Environmental Conservation Research Paper

that because some pleasures are inherently better than others (getting an education, say, is better than getting drunk), they have inherent worth that makes them desirable, it throws in question that the very possibility of hedonic calculus follows; it would mean that pleasure and pain are no longer considered the basic unit in terms of which the worth of all acts and goals are to be measured (Goldberg, 1995, p. 117).

The boundary of feelings of those sentient beings whose pain affects us becomes part of our moral boundary.

What are the different ways in which ethical concerns are manifested when describing the environmental problems or prospects? One of the persistent issues, which emerges in the dialogue on ethics, is the distinction among facts and values. Goldberg states: ‘facts concern the way things actually are, the evaluations are the judgments about things ideally as they ought to be’ (1995, p.5). Amartya Sen, in a very significant contribution (1981), observed that what we choose to describe involves value judgments and how we choose to describe it also involved a value judgment. The descriptive ‘is’ becomes the normative ‘ought’.

2. Determinants Of Domain Of Responsibility

2.1 Boundary Of Pain

Does the degree of pain suffered by other species determine the boundary of our responsibility? Some have argued that predation is a rule in nature and thus why should an anthropomorphic view of nature be decried so much. But survival of the fittest is also a feature of a natural system. Will that be acceptable as a basis of human social evolution? Darwin is believed to have remarked that humans were not necessarily on the top of the ecological chain as some higher form than others. Each organism may have adapted to its niche and thus may have advantages over other species in that niche: no single species is higher or lower than another. Our responsibility for another species may emerge from the pain we cause to it. The other view, as we shall see later, is that not every species may experience pain. Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) held that

any being capable of suffering should have his or her experiences taken into account by utilitarian calculations. However, according to right theorists, any version of utilitarianism, no matter how carefully conceived it is, fails to provide sufficient protection for innocent life, human or nonhuman (Pluhar, 1998, p. 165).

Pluhar asks,

Do animals have a prima facie right to life or a prima facie right not to be tortured? One might hold that some animals have no serious right but do have a right not to be tortured or one might hold that that they have a prima facie right to humane treatment that could be overridden by the need to preserve allegedly more morally significant lives. (Pluhar, 1998, p. 162).

But then this argument raises another dilemma, which is about hierarchy of moral responsibility. Rene Descartes (1596–1650) proposed ‘beings that are not rational are incapable of suffering.’ According to him, non-human animals are merely organic machines without consciousness, unlike humans, who allegedly are amalgams of material bodies and immaterial minds (souls). Though he claims that he does not deny that non-human animals are capable of sensation, he is denying that they can suffer.

2.2 Responsibility For Conservation Arising Out Of Greater Human Purpose

Dower asks,

Should we care for the environment because other life forms in nature, or nature itself, have a value, moral status independent of our interests, or because it is in our own collective interests to protect it? (1998, p. 769)

The scope of moral responsibility needs to be defined and different cultures experiencing tremendous loss of environment are defining it implicitly by making false compromises between development and environment. It appears as if one could have the former without the latter (unless we genuinely believe that Western societies are indeed more developed than the rest, as they certainly offer more consumer choices to their citizens). Human purpose could be to prosper, without impoverishing other human and non-human sentient beings, but it could also be defined by various cultures in negation of certain rights of others. Can ethics be determined by voting on it? We do not think so. A great degree of consumerist culture survives in most democratic European societies and yet its sustainability is questionable. The democratic way of arriving at the human purpose does not make it more legitimate and moral.

Human purpose can be defined in minimalist terms. One cannot solve all environmental problems but one can certainly solve some. Should one not try to solve a few because others remain? At the same time, our concern extends not just to those we know, see, or recognize. Our responsibility is to society and the biosphere at large, hence the international agreements such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (1992).

2.2.1 Agricultural Ethics. The responsibility towards long-term sustainability of land, biodiversity, and well-being of animals, has been contrasted with a desire to intensify agriculture by crossing the natural barriers among species by using biotechnology or other technologies. For some, biotechnological tools can lead to better environment, if these help in reducing or eliminating chemical pesticides. However, these tools can do the opposite by unleashing environmental risks. The biotechnological revolution involving incorporation of genes from one species into another has raised a great many ethical issues. The invocation of the precautionary principle itself has become contentious. If in doubt, this principle advises that we err on the side of conservation. Some have interpreted this to mean that no research need be done to explore biotechnological alternatives, even if these were to have the potential for solving some nutritional and food needs. Others argue that the issue of hunger is not one of production, but of distribution. Ethical dilemmas arise when we enable the hungry to obtain sufficient food (through the public distribution system) through environmentally destructive land use practices (such as cultivation on marginal lands). Whether biotechnology can help solve this problem is as much an issue of ethics as one of policy and institutions. For instance, it can reduce pressure to bring more land under cultivation by increasing productivity of existing land. Ethical dilemmas also emerge when:

(a) intellectual property rights are granted over life forms (such as the Harvard onco-mouse) or other organisms violating the sanctity of life, as well as granting monopoly to those who did not and can not create life (except for modifying it into the laboratory),

(b) risks are taken in releasing in the environment genes which, in their natural conditions, did not have the possibility of diffusing among species (e.g., through transgenics tolerant to herbicides),

(c) animals are treated with hormones or other reagents which increase their productivity, yet affect their well-being or shorten their life cycle, and

(d) solutions are not developed to grow crops in problem soils, such as alkaline or salt-affected soils, through biotechnological means.

2.2.2 Asymmetry Of Rights And Responsibilities. Risks are involved not just when things are changed but also when they are left unchanged. It is this position justifying inertia that populist arguments have made their mainstay. While exploring biodiversity or associated knowledge systems, ethics of extraction assumes asymmetrical rights and responsibilities (Gupta, 1994, 1995, 1999). We never acknowledge the creativity and innovations as well as traditional knowledge systems of local communities and individuals conserving resources in our writings (the whole discipline of ethnobiology has been a testimony to this). We do not share benefits with them fairly, never share what we have learned from them and others in their language. The Honey Bee network set up in 1989 to document and disseminate grassroots creativity and green innovations is an exception (http://www.sristi.org/honeybee.html). We complain when the same communities and individuals are at times forced to follow environmentally unfriendly actions. Studies have shown that the regions of high biodiversity in the tropics are also inhabited by the poorest people, who have the lowest educational levels (despite exceptions), who have high emigration of males and consequently a high proportion of households headed or managed by women. Yet discourse on environmental ethics has seldom reflected on these systematic relationships.

2.3 Ecocentrism/Biocentrism Deep Ecological Ethics

The rights of not just the animate but also the inanimate, of not just the human but equally other species, and of not just the born but also the unborn are articulated in a combination of biocentric, ecocentric, and deep ecological ethical perspectives. Ecocentric theorists include Kenneth Goodpaster, Lawrence Johnson, Holmes Rolston, Baird Callicott, Arnold Leopold, John Rodman, etc., who essentially argue for moral rights of all beings and ecosystems. A lake has a personality if endowed with values, in the same way as mountains and species. Munshi (1952), a famous writer, in his lecture entitled ‘A Gospel of Dirty Hand’ tried to link the soil with soul. He did not see any way we could understand the relationship between nature and human beings if we did not see the linkage between nutrient cycle, hydrological cycle, and local institutions. Of course, he contrasted the ethic in which nature was held supreme, with the local tribes who, overawed by nature, remained what some may call ‘primitive.’ Other tribes or social groups, which overpowered nature, vanished into oblivion because they crossed the limits of nature. He argued for moderation. Some ecologists argue, however, not just for moderation but for a hands-off policy. The

recognition of moral status of non-sentient living things can thus be depicted as the next step in the history of moral development (Rawles, 1998, p. 276).

Pedersen (1993) distinguishes two strands of modernity drawing from Giddens’ work (1990) which may have a bearing on the evolution of ecocentric ethics. He refers to separation of space from place and of time from ecological space. Such a conception of ecological space does not require cultural association with a locality. Callicott (1994) hopes that such an international environmental ethic can evolve which can be compatible with local vernacular cultural traditions linked to space and time in a very different manner. The evolution of global time and of global space may also lead to the emergence of a global social group without a particular living space or habitat to qualify for specific environmental value.

Biegart (1999) recalls the contrast of perspectives between Native Americans and European settlers about water (surface flow). He gave the example of the late Philip Deere of Oklahoma, medicine man of the Muskogee Nation, who termed rivers and streams as the veins of the world. Clogging them, one could say would clog not just the life in them but the life of humans as well. The sacredness of water in all such cultures indicates that by polluting waters we are also polluting the spirits that sustain these waters.

2.3.1 Accountability Towards Perfect Strangers And Other Non-Persons. Human needs cannot always take priority over the needs of nature and other living beings. How do we determine our accountability towards the future generation, which is unknown to us? The future generation is made up of ‘perfect strangers’—i.e., who are not known and are unknowable. We do not hear the voice of the unborn. What should be the responsibility of the present generation to discern the needs and preferences of such sentient and non-sentient beings with whom we are unable to communicate? There needs to be some response using contemporary as well as traditional value systems (Gupta 1991).

The cultures of the world have evolved means of generating and monitoring responsibility towards other living beings. But this responsibility need not emanate only from human value systems. Goodpaster observes,

to be worthy of moral respect, a unified system need not be composed of cells and body tissue: it might be composed of humans and non-human animals, plants and bacteria. (Rawles, 1998, p. 279).

Johnson argues that ‘various beings other than individual organisms can meaningfully be said to have interests, and that these interests are morally significant.’ The beings in question include species and ecosystems. Brennan critiques this position and suggests that the claim of Goodpaster

rests upon a naıve and scientifically outmoded view of ecosystems and species, neither of which have the characteristics that Johnson has attributed to them.

Brennan disagrees with the claim that

ecosystems have interests, because he takes this claim to presuppose a view of ecosystems as goal-directed that the scientific community has largely rejected. (Brennan, in Rawles 1998, p. 279).

2.4 Socio-Psychological Roots Of Ethical Consciousness: The Internal Values

Hill (1978) brings in a personal psychological aspect while identifying roots of ecological ethics. He adds,

my psychological argument is that truly ethical behavior originates wholly from the healthy, unhurt, undistressed parts of individuals; and unethical behavior originates from the hurt part. If we want people to behave ethically, then we must provide environments that are supportive of the healthy part of individuals (Hill 1992, p. 11).

Stone (1987) argues that monist (one best way to resolve ethical dilemmas) arguments have to be tempered by moral pluralism. The latter implies that one looks at the ethical basis of not just the action choice, but also the motivations of the actors and the institutional context of both the actors and the actions. There could be other planes as well. Can we not use a universalistic ethical principle in one part of our life space and use pluralistic values in other parts? Innovations from the Honey Bee data base on grassroots innovations managed by the Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions (SRISTI) seem to indicate segmentation of life space.

The institutional behavior is the one where internal commands replace external demands. One does a thing not because one is being supervised but because that is the right thing to do. Environmental ethics is at a crossroads. We are looking for new indicators that will generate internal responsibility for caring for nature across different cultural contexts and worldviews. But what constitutes nature and what determines whether responsibility for its care globally, regionally, and locally will invoke equally strong internal commands: these questions remain open. Legal and public policy instruments are evolving and seem to indicate increasing concern for environmental care. But calls for such concern in the current geopolitical context from Western countries immediately invites criticism from developing countries. They see this call from the West as the sign of new emerging environmental protectionism. They argue that Western societies accumulated wealth by destroying their environment, which gives rise to a precipitous argument: that therefore developing societies also need to have the right to accumulate wealth by destroying their own environment. Moral discourse will have to take a center stage in each of these polarized polities.

2.4.1 Environmental Perception And Cognition. Dunlap et al. (1993) have provided some of the most striking evidence against the notion that concern for the environment stems from ‘post-materialist values’ (Muller-Rommel 1989). In a worldwide survey of citizen concern for the health of the planet, a high level of environmental concern was found in developing as well as developed countries. Such a concern is a necessary condition, though is insufficient for taking effective action. Stern et al. (1995) looked into the factors that may influence these environmental concerns of the citizens. One of the important findings of the authors is that activation of personal stable values is possible through organized efforts which try to influence the values in the direction of conservation ethic or otherwise. A study done by Gupta looked at the profile of the green consumers (Gupta et al. 1997). It revealed four types of consumers: (a) active mobilisers, (b) populist mobilisers, (c) passive practitioners, and finally, (d) those who were indolent and indifferent. The fact that there was not much difference in the proportions for each category indicated the possibility that social values could gravitate to either side depending on the nature of effect, available information, and action of organized interest, would have on internal values.

Austin and Schill (1991) and Boyce (1995) have argued for taking into account the need for environmental justice while looking at the issues of environmental care. SRISTI (1993) has argued for the need to combine ethics, equity, excellence, efficiency, environment, and education.

Gandhi provided a thoughtful summary of environmental ethics when he said that the world had enough for everyone’s need but not enough for everyone’s greed. The concepts of aparigrah (not accumulating more than one needs), ahimsa (nonviolence) and frugality developed by him provided a practical guide to responsible living.

In the emerging modern consciousness in which a human being is no more responsible for his or her individual moral space but for the whole world, Amato (1982) argues that claims of guilt and gratitude will ultimately make us humble and bring us into harmony with our collective destiny. The exploration of environmental ethics is thus a journey into an abyss of responsibility for self and society, for present and future generations, and for the human and the nonhuman sentient and non-sentient beings, things, places, and also for time. We need to extract a slice of our time from the womb of ever-forgiving nature, which is learning to forget forgiving. That is the real tragedy and also the challenge.

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