THREE APPROACHES TO THE CENTRAL QUESTION

In his address to the conference on environmental justice and global ethics from which this chapter derives, Arne Naess stated that the ‘central question’ is, ‘how can the fact of cultural and philosophical difference on justice and nature be reconciled with the urgent need to deliver fair judgments in cases of conflict between development and the environment, exploitation and conservation?’ I agree that this is one of the central questions of the present. The importance of the question is that it orients critical reflection not towards some abstract question of world-views or of an imaginary world beyond conflict, but towards what is happening here and now: to the conflicts over our relation to the environment and how they are to be addressed. In response, I would like to sketch an ethics, a way of thinking and acting, appropriate to this situation of environmental conflict in which we are engaged. By an ‘ethics’, I mean a public philosophy that enables people to analyse critically cases of environmental conflict on the one hand, and to act ethically and effectively to bring about fair judgments on the other. I will begin by introducing this type of ecological ethics as a response to the limitations of two better-known alternative and complementary approaches.

(1) Universal rights. The most prominent approach is to try to work out very general principles of environmental justice that should apply to any situation of conflict.