems 13 (1998): 137155.
16. Dale Jamieson, Discourse and Moral Responsibility in Biotechnical Com-
munication, Science and Engineering Ethics 6 (2000): 265273.
17. See Paul B. Thompson, Uncertainty Arguments in Environmental Issues,
Environmental Ethics 8 no. 1 (1986): 5975.
18. Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of Ethics for the
Technological Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).
19. Norman E. Borlaug, Ending World Hunger: The Promise of Biotechnology
and the Threat of Anti-Science Zealotry, Plant Physiology 123 (2000):
487490; Edward Soule, Assessing the Precautionary Principle, Public Affairs
Quarterly 14 (2000): 309328.
20. Michelle Marvier, Ecology of Transgenic Crops, American Scientist 89
(2001): 160167.
21. John Perkins, Insects, Experts and the Insecticide Crisis (New York: Plenum
Press, 1982).
22. For a concise overview of the scientific literature, see L. L. Wolfenbarger and
P. R. Phifer, The Ecological Risks and Benefits of Genetically Engineered
Plants, Science 290 (2000): 20882093.
23. T. Tzfira, A. Zuker, and A. Altman, Forest-Tree Biotechnology: Genetic
Transformation and Its Application to Future Forests, Trends in Biotechnology
16 (1998): 439446.
Environmental Ethics Case for Crop Biotechnology 217
We begin with a brief account of three walks we have taken, two together
and one a solo walk, where we have encountered conservation problems
of what we will call the old world1 kind. In the second section we
offer an old world suggestion about how these problems should be
approached. In the third section we criticize certain new world ap-
proaches to such problems, and in the fourth section suggest that our
old world approach has application to new world conservation
problems also. Finally, we suggest that our preferred approach has
explanatory power and is metaphysically sound.
Walk 1
The first walk was around an area called Little Langdale in the United
Kingdoms Lake District National Park, and our guide was the regional
manager for the National Trust, the conservation body that owns the
land. Our attention was drawn to a number of problems typical of the
region that organizations such as the National Trust face: how much
grazing to permit; how to manage the small wooded areas; whether to
fence off some of the higher slopes to allow the juniper, which still had
a foothold there, to recover. Then our path turned through a farmyard
and out the other side to a small mound. The mound, we learned, was
a largely natural feature, slightly shaped at the edges by human hand.
Recent archaeological investigation had established that this mound was
once a Thingmount, or Norse meeting place, and thus a site of some
significance.2 Part of the mound had been excavated unwittingly by the
local farmer and was now buttressed by a concrete silage clamp. So, one
220 Alan Holland and John ONeill
question was whether the Trust should aim to restore the mound to
its original condition by removing the clamp. The other question was
raised by a more ephemeral adornment. Atop the mound and, as it were,
its crowning glory, stood a thoroughly unabashed and utilitarian washing
line. It was, after all, an excellent spot for drying clothes.
Walk 2
The second walk was around Arnside Knott, a small limestone out-
crop in an area just south of the Lake District National Park known as
Silverdale; this too was under the care of the National Trust. Once more
we were fortunate to have the regional manager as our guide. Here, in
recent memory, a certain butterfly had flourishedthe High Brown
Fritillarywhich is relatively rare in the UK context. The colony was
now much reduced and there was a considerable risk that it would dis-
appear altogether. It had flourished because of local use of the land for
grazing purposes; this created the limestone grassland that the insect
requires for breeding purposes. The colony began to dwindle when the
practice of grazing ceased. What the National Trust has recently done is
to fence off a section of the land, cut down the naturally arriving yew
and silver birch that had successfully begun to recolonize the land, and
reintroduce grazing.
Walk 3
The third walk was around a disused slate quarry in North Wales. From
a landscape perspective it would normally be judged something of an
eyesorea scarand from an ecological point of view it would be
judged relatively barren, showing little sign of life except for a few
colonizing species. For both these reasons the local council decided to
embark on a reclamation project that would involve landscaping the
area. But as work started, there was local opposition. To carry through
this project would be to bury the past: it would involve burying the
history of the local community and the story of their engagement with
the mountainas revealed in the slate stairways, the hewn caverns,
and the exposed slate face. Higher up, and most poignant of all, the
Yew Trees, Butterflies, Rotting Boots, and Washing Lines 221
workmens huts were still in place, and inside the huts could be seen rows
of decaying coats hanging above pairs of rotting boots, where the last
men to work the quarry had left them.
have no place for time, narrative, and history in their accounts of how
we should decide what is to be done. Utilitarianism, with its emphasis
on future consequences, and existentialism, with its emphasis on the
unconstrained nature of human decision making, are notable culprits.
While Rawlsian theory is not consequentialist, its impartial perspective
stretches across time and is to that extent atemporal. Evaluations of spe-
cific history and processes form part of that body of knowledge of par-
ticulars of which those in the original position are ignorant: agents enter
deliberation devoid of knowledge of the particular time and place in
which they exist. And even theories that do introduce retrospective con-
siderations do so in the wrong way. Some deontological theories, for
example, make it a matter of some contract that has been entered into.
But in the context of conservation we are not constrained by the past
because of any promises we have made. The obligations we have to the
past, if that is a proper way to speak here, are entirely nonvoluntary.
Nor are our evaluations, and the constraints on our actions, about
the legitimacy of the procedures that got us where we are. Robert
Goodin is one of the few political theorists to have noted the importance
that history and process have as a source of environmental value.
However, he spoils his case by associating it with Nozicks historical
entitlement theory of justice.5 This appeal to Nozick to illustrate the
point about history misses the mark entirely. The value a place may have,
say as an ancient meadowland, has nothing at all to do with the justice
or otherwise of any procedure that handed it down to us, and everything
to do with the continuing historical process it encapsulates. In addition
to these critical reflections on ethical theory, it should also be observed
that a number of the currently proposed goals of environmental policy,
such as sustainability, land health, and the maintenance of biodi-
versity, as these are typically defined, fail similarly to incorporate the
dimensions of time and history, and must be judged inadequate on that
account.
At this point we will no doubt disappoint some of our readers by
failing to give clear criteria for what exactly constitutes an appropriate
trajectory from what has gone before, or what the best way of continu-
ing a narrative might be. The main reason is that we believe this to be
a matter for reasoned debate and reflective judgment on the part of those
who have studied the situation carefully and thought hard about it: it is
Yew Trees, Butterflies, Rotting Boots, and Washing Lines 223
beauty but also the absence of those who were driven from their homes
in the clearances. Their memory must also be respected. The argument
over the fate of the 100-foot-high statue to the Duke of Sutherland on
Beinn Bhraggie Hill near Golspie is about which history we choose to
acknowledge.8 We should perhaps support its removal not just on aes-
thetic grounds but also for what it represents to the local people, some
of whom are descended from those who were driven out. For the same
reasons, the now dilapidated cottages that their ancestors left behind
should perhaps remain. That there is a problem about conflicting tra-
jectories, often associated with differences of scale and pace between
natural history and human history, we do not deny. But we hold that
this is not a problem for our approach, but a problem revealed by our
approach. It is not the task of analysis to make difficult problems appear
easy, but to reveal difficult problems for what they are.
So far, our stance has been merely defensive. We have defended an old
world approach to certain old world problems, and found a new
world approach wanting. But now we propose to go onto the offen-
sive. We are aware that the inhabitants of new world countries, such
as the United States or Australasia, are likely to find these old world
conservation problems quaint or parochial. They hardly concern big
global issues, and they hardly concern the problems of conservation in
large wild places, the areas of so-called minimal human influence. Or so
it may seem. But in fact, we want to suggest that, far from it being helpful
to bring over new world concepts of nature to help solve the quaint
and parochial problems of the old worldand we have just attempted
to show that it is not helpfulon the contrary, what would be more
helpful would be to take the perspective we have just suggested for
dealing with the old worlds conservation problems out into the new
worlds wildernesses.
The first of our reasons for favoring the old world perspective is empir-
ical: the new world is much more like the old world than it likes to
pretend. In short, we do not quite buy the wilderness story. Our pre-
ferred version of that story would be this: that emigrants from the old
world arrived in the new world and mistakenly thought it to be wilder-
ness; this folk memory has lived on . . . and on. In fact, what these im-
migrants were encountering as new was another peoples old world,
another peoples home. The Indian and the Aborigine had already radi-
cally transformed their land. Although (as previously argued) we may
not know, because it is impossible to say, what that land would have
been like naturally, we may at least be sure that the presence of these
indigenous peoples will have made some considerable difference.
The failure to recognize this has itself been the source of problems in
the treatment of the ecology of the new world. In particular, in both
Yew Trees, Butterflies, Rotting Boots, and Washing Lines 227
hurricanes and locusts might be, they are more often conceived as a curse
than as a blessing. Should this suspicion prove to have some foundation,
and should natural capital, as distinct from the natural world, prove rel-
atively robust, then this aspect of the case for claiming that biotic impov-
erishment results from human impact would remain to be made.
But even where there is agreement in judgment as to what will count
as biotic impoverishment or loss, the question remains whether the new
world approach provides an adequate account of the justification for
such judgments. This is the subject of our final section.
Presto
awesome role in the histories of others, so that they come to have their
own significance in the narratives of human and natural events.
We suggest two areas in particular where the virtues of our account
show through. The first is in diagnosing cases of conflict and the second
is in diagnosing the tragedy of environmental loss. Taking conflict first,
if we return to the conservation problems with which we started, we see
that part of the tension between human history and natural history arises
from the different paces of change in the two. And the history of the
natural world and the objects it contains matter just as much as do those
from human history, for the natural, too, has its own narrative dimen-
sion, its own natural history. It is the fact of their embodying a par-
ticular history that blocks the substitutivity of natural objects by human
equivalents, rather than, for example, the inability to replicate their func-
tion. While natural resources may be substituted for one another and
by human equivalentsthey have value by virtue of what they do for
usnatural objects have value for what they are, and specifically for the
particular history they embody. The block on faking nature15 lies not
just in the origin of natural objects but in the history that takes us from
their origin. Were we in 500 years time to release into some natural
bamboo-plantation pandas developed from embryos that were naturally
conceived but then frozen, their natural origins would be unlikely to
confer a natural status on the result. Thus, naturalness is a ques-
tion of both origin and history, and conservation problems are frequently
associated with conflicting historical narratives.
Our second illustration concerns the tragic dimension of environ-
mental loss. We do not here challenge the appropriateness of applying
terms such as impoverishment and loss to certain environmental situa-
tions, but we do question whether reference to the ecological character-
istics of these situations is alone adequate to convey the gravity of such
applications. We find a hiatus here. If you look in the larder and find
that you are running out of sugar, you might speak of this as a tragedy,
but in doing so you would be conscious of using hyperbole. There is a
shortfall between saying of a situation that it is unsustainable, and saying
that it is tragic. The ecological characterization fails, in our view, to
capture what is at stakefails to capture the element of tragedy that
environmentalists feel. A sense of tragedy requires that there be a story
Yew Trees, Butterflies, Rotting Boots, and Washing Lines 233
and the story can be fiction or, as Colin Macleod argues in his essay on
Thucydides and Tragedy, fact. Thucydides, Macleod writes, can
certainly be said to have constructed his history and interpreted events,
in a strict sense of the term, tragically. This is not at all contrary to his
aims as a historian. History is something lived through.16 We agree.
It is only in the context of a history of nature, we submit, that the
sense of something akin to an environmental tragedy can find adequate
expression.
Coda
It is worth noting that the perspective offered here has some sound meta-
physical backing. For what we are in effect proposing is that the term
nature should be taken in a sense that the philosopher Saul Kripke has
identified as that of a rigid designator.17 That is, we should be taken
to be using nature in the manner of a (proper) name, as referring to a
particular historically identifiable individual. We should not be taken to
be using the term descriptively as referring to whatever is, or might be,
natural. This coincides with the way Kripke himself has proposed con-
struing terms referring to constituents of the natural world, such as
organic and inorganic kinds, and is consonant with the theoretical posi-
tion adopted by some leading biologists who construe species (ontolog-
ically) as individuals rather than classes.18 We are claiming, accordingly,
that our evaluative attachment is to this natural world, not to any pos-
sible natural world. For there could be no guarantee that any possible
natural world would be good. Some possible natural worlds could turn
out to be horrific, like certain medieval depictions of hell. A corollary of
this position is that there is no such thing as a state or condition of some-
thing that constitutes its being natural, or an identifiable set of char-
acteristics that makes any item or event natural. Being natural is, and
is only, determined by origin and by history: it is a spatiotemporal
concept, not a descriptive one.
Notes
1. We recognize that the distinction between old and new world per-
spectives is something of a (gentle) caricature. It is intended only to register a
234 Alan Holland and John ONeill
tendency. In fact, many of the sharpest critiques of the wilderness concept are
by new world authors. See, for example, the discussions in J. Baird Callicott and
M. Nelson, eds., The Great Wilderness Debate (Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 1998), and William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinvent-
ing Nature (New York: Norton, 1995).
2. In fact, this is thought to be the only site of its kind on the UK mainland,
although another one has been found on the Isle of Man.
3. Epictetus, Enchiridion XLIII, from The Moral Discourses of Epictetus, trans.
Elizabeth Carter (London: Dent, 1910), 270.
4. Alan Holland and Kate Rawles, The Ethics of Conservation, Report presented
to The Countryside Council for Wales, Thingmount Series no. 1 (Lancaster:
Department of Philosophy, Lancaster University, 1994), 37. We would suggest
that the significance or making sense referred to here should form a key
element of the coherence that characterizes public reflective equilibrium (see
the editors introduction to this volume).
5. Robert Goodin, Green Political Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992),
2630.
6. An approach broadly endorsed by the UKs old Nature Conservancy
Council: The standards of nature conservation value thus became estab-
lished through practice and precedents based on collective wisdom
(Nature Conservancy Council, Guidelines for Selection of Biological Sites
of Special Scientific Interest (Peterborough: Nature Conservancy Council,
1989), 13).
7. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book II.
8. Between 1814 and 1819, the Black Duke, as he was known, played a
leading role in evicting the indigenous people from their homes. See David Craig,
On the Crofters Trail (London: Jonathan Cape, 1990).
9. Aldo S. Leopold et al., Wildlife Management in the National Parks, U.S.
Department of the Interior, Advisory Board on Wildlife Management, Report
to the Secretary, March 4, 1963, p. 4; cited in A. Runte, National Parks: The
American Experience, 2nd ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987),
198199.
10. Leopold et al., Wildlife Management in the National Parks, 6; cited in Runte,
National Parks, 205.
11. Kenneth Olwig, Reinventing Common Nature: Yosemite and Mt.
RushmoreA Meandering Tale of a Double Nature, in Uncommon
Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York: Norton,
1995), 396.
12. Leopold et al., Wildlife Management in the National Parks, 21; cited in
Runte, National Parks, 200.
13. Michael Jones, Finland: Daughter of the Sea (Folkestone: Dawson, 1977),
15, 59.
Yew Trees, Butterflies, Rotting Boots, and Washing Lines 235
14. J. Suomin, The Grain Immigrant Flora of Finland, Acta Botannica Fennica
111 (1979): 1108; H. Jutila, The Seed Bank of Ballast Area in Reposaari, SW
Finland, unpublished ms.
15. Robert Elliot, Faking Nature, Inquiry 25 (1982): 8193.
16. Colin Macleod, Collected Essays (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983),
145146.
17. Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), 34.
18. See, for example, Michael Ghiselin, Species Concepts, Individuality, and
Objectivity, Biology and Philosophy 2 (1987): 127143; Ernst Mayr, The
Ontological Status of Species, Biology and Philosophy 2 (1987): 145166.
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
III
Rethinking Philosophy through
Environmental Practice
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
9
The Role of Cases in Moral Reasoning:
What Environmental Ethics Can Learn from
Biomedical Ethics
Robert Hood
ethics, where there are also roles for ethicists in business and professional
environments.1
Perhaps the most successful applied ethics discipline, both in terms of
developing an applied, case-based focus and in creating a nonacademic
role for ethicists, is biomedical ethics. The clinical side of biomedical
ethics is notable for its departure from normal philosophical ethics
and its success in engaging interest and respect from the health care pro-
fessions. Clinical biomedical ethicists are employed by many hospitals
and participate as integral members of health care teams. As yet there is
no analog in environmental ethics to the practical or clinical side of clin-
ical biomedical ethics, where philosophers work as part of the care team
side by side with physicians and nurses and patients in a clinical setting.
In sum, whereas environmental ethics by and large still is focused on the
theoretical issues, biomedical ethics has both a theoretical and a clinical
side. To understand what environmental ethics can learn from bioethics,
I next review a debate in bioethics.2
paradigm cases where there was agreement, then explored more com-
plex cases posed by biomedical research. Using arguments from analogy,
precedents, and counterexamples, in a process similar to that found in
common law, Jonsen and Toulmin report they triangulated their way
across the complex terrain of moral life, gradually extending their analy-
sis of relatively straightforward problems to issues requiring a much
more delicate balancing of competing values.4
As Jonsen and Toulmin tell the story, the call for ethicists to focus
on cases is at odds with the dominant traditions in ethics in the last
several centuries, which they characterize as being focused on principles.
Regardless of whether we agree with all of Jonsens and Toulmins history
of ethics, nevertheless their heretofore-overlooked discussion of case-
based ethics is a fruitful source for a discussion of the role of cases in
environmental ethics. In addition to their defense of the use of cases in
moral reasoning, they provide a detailed model of what a case-driven
approach to moral and political philosophy looks like. Through their
work in medical ethics they provide an analogous model or direction of
how case-driven environmental ethics might develop.5
Jonsens and Toulmins argument for a case-based approach appeals
to a broadly construed Aristotelian picture of moral reasoning. They
characterize their method as being
the analysis of moral issues, using procedures of reasoning based on paradigms
and analogies, leading to the formulation of expert opinions about the existence
and stringency of particular moral obligations, framed in terms of rules or
maxims that are general but not universal or variable, since they hold good with
certainty only in the typical conditions of the agent and circumstances of action.6
recounted that his own conviction on this score dates from the day I
saw a wolf die. Leopold and others were eating lunch when they spied
some wolves. In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance
to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the pack. Among
the kill was an old wolf: We reached the wolf in time to watch the fierce
green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since,
that there was something new to me in those eyessomething known
only to her and the mountain. This event was a pivotal one in Leopolds
intellectual and personal development. When a friend urged Leopold that
Sand County Almanac should contain material that illustrated Leopolds
own transformation, Leopold noted the story, including this passage:
I was young then, and full of trigger itch; I thought that because fewer wolves
meant more deer, that no wolves meant hunters paradise. But after seeing the
green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such
a view.
Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have
watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing
slows wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and
seedling browsed, first to anemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every
edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain looks as if
someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exer-
cise. In the end, the starved bones of the hoped-for-deer herd, dead of its own
too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-
lined junipers.8
Leopolds description of this event reveals the degree to which his posi-
tion had changed from his early work in the Forest Service, where he
viewed the wolf as vermin. He had come to the understanding that
land health just is biological diversity, and for health to be maintained
native biological diversity must be maintained. However, he communi-
cated this in terms of this narrative, which allows the audience to accom-
pany him on his moral transformation.9
Such detailed cases are an extension of life not only horizontally, bring-
ing the reader into contact with events or locations or situations or prob-
lems not previously met, but also vertically, giving the reader experience
that is deeper, sharper, and more precise than much of what takes place
in life. Given the fact that many people lack firsthand understandings
of natural areas and systems, detailed descriptions such as Leopolds,
which include aesthetic and ecological factors, help develop a moral im-
agination, thereby training judgment and encouraging more competent
244 Robert Hood
Moral Disagreement
The third element of case-based moral reasoning is an account of how
to evaluate problem cases against clear paradigm cases. Disputes are
settled by identifying relevant similarities among cases, and figuring out
by a series of arguments from analogy where the problematic case fits
within the established paradigmatic case taxonomy. The circumstances
of particular casesthe details acquired by specifying who, what,
where, by what means, why, how, when, and about which or whom
are used to locate a problematic case in the taxonomy. Weighing the
circumstances, motivations, and degrees of probability in a case are
examples of the sorts of things that are brought to bear on a cumulative
246 Robert Hood
Jonsen and Toulmin argue that medical ethics, and any applied field,
should be case based. Focusing on cases can facilitate agreement about
treatment and policy even when there is disagreement over principles.
This suggestion that different justifications can nevertheless converge
on the same policy or plan of action has also been made, for different
reasons, by Bryan Norton. Indeed, it would seem that there are a number
of similarities between biomedical ethics and environmental ethics.
Bioethics emerged to cope with novel problems due to technological, eco-
nomic, and social changes in medicine such as euthanasia and organ
The Role of Cases in Moral Reasoning 247
doctoring, though he cautioned that land doctoring was still so new that
actions must not be confused with cures. The art of land-doctoring is
being practiced with vigor, but the science of land-health is a job for the
future.16 However, even when there is recognition within the manage-
ment professions of normative issues, there is no widespread cultural
recognition and esteem for environmental management as engaged in a
moral endeavor. Unlike medical ethics, where the medical profession was
already seen as engaged in a moral endeavor, in environmental ethics
we have had to make the case that the problems truly are moral ones.
In addition, environmental ethics calls for huge changes at the core of
the resource management fields, not just incremental ones. Whereas
bioethics never questioned the ends of medicine, environmental ethics
has raised searching questions about the ends of management and
technology.17
A third difference concerns the institutional contexts of medical and
environmental decision making. In medicine, the decision team is rela-
tively small, and usually there are clear channels of authority. In con-
trast, much environmental decision making in the United States is public
in the sense that government agencies have requirements to solicit
public comment on policy matters and specific land-use decisions. The
public context of environmental decision making means that environ-
mental decisions are made according to democratic or representational
paradigms, where notions of satisfying the aggregate or average prefer-
ences may be decisive.
A fourth difference between environmental ethics and biomedical
ethics concerns the discourse and practice of medicine and environmen-
tal management. Even though there has been debate about justification
in bioethics, nevertheless there is recognition that the day-to-day dis-
course and practice of the medical profession is organized in terms of
cases. Medical professionals approach patient care in terms of a narra-
tive of a casequestions are asked about the patients history and symp-
toms, recommendations are made concerning treatment, and the case is
concluded when the patient is cured. Interesting cases are the subject of
professional debate and discussion as casesthey are published as case
studies in medical journals and the case is the subject of general rounds
in teaching hospitals. Moreover, the education and socialization of
doctors and nurses involves exposing them to clinical cases and
250 Robert Hood
I will sketch how the case-based process might work with the following
example. Clinical environmental ethics cases, when viewed as ethical
problems, might be analyzed in terms of the following four questions
and topics:
1. Ecosystem condition and status: What is the condition of the ecosys-
tem and what management interventions should be done to protect,
maintain, or improve the condition?
2. Preferences of stakeholders: What are the goals to which management
should be directed according to the preferences of stakeholders?
3. Ecosystem health: What are the goals to which management should
be directed based on the health of the ecosystem?
4. Contextual features: What social, economic, legal, and administrative
factors influence management?
Exploring these four topics, in order, provides a structured way of inves-
tigating and resolving ethical issues given the condition of the ecosystem,
the management goals and facts about the ecosystem, and the constraints
imposed by the specific context. These topics could help environmental
managers understand where the moral principles meet the circumstances
of the clinical case. Asking these four questions helps organize informa-
tion so that clear cases and analogies can be developed. Consider the fol-
lowing case:
The successful control of sea lampreys (Petromyzon marinus) in the Great
Lakes is one of the major success stories in fisheries management. Sea lampreys
are parasitic eel-like fish native to the Atlantic Ocean. They entered the Great
Lakes in the early 19th century after the construction of a shipping canal, and
then migrated throughout the Great Lakes and tributaries. They are an exotic
species and lack significant predation in the Great Lakes. By the 1950s they were
largely responsible for the severe decline of lake trout and whitefish populations
in the Great Lakes, as well as for effects on the ecosystem as a whole. In the late
1950s a lampricide chemical, TFM (3-trifluoromethyl-4-nitrophenol), was dis-
covered which kills larval lamprey and, at the levels used for control, is non-
toxic or has minimal and temporary effects on aquatic plants, invertebrates, fish
and waterfowl. It is also non-toxic to humans and other mammals. TCM is
252 Robert Hood
reapplied every 310 years in streams infested with larval lamprey, and has result-
ing in a recovery of fish populations and the sport and commercial fishing indus-
tries. Even though the lampreys have not been eradicated, they have been
managed and controlled.19
practices that work, and need not be reserved for unusually challenging
cases. More detailed work using the case-based approach may increase
our understanding of well-functioning environmental practices and
enrich theoretical environmental ethics, just as clinical bioethics has
informed theoretical ethics. Second, a case-based approach would be sig-
nificantly more complicated if there was disagreement about manage-
ment goals, or if the treatment was not as successful. However, if it is
clear that a case-based approach would have difficulty with more com-
plicated situations, I hope it is apparent that theoretical approaches
would likely do no better, and might do worse to the extent that they
did not take into account the nuances and details of the particular case.
Conclusion
Notes
in gasoline, and are these values that we can applaud? In short, was this
a good example of how to do it, or are the results tainted by the means
used to obtain them?
I examine, in turn, the effectiveness of lead-in-gasoline policies and the
ethical underpinnings of the governments actions. I show first that this
policymaking effort exemplified how to do it when measured by two
of its most important results: federal policies markedly decreased United
States lead air emissions and public blood lead levels, and the policy
process engaged a broad segment of the general public. However,
government officials used different, even contradictory values in response
to changing political pressuresthat is, they employed grab bag
ethics. I evaluate this tangle of ethical and political considerations from
a pragmatists perspective and I conclude that lead-in-gasoline policy-
making was a success, albeit a qualified one.
This analysis reinforces themes articulated by Andrew Light and Avner
de-Shalit in their introduction to this book. In particular, the case of
leaded gasoline links theory with practice by illuminating the specific
kinds of ethical discourse that are explicit or, more often, implicit in
environmental policymaking. Further, one can see a clear need for
philosophers in decisions like that of leaded gasoline, which are domi-
nated by technical experts who often fail to articulate the contestable
normative assumptions hidden behind elaborate analytical facades.
However, environmental ethicists will not become integral to public
debates until they acknowledge the worth of, and become fluent in, the
language that policymakers use. As the case of leaded gasoline demon-
strates all too clearly, that language is messy, inconsistent, and largely
anthropocentric. Many environmental ethicists may understandably
prefer to express themselves through the elegance of abstract theoretical
arguments, but in so doing they will continue to consign themselves to
the margins of environmental policymaking and many valuable ideas will
never enter the public sphere.
It is all too tempting for Americans to look back from the vantage point
of 2002 and to proclaim the inevitability of leaded gasolines demise.
But in so doing we would revise history, for the reduction and sub-
Grab Bag Ethics and Policymaking for Leaded Gasoline 261
Post, former EPA official Robert Sansom recalled that the Agencys rec-
ommendation to reduce lead in leaded gasoline for public health pro-
tection was among the most difficult decisions Administrator William
Ruckelshaus ever made, opposed by the White House, John Ehrlichman,
Treasury Secretary George Schultz, OMB Director Caspar Weinberger,
even by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. At the
height of the energy crisis oil refiners placed full-page ads in the 27
November 1973 and 19 March 1974 Washington Post in which they
predicted direly that removing lead from gasoline could have the net
effect of dumping 1 million barrels of crude oil every day. The Circuit
Court for the District of Columbia at first overturned, and then barely
upheld, EPAs rulemaking to reduce lead in leaded gasoline (Ethyl Corp.
v. EPA, 541 F. 2d 1 (D. C. Cir. 1976), cert. denied 426 U. S. 941 (1976)).
But by the early 1980s elite attitudes toward lead in gasoline had
shifted, as became evident in the backlash against a short-lived attempt
to undermine the lead phasedown. The Reagan Administration sought
to eliminate government interference in the marketplace, and at the
urging of the White House Task Force on Regulatory Relief, EPA
proposed relaxing or rescinding the lead phasedown.10 Even more
disturbingly, EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch met with representatives
of a small refinery and effectively promised them she would not enforce
the existing leaded gasoline limits. One EPA analyst who attended that
astonishing meeting recalled that the Administrator stated that she was
not going to enforce the regulations on something that was going to be
drastically changed or abolished.11
Elite reactions to these actions were overwhelmingly negative.
Members of Congress and representatives of the medical community
condemned any effort to increase gasoline lead concentrations.12
The Washington Post (22 March and 27 May 1982) and the New York
Times (18 April 1982) editorialized against backroom deals and relax-
ation of the lead rules. Syndicated columnist Jack Anderson and even
conservative commentator George Will strongly endorsed the lead
phasedown.13 Large refiners also protested, claiming that EPAs proposal
would perpetuate an unfair competitive advantage for smaller refiners.14
Under fire for their proposals, EPAs political appointees quickly reversed
course and ordered further reductions in gasoline lead concentrations in
1982 and again in 1985.
264 Vivian E. Thomson
Ashlands motives were not entirely altruistic: the company was also
concerned about recouping its investment on facilities that would manu-
facture unleaded gasoline and ethanol, a lead substitute. Even so, the
companys definitive public acknowledgment of leads health impact
marked a dramatic change from its position in 1970. Many other
refiners supported EPAs 1984 proposal to reduce lead gasoline con-
centrations to negligible levels, even though some argued about the
appropriate timing thereof. State and local government representatives,
health officials, and conservation groups overwhelmingly advocated
further reductions in lead levels or an outright ban on leaded gasoline.16
Strikingly, many citizensindividually and in groupsalso com-
mented directly on these actions. EPA received over 1000 and 1500
written comments on its 1982 and 1985 rules, respectively. Among the
groups offering these comments were a predictable range of Washington
insidersrefiners, lead manufacturers, national and local environmental
organizations, state and local governments, trade groups, farming
organizations. But hundreds of comments came from citizens outside the
Washington policy community. Included in this latter group was an enor-
mous hodgepodge of citizen organizations, local government represen-
tatives, and businesses, such as the Studebaker Drivers Club of Central
Oklahoma, the Northwestern Boating Council, the Six Rivers Racing
Association, the Ear, Nose and Throat Associates of Spokane, the New
York City Office of the Comptroller, the City of Avon Lake, Ohio, the
Tahoe Fracture and Orthopedic Medical Clinic, the Small Car Shop of
Grab Bag Ethics and Policymaking for Leaded Gasoline 265
Rosehill, Kansas, Sids Auto Parts and Hardware Store (no city given),
Yankee Wood Saw of Hoosick Falls, New York, the Heart of Dixie
Mustang Club, Hackd Magazine of Portland, Oregon, Bacons Sugar
House of Jaffrey Center, New Hampshire, and the Fairville, New York
Volunteer Fire Department. Others listed no group affiliation, implying
that they were offering input as individuals. Comments came from
virtually every state, showing that concern over leaded gasolines regu-
lation extended widely and was not limited to particular geographic
areas.17 And the leaded gasoline rule making attracted far more com-
ments than comparable Clean Air Act rules completed in this same
period. Between 1983 and 1988 other major, high-profile Clean Air Act
actions garnered from 60 to 500 comments.18
Why were so many citizens from across the country activated over
policymaking for leaded gasoline? EPA records do not reveal the nature
of each individuals remarks. But the summaries reveal that many
worried about increased gasoline prices and about whether their boats,
cars, and farm equipment would run effectively on low-lead gasoline. If
public concern over environmental issues is inversely related to public
confidence in the federal governments actions, as one observer has spec-
ulated,19 then some commenters may have been provoked into partici-
pating by the political firestorm that eventually consumed many of
President Reagans controversial environmental appointees.
However, many commented on EPAs proposals because of their
concern over leads public health effects.20 Survey data indicate that this
may have been a longstanding concern for many Americans. As far back
as the early 1970s two national polls showed that 60 to 70 percent of
respondents said they often or sometimes worried about leaded
gasoline exhaust.21 Reasonably frequent media articles undoubtedly kept
these concerns alive. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s popular, wide-
circulation magazines like Parents Magazine, Psychology Today, and the
Saturday Evening Post reported often on lead, frequently highlighting
the special risks for children.22 More elite publications were no less atten-
tive: the New York Times published 274 stories between 1970 and 1990
on the subjects of lead air pollution or leaded gasoline, with pulses of
articles in 1970 (63 stories), 1982 (20 stories), and 1984 (24 stories). As
a result of this sustained media coverage, many members of the general
public must have been at least vaguely aware that products with lead
266 Vivian E. Thomson
were hazardous and that leaded gasoline was the subject of policy
discussions.
Those debates ended with the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, which
banned leaded gasoline for highway sale after 1995 and which also
forbade the production or sale of engines requiring leaded gasoline after
model year 1992.23 The policymaking system that, at best, provided
mixed signals in 1970 regarding the need for, and advisability of,
unleaded or low-lead gasoline had legitimized drastic reductions in lead
additives by the mid-1980s and a ban by 1990.
A variety of evidence testifies to the dramatic environmental impact of
removing lead from gasoline. By 1990 leaded gasoline comprised only 5
percent of total gasoline sold in the United States.24 Between 1970 and
1996 estimated national lead air emissions plummeted by over 98
percent, from 220,869 to 3869 tons annually.25 Outdoor air monitoring
data from a wide variety of urban areas show that lead concentrations
dropped by over 90 percent between 1976 and 1992.26 Lead can be
transported for great distances via atmospheric currents and lead
levels in Greenland snow decreased in tandem with U.S. gasoline lead
consumption.27
A key question was whether lowering lead in gasoline would have an
impact on blood lead levels, given that humans are exposed to lead from
sundry sources (e.g., lead paint, lead solder in cans, lead in pottery and
drinking water). Several studies have confirmed a strong link between
gasoline lead additive production and blood lead levels. National blood
lead levels and lead additive production moved in parallel: even seasonal
shifts in lead additive production were mirrored by similar changes in
national mean blood lead levels.28 Between 1976 and 1991 mean national
blood lead levels and automobile lead emissions dropped by 78 percent
and by over 95 percent, respectively.29 Despite early questions about
whether regulating gasoline lead additives would have a measurable
effect, these analyses put such doubts to rest.
Although the growing use of catalytic converters would have spurred
refiners to supply some unleaded gasoline, the evidence clearly shows
that gasoline lead levels would not have dropped as precipitously without
federal intervention. Industry and public resistance to the advent of
unleaded and lower-lead gasoline was initially quite strong for several
reasons: adding lead was the cheapest method for raising octane levels;
Grab Bag Ethics and Policymaking for Leaded Gasoline 267
unleaded gasoline required more crude oil to produce than leaded, which
was an important consideration during the 1970s energy crisis; and it
was unclear whether automakers would use catalytic converters or some
other method to meet federal auto emission standards. Even as they pro-
duced more unleaded gasoline, refiners introduced more lead into leaded
gasoline because of its octane-enhancing qualities. And about 10 to 15
percent of motorists driving cars with catalytic converters misfueled
their cars with leaded gasoline, for a variety of reasons.30 As a result,
consumption of leaded gasoline and lead additive in the early 1980s
remained much higher than anticipated.31
In summary, policymaking for lead in gasoline worked. The evidence
shows that lead air emissions dropped markedly after the government
mandated the widespread availability of unleaded gasoline and as the
amount of lead in leaded gasoline was decreased through government
regulation; monitored air concentrations of lead decreased substantially
in tandem with lead emissions; and, as gasoline lead levels dropped,
blood lead levels fell substantially. Other important measures of policy-
making success were the widespread consensus that gradually coalesced
in the policymaking community and the fact that, at least in the 1980s,
leaded gasoline policy actions engaged a hundreds of individual citizens
and citizens groups who were scattered widely across the country.
Notes
15. United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Hearing
before the Committee on Environment and Public Works: Airborne Lead Reduc-
tion Act of 1984, 98th Cong., 2d sess., 22 June 1984, 203, 204, 206.
16. United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Hearing
before the Committee on Environment and Public Works; ESI International,
Summary of Comments on the Environmental Protection Agencys August 2,
1984, Proposal on Regulation of Fuel and Fuel Additives (Lead Phasedown),
prepared for the Office of Mobile Sources, Environmental Protection Agency,
1984.
17. United States Environmental Protection Agency Docket no. A-81-36; United
States Environmental Protection Agency, Regulation of Fuels and Fuel Addi-
tives, Federal Register 50, no. 45 (7 March 1985): 9386.
18. This survey was performed on LEXIS/NEXIS (Envirn library, Fedreg file) on
14 April 1999. The search was designed to capture all Clean Air Act rules clas-
sified as major by the Office of Management and Budget (i.e., those estimated
to cost more than $100 million annually) that were finalized between 1983 and
1988. Even the 1987 action limiting the use of ozone-depleting chemicals
attracted far fewer comments (500) than the leaded gasoline rules.
19. Riley Dunlap, Public Opinion and Environmental Policy, in Environmen-
tal Politics and Policy: Theories and Evidence, ed. James P. Lester (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 1989).
20. Environmental Strategies, Inc., Summary of Comments on the Environ-
mental Protection Agencys February 22, 1982, Proposal on Regulation of Fuel
and Fuel Additives (Lead Phasedown), prepared for the Office of Air, Noise and
Radiation Enforcement, Environmental Protection Agency, 5 October 1982.
21. Louis Harris and Associates, March 1971 Harris Survey; the 1972 Virginia
Slims American Womens Opinion Poll; both sets of results obtained from the
Public Opinion Location Library, a Roper Center database available through
LEXIS/NEXIS.
22. See, for example, Max L. Fogel, Warning: Auto Fumes May Lower Your
Kids IQ, Psychology Today 13, no. 8 (January 1980): 108, and Claude A.
Frazier, Suffer Little Children, Saturday Evening Post 252, no. 7 (October
1980): 72.
23. United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, A Leg-
islative History of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, Committee Print
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1993).
24. United States Environmental Protection Agency, Motor Vehicle Tampering
Survey 1990 (Washington, DC: Office of Air and Radiation, 1993).
25. United States Environmental Protection Agency, National Air Pollutant
Emission Trends, 1900 to 1996 (Research Triangle Park, NC: Office of Air
Quality Planning and Standards, 1997).
26. United States Environmental Protection Agency, National Air Quality and
Emissions Trends Report, 1992 (Research Triangle Park, NC: Office of Air
Grab Bag Ethics and Policymaking for Leaded Gasoline 277
Agency, Regulation of Fuels and Fuel Additives, Federal Register 50, no. 45
(7 March 1985): 9386.
40. David T. Deal, Mobile Source Fuels and Fuel Additives, in Clean Air Law
and Regulation, ed. Timothy A. Vandever (Washington, DC: Bureau of National
Affairs, 1992).
41. Andrew Light, Contemporary Environmental Ethics: From Metaethics to
Public Philosophy, forthcoming in Metaphilosophy (2002).
42. Richard Rorty, Pragmatism, Relativism, and Irrationalism, in Richard
Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism (Essays: 19721980) (Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press, 1982).
43. Andrew Light and Eric Katz, Environmental Pragmatism and Environ-
mental Ethics as Contested Terrain, in Environmental Pragmatism, ed. Andrew
Light and Eric Katz (London: Routledge, 1996); Matthew Festenstein, Pragma-
tism and Political Theory from Dewey to Rorty (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1997).
44. Kelly A. Parker, Pragmatism and Environmental Thought, in Light and
Katz, Environmental Pragmatism.
45. Ian Shapiro, Political Criticism (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1990).
46. Shapiro, Political Criticism; Light and Katz, Environmental Pragmatism
and Environmental Ethics as Contested Terrain.
47. Deborah A. Stone, Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making
(New York: Norton, 1997); Bruce A. Williams and Albert R. Matheny, Democ-
racy, Dialogue and Environmental Disputes: The Contested Languages of Social
Regulation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995).
48. Shapiro, Political Criticism.
49. James Bohman, Democracy as Inquiry, Inquiry as Democratic: Pragmatism,
Social Science, and the Cognitive Division of Labor, American Journal of
Political Science 43, no. 2 (1999): 590607.
50. Morris Dickstein, Introduction: Pragmatism Now and Then, in The
Revival of Pragmatism: New Essays on Social Thought, Law, and Culture, ed.
Morris Dickstein (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998).
51. Alan Ryan, John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism (New
York: Norton, 1995); Paul B. Thompson, Pragmatism and Policy: The Case of
Water, in Environmental Pragmatism, ed. Andrew Light and Eric Katz (London:
Routledge, 1996).
52. Sandra B. Rosenthal and Rogene A. Buchholz, How Pragmatism Is an
Environmental Ethic, in Environmental Pragmatism, ed. Andrew Light and
Eric Katz (London: Routledge, 1996).
53. Dickstein, Introduction: Pragmatism Now and Then, 3.
54. Shapiro, Political Criticism; Ryan, John Dewey and the High Tide of
American Liberalism.
Grab Bag Ethics and Policymaking for Leaded Gasoline 279
55. Charles Lindblom, Inquiry and Change: The Troubled Attempt to Under-
stand and Shape Society (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 277n35.
56. Sheila Jasanoff, Acceptable Evidence in a Pluralistic Society, in Acceptable
Evidence: Science and Values in Risk Management, ed. Deborah G. Mayo and
Rachelle D. Hollander (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); K. S. Shrader-
Frechette, Burying Uncertainty: Risk and the Case against Geological Disposal
of Nuclear Waste (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
57. John Dewey, Philosophy and Democracy, in John Dewey: The Political
Writings, ed. Debra Morris and Ian Shapiro (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993).
58. Cass Peterson, How the EPA Reversed around the Gas Pumps,
Washington Post, 1 August 1984, sec. A.
59. Jane Mansbridge, Public Spirit in Political Systems, in Values and
Public Policy, ed. Henry J. Aaron, Thomas E. Mann, and Timothy Taylor
(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1994), 157.
60. See, for example, Mark Sagoff, The Economy of the Earth: Philosophy, Law,
and the Environment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
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11
Animals, Power, and Ethics: The Case of
Foxhunting
Clare Palmer and Francis OGorman
Before considering the course of the hunt itself, we want to look at the
broader locus of human-animal power relations in which the hunt is
Animals, Power, and Ethics 283
located. Hunting a fox is, after all, a complex, interspecies activity where
members of three species are in pursuit of a member of one.
For this human-driven pursuit to occur, the cooperation of dogs (both
foxhounds and terriers) and horses must be obtained, and this coopera-
tion forms the backdrop against which hunting takes place. Lets think,
for instance, about the processes involved in producing a foxhound ready
to take part in a hunt (although the production of a hunting horse or
terrier is somewhat different, many of the fundamental features remain
the same).
First, the foxhound is a pedigreed, domesticated dog. Thus its very
body, its genetic makeup, biological constitution, appearance, and tem-
perament are inscribed with human choice. Over generations, desirable
characteristics have been optimalized while undesirable ones have been
bred out. Sexual partners have been carefully selected by humans to
produce an individual hound displaying the qualities of intelligence,
speed, stamina, voice and nose.10 Of course, this process may produce
imperfections, as Foucault argues: Differences, peculiarities, deviance
and eccentricities are even more highlighted in a regime concerned to
seek them out.11 It is also possible, given the relatively limited human
knowledge of genetics, that the pedigree process may create more serious
genetic vulnerabilities among the hounds apparent only at some future
date. But however flawed the results, the very constitution of even the
imperfect foxhound has been shaped by humans.
Once born, the hound puppy enters a world where its subjectivity is
constructed and developed by those both human and nonhuman around
it. It will learn something about rank and pecking order among its fellow
dogs. However, it will also be involved in a series of relations with
humans that will affect its ability to act. These may be restrictive on the
hound. Patton characterizes such restrictions, in the human context, as
external limits to the kinds of act which may be carried out or . . . inter-
nal limits to the kinds of action the agent is capable of undertaking.12
The external limits in the case of a dog may take a variety of forms.
Control over available space, kind of space, and mobility is one form of
limit; much of the time the hound will be spatially confined in kennels;
when taken out it may be restrained. It may also be isolated from other
members of its species for periods of time. Such spatial and social con-
284 Clare Palmer and Francis OGorman
straints form the context in which the hound develops. At the same time,
the hound is learning internal limits to its actions. It will be taught par-
ticular kinds of behavior relating to its bodywhen and where to defe-
cate, what sort of behaviors are appropriate in response to which sounds
and verbal commands. This knowledge is psychologically internalized
from various external human practices relating to the body, such as the
use of violence or rewards of food. In learning to behave as an adult fox-
hound ready for a hunt, the hound must deeply internalize human dis-
ciplinary practices. Viewed in this way, the adult foxhound is profoundly
inscribed with human power practices: the very constitution and form
of the hound is shaped by human desires; the space in which the hound
may move and the social world with which it interacts is constructed by
human decision; and the rules it has internalized and the behavioral
responses it demonstrates are shaped by human hands. Indeed, the
production of domesticated animals is one example of the creativity
of human power practices.
However, the hound is not entirely a passive surface shaped by
humans. It may resist elements of this process, to some extent at least:
otherwise we would have no concept of a dog as being disobedient.
It may howl for hours when left in a place it does not want to be, ignore
human commands, escape from confined spaces, fight other dogs, eat
what is not intended for it. But for the domesticated dog, these forms of
resistance are entirely located within a framework of human domina-
tion; ultimately dog resistance is what Foucault describes in a different
context as no more than a certain number of tricks which never brought
about a reversal of the situation.13 Selective breeding cannot be
resisted by animals; it is a dominating practice that produces, even
where an animal is purposefully bred for ferocity, a docile body, in that
it is a body created to do what humans want of it. It represents a form
of capture of the others own power or capacities.14
The fox, in contrast, can be characterized as having an unruly body.
This might apply in several respects. For instance, foxes are rarely bred
by humans for hunting. Where this does happen, particular favored char-
acteristics are not selected (there is no attempt to produce bushier
brushes, longer legs, pointier snouts). Thus, even on the occasions where
they are bred, foxes retain what we might think of as a constitutive wild-
ness, understanding wildness here to mean that their genetic constitution
Animals, Power, and Ethics 285
In the United Kingdom, there are two different forms of foxhunting: the
autumn hunt, or cub hunting from August to October, and the main
winter hunt season from November to April. Autumn hunting takes
place when the seasons cubs are maturing, and entire families of foxes
are together in woodland coverts (which have sometimes been planted
by humans for this purpose). These coverts are encircled by the humans
and horses of the hunt, while the dogs are sent into the woodland and
encouraged to remain there. Dogs within the wood hunt foxes until foxes
are killed or break cover and disperse in different directions. The reduc-
tion of fox numbers and the dispersion of fox families is one of the
purposes of cub hunting. In addition, it provides humans with the oppor-
tunity to train and discipline young foxhounds to distinguish between,
for instance, foxes and deer, and only to hunt foxes; to know the sound
of the horn and what the various calls mean.16
In contrast to the autumn hunt, the full foxhunting season may entail
dogs, horses, and humans chasing a fox for considerable periods of time
across open countryside. Although the average chase is only seventeen
minutes before a fox is killed or its scent lost, the Worcestershire Hunt
recently claimed to have covered ninety miles following one fox (and
several horses died of exhaustion). The hounds are encouraged to chase
the fox by being deprived of food prior to the hunt; however, if the fox
is caught, it is supposed to be killed by the lead hound biting it at the
back of the neck rather than by being torn apart by the hounds en masse.
Its body, however, is frequently given back to the hounds to eat. If a
chased fox runs into an unstopped earth, terriers are often used to flush
foxes out into the open again, although sometimes the terriers kill the
fox underground.
What then can we make of human-animal power relations in the
course of foxhunts? A number of different descriptions exist in hunting
literature; we can only focus on a few here.17 One characteristic fre-
quently discussed is the imagined bonding of horses/dogs with humans
in the course of the hunt. Scruton, for instance, comments that hunting
with hounds is the noblest form of hunting. And this is because it is the
form in which our kindred nature with the animals is most vividly
present to our feelings. The pleasure that we feel in this kind of hunting
Animals, Power, and Ethics 287
is borrowed from the animals who are really doing itthe hounds who
pursue and the horses who excitedly follow them.18 Certainly, humans,
horses, and dogs must cooperate in the course of a hunt. There is a
common purpose (at least between the humans and the dogs) and some
degree of mutual dependencythe humans are dependent on both horses
and dogs to chase the fox; the dogs and horses at various times rely on
human guidance. But what is this sense of bonding and kindred nature
that is felt with dogs and horses while huntinga sense that does not
extend to the fox? It is only possible because humans have shaped domes-
ticated animals so that they are doing what humans want when humans
want it. (The imagined bonding soon breaks, presumably, if the horse
refuses to jump a fence or the dogs lose the fox and chase a rabbit.)
Bonding with the fox does not occur not just because the hunters are
trying to kill the fox (in some cultures an imagined bonding with hunted
animals is ritually necessary) but because, in one sense at least, the fox
is defying a human project (even though, in another sense, the pursuit is
necessary for the hunt to happen).19
In exploring these power relationships further, it is helpful to look
more closely at the (usually unwritten) rules of huntingin particular
the idea of the fair chase. This is widely discussed in hunting
literature and has a long historical heritage.20 Luke suggests that
the idea of the fair chase means that animals are not pursued when
their flight is restricted by water, deep snow, or fencing; when motorized
vehicles are used to track them; when they are electronically tagged;
or when they are placed outside their natural habitat.21 That is to say,
a fair chase is possible when the odds are not so overwhelmingly
against animals that they have no possibility of escape. These rules seem
generally to be observed in the case of British foxhunting, although the
chances of foxes escaping are lessened by the practice of blocking fox
earths before dawn so that they cannot take refuge during the course of
the hunt.22 However, that the fox has an opportunity to escape is an
important part of the hunt. Scruton maintains that a hunt should ensure
that the fox or stag has the best chance of saving himself, while the
great hunting advocate, Ortega, comments: If these countermeasures
did not exist, if the inferiority of the animal were absolute, the oppor-
tunity to put the activities of hunting it into effect would not have
occurred.23
288 Clare Palmer and Francis OGorman
There are, of course, many ethical arguments both for and against
hunting. What ethical decisions are made in this context depend on the
ethical framework and methodology adopted. This chapter does not
attempt to address questions of this kind, and we are not intentionally
proposing either a prohunt or antihunt position. However, we do suggest
that thinking about the whole context of human-animal power relations
surrounding the hunt, as well as during the hunt itself, may indicate new
perspectives on a few elements of the ethical debate.
One of the arguments that constantly resurfaces in ethical debates
about hunting is what hunting says about human relationships with
nature. Much of this turns on different uses of the highly contested term
nature. One strand of antihunting discourse argues that hunting is an
exhibition of human domination over nature and for this reason should
be ethically condemned. In contrast, one strand of prohunting discourse
maintains that hunting is natural, allowing humans to feel oneness with
nature and for this reason should be ethically applauded.
Here, of course, nature is being used in different senses. Within anti-
hunting discourse the idea that hunting is an exhibition of human dom-
ination over nature is usually underpinned by the idea that nature is what
is not human, or as Cartmill puts it in his recent book on hunting,
what is not part of the human domain.27 The prohunting argument
that hunting is natural in part relates to an idea of nature as the
290 Clare Palmer and Francis OGorman
Notes
no. 1 (1997): 2544; Roger J. H. King, Environmental Ethics and the Case
for Hunting, Environmental Ethics 13, no. 1 (1991): 5985; Gary Bekoff
and Dale Jamieson, Sport Hunting as InstinctAnother Evolutionary
Just-So Story, Environmental Ethics 13, no. 4 (1991): 375378; Thomas Vitali,
Sport HuntingMoral or Immoral?, Environmental Ethics 12, no. 1 (1990):
6982.
3. Animal is used here in the traditional sense, understood as nonhuman.
We acknowledge that the use of the opposition human-animal sug-
gests (inaccurately) that humans are not animals; it is adopted merely as
convenience.
4. Yi-Fu Tuan, Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1984). Tuan understands power as dominance and as a
consciously held possession.
5. See, for instance, Andre Collard and Joyce Contrucci, Rape of the Wild
(London: The Womens Press, 1988), 48; Nick Fiddes, Meat: A Natural Symbol
(London: Routledge, 1993), 173; Matt Cartmill, A View to a Death in the
Morning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 135. A. Franklin,
in On Fox-Hunting and Angling: Norbert Elias and the Sportisation Process,
Journal of Historical Sociology 9, no. 4 (1996): 454, also argues that, in the
past at least, foxhunting was a broader demonstration of power over rural
England.
6. There are a number of difficulties involved in applying Foucauldian
approaches to animalsin particular, Foucaults interest in discursive forms of
power. However, ways some of these difficulties may be approached have been
addressed in Clare Palmer, Taming the Wild Profusion of Existing Things? A
study of Foucault, Power and Animals, Environmental Ethics 23, no. 4 (2001):
339358.
7. Bryan S. Turner, The Body and Society (London: Sage, 1993), 79.
8. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1984), xx.
9. Michel Foucault discusses this in some detail in The Subject and Power,
included in Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, ed. Hubert Dreyfus and
Paul Rabinow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 208226. The idea
is also discussed by Paul Patton in Taylor and Foucault on Power and
Freedom, Political Studies 37 (1989): 260276.
10. Countryside Alliance, Hunting the Facts (1999), available at
http://www.countryside-alliance.org.
11. Alec McHoul and Wendy Grace, A Foucault Primer: Discourse, Power and
the Subject (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1993), 72.
12. Patton, Taylor and Foucault on Power and Freedom, 262.
13. Michel Foucault, Interview with Herodote, in Power/Knowledge: Selected
Interviews and Other Writings 19721977, ed. C. Gordon (Brighton: Harvester,
1980), 89.
Animals, Power, and Ethics 293
14. Paul Patton, Taylor and Foucault on Power and Freedom, Political Studies
37 (1989): 260276.
15. A comment that has uncomfortable resonance with the slave overseer who
said, Why, I wouldnt mind killing a nigger more than I would a dog. Reported
in K. Jacoby, Slaves by Nature? Domestic Animals and Human Slaves, Slavery
and Abolition 15, no. 1 (1984): 8999. Attributed to James Gray, United
Kingdom House of Commons Hansard Debates, 29 October 1997, Part 9,
Column 847.
16. Countryside Alliance, 1999.
17. Norbert Elias, in An Essay on Sport and Violence, in Quest for
Excitement, ed. Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986),
argues that the relationships involved in foxhunting have also changed over
timethat in early days humans were more closely involved in the kill, but that
later, with sportization, the hounds became the principal actors and responsi-
ble for the violence. If Elias is right, this suggests (unsurprisingly) that the
human-nonhuman relations involved in hunting are not universally constant, but
change over time.
18. Roger Scruton, From a View to a Death: Culture, Nature and the
Huntsmans Art, Environmental Values 6, no. 4 (1997): 471482.
19. In contrast, though, some antihunt discourses also rely on a sense of
bonding and kindred naturebut with the fox rather than the hounds. The
fox is seen as humanlike in the sense of being sentient and intelligent, and the
discourse depends on some sense of personal identification (and hence bonding)
with what it would be like to be that fox. Here the fox is constructed in terms
of familiarity and harmony with humans, rather than otherness and defiance.
20. See Anne Rooney, Hunting in Middle English Literature (Cambridge:
Brewer, 1993); Mira Friedman, Hunting Scenes in the Art of the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance, 2 vols. (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1978). Edward
of Norwich, 2nd Duke of Yorks The Master of the Game: The Oldest English
Book on Hunting (London: Chatto and Windus, 1909) is a useful starting point
in any consideration of the sizable amount of primary literature on medieval
hunting and its rules.
21. Luke, A Critical Analysis of Hunters Ethics, 27.
22. See D. Itzkowitz, Peculiar Privilege: A Social History of English Fox-Hunting
17531885 (Brighton: Harvester, 1977), 3; United Kingdom House of Commons
Hansard Debates November 29 1997 Part 3 Column 1206.
23. Jos Ortega y Gasset. Meditations on Hunting (New York: Charles
Scribners Sons, 1972), 49.
24. Michel Foucault, Governmentality, in The Foucault Effect: Studies in
Governmentality, ed. G. Burchill, C. Gordon, and P. Miller (Sussex: Harvester,
1993), 220; Foucault, The Subject and Power, 225.
25. Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 37.
26. Luke, A Critical Analysis of Hunters Ethics, 28.
294 Clare Palmer and Francis OGorman
This chapter explores the ethical and political issues that arise from
environmental practice in the area of biodiversity conservation. The cen-
tral concern of environmental ethics has been the relationship between
human beings and nature: providing moral justification for the value of
the nonhuman natural environment; exploring the limits of the rights of
humans vis--vis nature; positing the rights that nature could be said to
have against humans, and the considerations of justice that place duties
on human beings in their interactions with nature. On the other hand,
no such unity of purpose characterizes environmental practices that
emanate from a variety of sourcesranging from popular practices to
environmental activism and from government regulation to international
agreementsand therefore speak quite different languages.
Biodiversity conservation is an area where the gap between envi-
ronmental ethics and environmental practice is arguably the widest.
Drawing attention to it is important for two reasons. First, the chief
policy and indeed political questions that have been at the center of
debates on biodiversity in recent times are underpinned by rival ethical
assumptions that call for explication. At the bottom of every policy and
political statement on the subject, there lies implicit a normative posi-
tion about the relationships between nature and human beings, as well
as the diverse social, political, and moral communities to which indi-
viduals belong.
Second, there appears to be a certain inadequacy in the traditional way
mainstream environmental ethics has looked at the human-nature rela-
tionship. Even as they recognize the differentiatedness of nature (in terms
296 Niraja Gopal Jayal
of animals, plants, and other living organisms) and seek to account for
the treatment of whole species as well as of individual members of these
species, environmental ethicistswith a few notable exceptions like
Murray Bookchinfrequently tend not to differentiate between human
beings as they relate to nature. For the purposes of environmental ethics,
therefore, a merchant banker in New York is, in her actual practices
and her moral responsibilities toward nature, no different from a tribal
person displaced from her forest habitat by a dam project in western
India. Implicit in such a view is a certain universalism, and nowhere does
this become more problematic than in the consideration of biodiversity,
where we may observe a vast range of human-nature interactions. Such
interactions may go beyond a purely instrumentalist view of the envi-
ronment in terms of natural resource use (which would include the con-
sumers as well as the conservers of nature), to encompass relationships
with the environment that enter into the self-perception of individuals
and even into the very constitution of their individual personhood and
their social self.
An undifferentiated view of the category of the human person in envi-
ronmental ethics may therefore be unhelpful if we are to explore the
different ethical values implicitly invoked in claims of rights or justice in
relation to the natural environment. The validity of such an approach
may be justified in two distinct ways, one theoretical and the other empir-
ical. For the first, theoretical justification, let us take the argument for
welfare rights as an example. Such an argument is premised on a recog-
nition of special needs in situations of social and economic inequality,
which justifies special provisioning by the state, on the grounds that
the universalist ascription of civil and political rights to all citizens is an
insufficient guarantee of their equality.1 Similarly, we need to go beyond
the rather flat standard account of the human person that, assuming the
task of equipping individuals with rights to be complete, seeks to extend
these to animals, plants, and even nonhuman, nonsentient, living beings.
Such a project does not take into account how some people are more
closely and intimately linked with nature, such that their individual and
social self is constituted by that relationship. The following excerpt from
a letter written by a tribal person in the Narmada Valley in western
Indiafacing displacement on account of the Sardar Sarovar damto
the Chief Minister of the state government, illustrates this:
Ethics, Politics, Biodiversity 297
You tell us to take compensation. What is the state compensating us for? For
our land, for our fields, for the trees along our fields. But we dont live only by
this. Are you going to compensate us for our forest? . . . Or are you going to
compensate us for our great riverfor her fish, her water, for the vegetables that
grow along her banks, for the joy of living beside her? What is the price of this?
. . . How are you compensating us for our fields eitherwe didnt buy this land;
our forefathers cleared it and settled here. What price this land? Our gods, the
support of those who are our kinwhat price do you have for these? Our adivasi
(tribal) lifewhat price do you put on it?2
human life on earth as having intrinsic value; they believe that the rich-
ness and diversity of life forms contributes to the realization of this value;
and they are convinced, finally, that human beings have no right to
diminish this richness and diversity except for the satisfaction of vital
needs. This argument has been extended to assert that all organisms and
entities in the ecosphere, being parts of an interrelated whole, are equal
in their intrinsic worth. A common criticism of this perspective has been
that, in privileging the worth of the whole ecosystem, it provides no
grounds from which the value of individual plants or microorganisms
might be determined. All organisms may be part of an interrelated whole,
but this is insufficient to establish that they are all of intrinsic worth, let
alone of equal intrinsic worth.8 If we do extend our respect for sentient
beings to nonsentient living things, on what basis do we differentiate
between the greater or lesser worth of some, in situations where practi-
cal trade-offs have to be made?
Anthropocentrism is characterized by a certain ambivalence on the
question of biodiversity conservation. There are two ways it can mandate
and support conservation. The first is a weak anthropocentrism, which
suggests that conservation is desirable either because human beings
derive aesthetic satisfaction from the contemplation of natural diversity
or because it satisfies human preferences in relation to nature in ways
that welfare economics seeks to catalog and value such preferences. In
the latter perspective, valuing biodiversity may lead to the creation of
incentives for stakeholders to conserve it. A weak form of anthropocen-
trism may also be required by moral expansionism,9 which proceeds
on the principle that the only source of value is an evaluator, and since
we have no way of determining the relative moral worth of the interests
of different beings, we should not distinguish between them. As such,
this approach seeks to expand outwards from a human-centered ethics
to a fuller moral recognition of and protection for nonhuman animals
and sentient life in general.10
A second, stronger form of anthropocentrism is provided by an ethic
that appeals to the Aristotelian conception of well-being in terms of a
set of objective goods a person might possess, for example friends, the
contemplation of what is beautiful and wonderful, the development of
ones capacities, the ability to shape ones own life, and so on.11 This
approach suggests that we value things in the natural world for their
300 Niraja Gopal Jayal
* World Wildlife Fund is now called the World Wide Fund for Nature. The
acronym WWF remains the same.
Ethics, Politics, Biodiversity 303
business community in America had also lobbied strongly against it. A
month before the UN Conference on Environment and Development (the
Earth Summit) held at Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, a document was
drawn up at the seventh and final round of negotiations at Nairobi,
which remained contentious even on the eve of the summit. Though it
embodied substantial concessions for which the United States had driven
a hard bargainin not, for example, providing the South with the guar-
antees it had sought for the transfer of biotechnology or on the question
of intellectual property rightsthe United States refused to sign the
Biodiversity Convention at Rio. It is significant that the reasons cited,
by President George H. W. Bush, for this rejection was that the conven-
tion threatens to retard biotechnology and undermine the protection of
ideas.15 The Convention on Biological Diversity, in force since Decem-
ber 1993, has however been ratified by over 150 countries.
The general declaration on environment and development that emerged
from the Rio Summit recognizes both the intrinsic value and the anthro-
pocentric value of biodiversity. It gives to nation-states the sovereign
right to exploit their natural resources, in accordance with their own
policies on environment and development. But its further recognition of
a right to developmentsubject only to the minor caveat of the devel-
opmental and environmental needs of future generationsendorses the
priority of development over environment, rather than the idea that devel-
opment should take place only within environmental limits. Chatterjee
and Finger have persuasively argued that the biodiversity convention
exemplifies a perversion of the concern for the destruction of the
worlds biodiversity into a preoccupation with new scientific and biotech-
nological developments for economic growth. There are, in their view,
three key arguments that hold this perversion together:
First, the convention gives nation-states the sovereign right to exploit their own
resources pursuant to their environmental policies, thus transforming biologi-
cal diversity into a natural resource to be exploited and manipulated. Then, the
convention implicitly equates the diversity of lifeanimals and plantsto the
diversity of genetic codes, for which read genetic resources. By doing so, diver-
sity becomes something modern science can manipulate. Finally, the convention
promotes biotechnology as being essential for the conservation and sustainable
use of biodiversity. (emphasis added)16
human problems and that this potential only increases as the frontiers
of science expand. The second is justified by a view that is clearly ethico-
philosophical as well as ecological.
Modern liberal philosophy endorses the principle that the beings who
can have rights are precisely those who have or can have interests. Thus,
plants and vegetables can be said to be capable of having a good, because
they are living things with certain inherited biological propensities that
determine the pattern of their natural growth, but is not that good
distinct from having interests? For interests presuppose cognitive equip-
ment, and are compounded out of desires and aims, both of which pre-
suppose something like belief, or cognitive awareness.28 If the plants
need for nutrition or cultivation, its flourishing or languishing, suggest
that it has interests, the interests that thrive when plants flourish are not
plant interests, but human interests. However, though neither plants nor
whole species can be said to have rights in the strict sense of the term,
we may assert duties to protect threatened and endangered species, not
duties to the species themselves, but rather duties to future human beings,
duties derived from our housekeeping role as temporary inhabitants of
this planet.29
Any claim for the conservation of biodiversity that appeals to our
concern for future generations is thus located in a human-centered ethic
that invokes our belief that our descendants (will) have interests that are
morally significant.30 Whether it is the material interests of future gen-
erations that we wish to protect in the face of an alarming depletion of
biodiversity, or a consideration for their aesthetic fulfillment that impels
us to preserve the wilderness for their enjoyment, the rights we seek to
protect for them are contingent rightsthat is, the interests that they
are sure to have when they come into being.31
The discussion so far suggests that these three claims are not necessarily
compatible with each other, and there are tensions between them that
are difficult to unequivocally resolve. Let us first take the claim made
on behalf of the sovereign nation-state. This asserts the sovereign right
of the nation-state to the biological resources found within its territorial
boundaries, and seeks to formalize this ownership in instruments of
Ethics, Politics, Biodiversity 311
Notes
1. Debates on equality and welfare are suggestive in another respect also. Take,
for instance, Amartya Sens argument about how the identification of objects of
value specifies an evaluative space. Sens capability approach expands the eval-
uative space to include, in a way that utilitarianism does not, the capability to
lead different types of lives, and this capability depends on many factors, includ-
ing personal characteristics and social arrangements. See Amartya Sen, Capa-
bility and Well-Being, in The Quality of Life, ed. Martha C. Nussbaum and
Amartya Sen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 33.
2. Bava Mahalia, Letter from a Tribal Village, Lokayan Bulletin, 11 (1994):
157158.
3. It does not, however, deal separately with the different dimensions of biolog-
ical diversity, such as genetic diversity, species diversity, and ecosystems
diversity.
4. Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993),
283.
5. Lawrence E. Johnson, A Morally Deep World: An Essay on Moral Signifi-
cance and Environmental Ethics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993),
265.
6. Arne Naess, Deep Ecology, in The Green Reader, ed. Andrew Dobson
(London: Andre Deutsch, 1991).
7. Robyn Eckersley, Liberal Democracy and the Rights of Nature: The
Struggle for Inclusion, in Ecology and Democracy, ed. Freya Mathews
(London: Frank Cass, 1996), 181.
8. Singer, Practical Ethics, 282.
9. Holmes Rolston III, Environmental Ethics: Values in and Duties to the
Natural World, in Applied Ethics: A Reader, ed. Earl R. Winkler and Jerrold
R. Coombs (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993).
10. It has been suggested that nature is just the latest minority deserving a place
in the sun of the American liberal tradition (Roderick Nash, cited in Robyn
Eckersley, Liberal Democracy and the Rights of Nature, 125).
11. John ONeill, Ecology, Policy, and Politics (London: Routledge, 1993).
12. Avner de-Shalit, Why Posterity Matters: Environmental Policies and Future
Generations (London: Routledge, 1995).
13. Vandana Shiva has argued that biodiversity is not a global commons in the
sense in which oceans or the atmosphere are, because biodiversity exists in spe-
cific countries and is used by specific communities. In this sense, biodiversity
is and has always been a local common resource (Vandana Shiva, Biodiversity
Conservation, Peoples Knowledge and Intellectual Property Rights, in
Biodiversity Conservation: Whose Resource? Whose Knowledge?, ed. Vandana
Shiva (New Delhi: INTACH, 1994), 4). It may also be argued that the argument
of the global commons cannot cut both ways. If genetic resources are a common
Ethics, Politics, Biodiversity 315
heritage, they cannot be privatized, and if they are sought to be privatized, they
have to be acknowledged as the property of the Third World and paid for like
any other resource. This is especially so because they tend to return to their places
of origin in the form of a priced commodity.
14. Mukund Govind Rajan, Global Environmental Politics: India and the
North-South Politics of Global Environmental Issues (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1997), 206ff.
15. Fiona McConnell, The Convention on Biological Diversity, in The Way
Forward: Beyond Agenda 21, ed. Felix Dodd. (London: Earthscan, 1997), 51.
16. Pratap Chatterjee and Matthias Finger, The Earth Brokers: power, politics
and world development. (London: Earthscan, 1995), 42.
17. Ashish Kothari, Understanding Biodiversity: Life, Sustainability and Equity,
Tracts for the Times no. 11 (Delhi: Orient Longman, 1997), 55.
18. Marian A. L. Miller, Sovereignty Reconfigured: Environmental Regimes
and Third World States, in The Greening of Sovereignty in World Politics, ed.
Karen T. Litfin. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 189.
19. Suman Sahai, Biotechnology: New Global Money-Spinner, Economic and
Political Weekly 30, no. 46 (1994): 2916.
20. Klaus Bosselmann, Human Rights and the Environment: Redefining Fun-
damental Principles?, in Governing for the Environment: Global Problems,
Ethics and Democracy, ed. Brendan Gleeson and Nicholas Low (Hampshire:
Palgrave, 2001), 131.
21. The polar opposite of this argument is, of course, explicitly developmental.
It suggests that development, which is equated with economic growth, is
hampered and obstructed by such claims by or on behalf of such communities.
Another variation of this argument is that of mainstreaming tribal communi-
ties, on the premise that they are being excluded from, and are therefore deprived
of, the benefits of progress and development by being kept caged within their
traditional unchanging environs.
22. For a rich variety of examples, see Michael D. Warren, L. Jan Slikkerveer,
and David Brokensha, eds., The Cultural Dimension of Development: Indige-
nous Knowledge Systems (London: Intermediate Technology Publications, 1995).
23. Environmental activists have argued that the formulation is weak and
unclear, and will need sustained pressure to ensure that it works in the interests
of biodiversity conservation as well as the equitable sharing of benefits.
24. In August 2001, the lower house of the Parliament of India passed the
Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Rights Bill, which gives some recogni-
tion to the rights of farmers who develop new strains through selection and breed-
ing. This is apparently the first time in the world that farmers and breeders rights
have received concurrent recognition. Nevertheless, farmers may find it hard to
meet the criteria specified for registering their strains, and to muster the resources
required to establish these. The benefit-sharing aspects of the bill are also ambigu-
ous and are likely to advance the interests of commercial breeders.
316 Niraja Gopal Jayal
Our sincere thanks and appreciation to Chris Hubbard at New York University
for helping to compile this reference sectionA. L. and A. de-S.
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About the Contributors
Williams, Bruce, 89
Women, in environmental justice
movement, 89, 93
World Bank, 302
World Resources Institute, 302
World Wildlife Fund (World Wide
Fund; WWF), 302