After presenting a brief history of the idea of a human right to an adequate environment as it has evolved in the United Nations documents, I assess this approach to our moral responsibility with regard to the environment. I argue that although this rights approach has some substantial weaknesses, these are outweighed by such clear advantages as its action-guiding nature and its political potency.

World Hunger and Morality contains the best current thinking about the appropriate moral response to world hunger. KEY TOPICS: The focus and content of this second edition is radically different from the first. Most of the essays are new to this volume. In fact, most of the new essays were written especially for this volume. It presents essays which helped shape the changing understanding of world hunger; includes work by some of today's pre-eminent ethicists; discusses the problem of intra-national as (...) well as international hunger; and considers how gender differences play a part in understanding, and solving world hunger. (shrink)

Four important and influential policy statements on hunger that have served as national and international standards and guides for action have been reprinted here as a resource. They are (1) the Bellagio Declaration, which was produced by 24 international experts meeting to address the problem of world hunger in 1989 at the Rockefeller Foundation Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy; (2) the Medford Declaration to End Hunger in the U. S., which was designed to be a domestic equivalent of the Bellagio (...) Declaration, was produced in April of 1990 at Tufts University by U. S. organizations concerned with domestic hunger; (3) the position statement of the American Dietetic Association (ADA) that was approved by the House of Delegates in 1990; and (4) the position statement of the Canadian Dietetic Association (CDA) that was approved by the executive of the CDA in 1991. Aiken's brief introduction to these four statements critically examines them to draw attention to some of their strengths and weaknesses and to help clarify some of their implicit normative assumptions and implications. (shrink)

The theory of Deep Ecology is characterized as having two essential features: the belief that nature is inherently valuable, and the belief that one’s self is truly realized by identification with nature. Four common but different meanings of the term “radical” are presented. Whether the theory of Deep Ecology is “too radical” depends upon which of these meanings one is using.