Environment – Ethical dilemmas

When I was first studying environmental ethics and environmental law in the early 1990s, it was all about sustainability. Sustainability and sustainable development and management, though we thought they were oxymorons even back then. How can you have sustainable development, like sustained growth, on a finite planet?

Nevertheless, sustainable development focuses on ‘meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs’. It became internationally socialised through the Agenda 21 principles signed at the first Earth Conference in Rio in 1991. In New Zealand, it led to the adoption of sustainable management enshrined in the Resource Management Act.

Growth simply can’t be sustained forever, so the model of capitalist development dominating the globe at the moment is part of the problem. It’s both what we do and how we do it that is using up limited ‘natural capital’ all ‘resources’, as they’re defined in that paradigm. Though in another view, which I prefer, nature isn’t just a commodity to be priced and traded, or not valued at all. Nature has its own rights and needs and interests, both through sentient individual animals and through species, habitats and ecosystems in landscapes and the ecosphere. In this paradigm, sustainability would recognise the needs of present non-human generations without compromising the needs of future non-human generations.

Almost 30 years since the Rio Declaration, we’ve had lots more Earth and Climate Change summits. We’ve had the Anthropocene (the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment) formally recognised, and the problem of the oceans’ plastic has hit us where it hurts – at our beaches and in our fish. Science confirms ‘The Great Acceleration’, or the impact of human activity on the environment, has increased since WWII, with cumulative and feedback effects compounding our damage ever more.

Environmental ethics have also moved on. We now have laws that recognise animal sentience, even if we don’t honour them. There are recognised non-human animal rights and personhood. Occasionally, rivers and mountains have personhood status, too – not that being a person is everything. Animal and environmental rights philosophies are reaching a new wave and are manifest in social movements to end trophy hunting, bear fighting, circuses, inhumane treatment on farms and in calls for a broader land/planetary ethic, which is often found in indigenous cultures.

Humans show capacity for great compassion, wisdom, insight and technical dexterity. Our ability to make and shape nature to suit our purposes has extended human quality of life and longevity. Those same tools have enabled us to shape whole ecosystems – mountain top removal, deforestation, extinction, ecosystem destruction, giant lakes bled completely dry. We have scientific tools that show the damage we’ve done even while we become more attuned to the need to stop, give the Earth a break, and repair. In a lifetime, in full view, we’ve gone from aims of sustainability to evidence of crisis.

Christine Rose
christine.rose25@gmail.com