Environmental Ethics

Vromans, Kees; Paslack, Rainer; Isildar, Gamze; Vrind, Rob de; Simon, Jürgen

• List of figures and tablesPreface  1. Introduction to environmental ethicsGamze Yucel Isildar  2. Ethics: the search for decision criteriaKees Vromans  3. The challenge to environmental ethicsRainer Paslack  4. Main approaches to environmental ethicsKees Vromans and Rainer Paslack5. The need for political and legal regulationRainer Paslack and Jurgen W. Simon6. From environmental ethics to sustainable decision-makingRob de Vrind  7. SummaryAnnex: The Env-Ethics ProjectReferences and further sources of informationAbout the editorsIndex

Kees Vromans’ environmental ethics has five other editors and seven additional contributors. Among the three books under review, given it is a learning guide, it is the most pedagogically well-crafted book. Its preface discusses environmental ethics and the author’s `Environmental Ethics Project’ (www.env-ethics.com). Lesson one of the first chapter —introduction to environmental ethics— starts with a case study on `Clean and Clean Chemical Inc.’. The chapter comprehensively explains why environmental ethics is important and how this relates to real-live problems such as, for example, management. The chapter has three parts: the complexity of environmental problems; the socio-economical background; and the history of environmentalism. Each section closes with `Check Your Understanding of the Lesson’. This structure is repeated in the subsequent chapters: 2. ethics – the search for decision criteria, 3. the challenge to environmental ethics; 4. main approaches to envi- ronmental ethics; 5. the need for political and legal regulation; and 6. from environmental ethics to sustainable decision-making. The book concludes with a summary.Overall, the book provides an accomplished, easy-to-read and understandable introduction to the key issues related to environmental ethics. Having outlined the complexities associated with environmental ethics, the book prefers a somewhat utilitarian definition of ethics, e.g. `good or not good ends’ while also discussing the non-utilitarian philosophy of Kant. However, the book somewhat negates perhaps the world’s greatest moral philosopher – Aristotle. It mentions `deep ecology’ in passing while lacking Bookchin’s most illuminating and far-reaching work on environmental ethics. Nonetheless, the authors define environmental ethics in three ways: i) as a condition of life; ii) by having intrinsic value; and m) as a means of production. The authors also outline the two main perspectives on environmental ethics: the anthropocentric and the non-anthropocentric view. The distinction is whether only human beings have value (anthropocentric) or whether other elements of nature and environment also have value in-itself to use a Kantian term (non-anthropocentric). Chapter three discusses the ethics of resources, animal ethics, and the ethics of nature while dividing environmental ethics into a philosophical level (ethics), a political-legal level (laws), and a causalistic level (single cases and actions).The book also explains ethical decision-making, and why we need political-legal regulation and the regulation of environ- mental behaviour. In other words, environmental ethics can never be separated from the economic, political, and managerial realm. On that, the book suggests three steps for environment decision-making: i) description and analysis; ii) assessment; and m) justification with a proposal for a `six hat thinking’ creating a multi-perspective viewpoint on environ- mental ethics. Overall, the introduction to environmental ethics presented as a well-crafted pedagogically useful `learning guide’ providing a thoughtful and commendable introduction to environmental ethics.