Ethical reasoning of all types is anthropocentric, in that it is addressed to agents, but anthropocentric starting points vary in the preference they accord the human species. Realist claims about environmental values, utilitarian reasoning and rights-based reasoning all have difficulties in according ethical concern to certain all aspects of natural world. Obligation-based reasoning can provide quite strong if incomplete reasons to protect the natural world, including individual non-human animals. Although it cannot establish all the conclusions to which anti-speciesists aspire, (...) it may establish many of them with some clarity. (shrink)

There are a number of candidate rationales for the settlement of Mars. These are considered in Sect. 10.1. At least one of them is economically plausible: its use as a base of operations for asteroid mining in the Main Belt. This rationale suggests that environmental protection on Mars needs to be considered in a broader context than that of the planet alone. More specifically, the authors argue in Sect. 10.2 that planetary environmental protection is partly a (...) matter of containment and so requires a framing principle. Section 10.3 supplies such a principle for protection, “the 1/8 principle”: while economic growth in space remains exponential and comparable to historical patterns on Earth, we should use no more than 1/8 of the available resources, in order to secure a reasonable ‘breaking distance’ before we reach a point of super-exploitation. Section 10.4 examines the difficulties of applying such a principle to Mars, the need for trade-offs and special weighting for special strategic resources such as uncollapsed lava tubes. Section 10.5 points out the ease with which the principle can be turned into policy options and its good matchup with human practices of valuing and use. The latter considerations may not be decisive, but they do count strongly in its favour. (shrink)

The beginning of environmental consciousness and policy discussions on environmental protection can be traced back to the nineteenth century. Since the second half of the twentieth century, most policies and action plans towards environmental protection evolved under the leadership of the UN. While the early policies focused on sustainable development, recent policy discussions have moved beyond this, drawing on the idea of ecological resilience. Environmental protection initiatives face several ethical challenges.

Environmental ethics can be cultivated in China and other Asian countries based on Chinese philosophical perspectives. Two major Chinese philosophies relevant to the issues of environmental ethics—Confucianism and Taoism—suggest certain approaches to developing environmental ethics. These approaches can complement each other in developing a Chinese or East Asian theory of environmental ethics. Drawing on these perspectives, China’s Wolong National Nature Reserve can face the challenge of protecting its pandas while developing the local economy. By adopting a (...) set of strategies with elements from both Confucianism and Taoism, Wolong has fared well in both protecting pandas and promoting environmental ethics. This case has implications for both managerial researchers and practitioners. (shrink)

Environmental protection isn't what it used to be. During the 1960s and 1970s, environmentalists enacted a legislative agenda that seems like a dream today: statutes like the Clean Air and Clean Wa...

This article questions the degree to which ecological theory can be used as justification for protection of ‘natural environments’ as well as in determining which portions or features of those envi...

The UNCED Earth Summit established two new principles of international justice: an equitable international order and protection of the environment. UNCED was a significant symbol, a morality play about environment and economics. Wealth is asymmetrically distributed; approximately one-fifth of the world (the G-7 nations) produces and consumes four-fifths of goods and services; four-fifths (the G-77 nations) get one-fifth. This distribution can be interpreted as both an earnings differential and as exploitation. Responses may require justice or charity, producing and sharing. (...) Natural and national resources come into tension with the common heritage of humankind, exemplified in disputes about. who owns biodiversity resources. Ethics has to learn planetary home economics. (shrink)

We propose a model of planned corporate environmental behaviour that emphasises the values and attitudes of managers towards the environment, environmental intentions and the context in which these intentions are formed and translated into actual performance. In particular, we focus on the extent to which environmentally reactive managers influence the environmental performance of their firms. We identify the factors that mitigate or accentuate the effects of environmental “reactivism”—i.e. a mind-set shared by those who assign to the (...) state the responsibility of protecting the environment. We generate a series of hypotheses and use structural equation modelling to test them in the context of a unique dataset of Argentinean firms. Our system’s approach to corporate environmental behaviour explains approximatively 70 % of the variation in reported environmental performance across firms while highlighting elements of the model that may potentially be influenced by policy. Amongst other things, our empirical results suggest that stakeholder pressures can be an effective tool in the development of pro-environmental attitudes and in so doing offset some of the negative effects of environmental reactivism on environmental performance. Our paper highlights a number of other important implications for the design and implementation of environmental policies that account for human managerial determinants of corporate behaviour and social factors. (shrink)

Environmental ethicists have devoted considerable attention to discussing whether anthropocentric or nonanthropocentric arguments provide more appropriate means for defending environmental protection. This paper argues that philosophers, scientists, and policy makers should pay more attention to a particular type of anthropocentric argument. These anthropocentric indirect arguments defend actions or policies that benefit the environment, but they justify the policies based on beneficial effects on humans that are not caused by their environmental benefits. AIAs appear to have numerous (...) appealing characteristics, and their weaknesses do not provide compelling reasons to avoid them. Elucidating these arguments should inspire social scientists and philosophers to study the range of situations in which AIAs can be ethically and effectively employed and the extent to which they increase or diminish public support for environmentalism. (shrink)

The fundamental character of a punishment is the subject of this paper. Based on the assumed function of a punishment (deterrent), a punishment has to be perceived and experienced to be an adverse result by the punished and the public. The first factor in particular means that the courts have to have flexibility to sentence a person to such a punishment that is experienced as such. The legal question becomes how this customization of a punishment is acceptable from an equality (...) standpoint. In the field of environmental protection, the administrative process poses serious problems. There may be administrative proceedings that result in substantial economic losses for individuals and groups alike. (shrink)

In this paper I want to point out the multifaceted impact of utilitarianism as well as pragmatism, applied as the unified philosophy of environmental protection. Special attention is paid to the utilitarian aspect of Marxism, and a continuous, comprehensive case study from Poland – in the context of European economic realities – serves as an example of social receptionof the utilitarian paradigm in contemporary environmental protection policy.

This paper examines the impact of China’s new environmental protection law on green innovation. Using a large sample of Chinese prefecture-level cities for the 2010–2016 period and the difference-in-differences methodology, we provide strong evidence that the new environmental protection law promotes green innovation. This finding is robust to a battery of sensitivity tests. The micromechanism analysis shows that the new environmental protection law can promote green innovation by imposing stricter financial constraints on enterprises in (...) high-pollution industries and increasing their incentives for green innovation to meet green credit requirements. Further, we find that the impact of the new environmental protection law on green innovation is more prominent in prefecture-level cities with a lower level of banking competition and for prefecture-level cities with stronger intellectual property protection. Overall, these findings suggest that the new environmental protection law has played an important role in promoting green innovation in China. To improve the effect of the new environmental protection law on green innovation, the government can consider lowering banking competition and strengthening intellectual property protection. (shrink)

Environmental issues are very relevant today, so this Paper analyses the very beginning of the formation of environmental awareness, questioning its basic determinants – both in time and space and in the causes and consequences of human action on the environment as one of the fundamental elements for any historical research. The paper also offers a brief comparative review of the situation in the Republic of Croatia and finally opens ground for future discussions primarily in the evaluation of (...) progress and development of environmental events in relation to those that this study detected as initial. (shrink)

Environmental issues are among the most critical scientific and social problems of today. The human environment is an environment of inequality and crisis, and a platform for debate on the fairness of social order. The crisis is the result of human behaviour, which reflects the failure of development and unjust distribution of consequences. The gap between rich and poor on a global scale is evident in the disproportionate climate change impacts on countries and their ability to cope. In this (...) respect, the economic and political inequalities between First and Third World countries are fortified by ecological ones. The development of international environmental mechanisms such as the Kyoto Agreement is instrumental in this kind of change. The pursuit of tackling and controlling climate change has its unforeseen consequences, whereas in specific communities the existent inequalities are emphasised in new forms. If mechanisms developed for the environment, such as the market of carbon emissions and the carbon balance, lead to environmental injustice and disproportionately affects vulnerable groups, it raises the question of their purpose. On the path of Rawl’s idea on the fairness of social institutions, such system demonstrates itself as contradictory and unjust. (shrink)

Energy scientist Amory Lovins is fond of pointing out that in the late 19th century, it was not picketing environmentalists that saved the whales being slaughtered en masse for oil used for lightin...

Sustainable development is the global agenda designed to ensure that the world’s climate is not irretrievably damaged and future generations have equal access to the world’s resources for their own development. The institutionalisation of measures to promote sustainable development has however not had unanimous cooperation. This study therefore investigated the attitude of officials at the local government level to topical issues in the sustainable development agenda in Ondo State, Nigeria, as a pointer to entrenched attitudes in the Third World. Prioritisation (...) of issues varied between localities but premium was placed on poverty alleviation more than on climate change or power generation. People were more concerned with the improvement of their general well-being including health. Respondents indicated that most of the topical issues on the sustainable development agenda could be addressed at the local level thereby lending support for the notion that local action can contribute to global action. However, inclusive measures to promote positive action need to be institutionalised. (shrink)

This paper aims to improve knowledge about the main factors influencing firm environmental commitment, by examining empirically the relationship between public support for R&D for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and their investment in environmental protection. The empirical analysis was developed using a sample of 1594 Spanish firms, and a binary logistic regression to evaluate the existence of dependency relationships between the analyzed variables. The results show that those companies receiving direct funding from local public entities and (...) those collaborating with research centers and universities, invest more in environmental actions to protect the natural ecosystem. The paper contributes to the academic literature by analyzing the main factors that influence the SMEs environmental commitment. Moreover, showing practitioners and policy makers the effectiveness of different types of financial support depending on the origin of the funds and the form of action taken; showing managers the advantages of collaborating with public administrations, as well as with other research organizations, to obtain better ECSR results. (shrink)

This study examines the relationship between cooperative business relations in small businesses and environmental protection, one of the most important policies of social responsibility in manufacturing. We reviewed the literature and carried out an empirical study of 930 small manufacturing firms in Spain. Results indicate that small businesses that maintain and improve their cooperative relations through business networking with universities, competitors, suppliers and customers spend more on environmental protection. The managerial, practical, research and policy implications of (...) the obtained research findings are discussed. (shrink)

In The Political Limits of Environmental Regulation: Tracking the Unicorn, Bruce Yandle identifies some of the key weaknesses of federal environmental regulation, including its regressive effects, its tendency to better serve selected political interests than the cause of environmental protection, and the EPA's failure to follow sensible priorities. Additional problems may also be cited, including the tendency to exclude citizens? voices from deliberations regarding the degree of pollution control. But Yandle's conclusion regarding the likely superiority of (...) decentralized and market?sensitive alternatives to centralized regulation is overstated. Any such alternatives necessarily will continue to be grounded in relatively uniform national standards. Moreover, in the context of American political economy, market?based controls would continue to deny many citizens real voice and choice. The quest continues to be for the combination of controls that best preserves both the environment and liberty. (shrink)

Dr. Elliot argues that environmental protection and climate change issues would find a larger and more supportive audience if presented in less apocalyptical terms and more in a context in which mi...

In this paper, we want to analyze conceptually whether and when merely using economic discourse – talking money – can crowd out people's positive attitudes towards environmental goods and their reasons to protect them. We concentrate on the specific case of market-based or monetary valuation as an instance of ‘commodification in discourse’ and argue that it can have the same moral problems as real commodification. We aim to bring together insights from philosophy, ethics, economics and psychology to argue that (...) there are good reasons to think about how and when to apply MV in environmental cases. On the basis of this interdisciplinary analysis and in order to promote further empirical research, we develop four empirically falsifiable hypotheses. Commodification in discourse can bring about real commodification. MV can have framing and crowding effects on those who come into contact with it. Intrinsic motivation is more robust than extrinsic motivation and leads less to freeriding. MV's framing and crowding effects can decrease environmental protection. (shrink)

This paper wants to shed light on the way the philosophical school of Stoicsm in Greco-Roman antiquity has dealt with the relationship of men and nature by pointing out to some of the key texts in which these issues are mentioned. Although the modern concept of sustainability or environmental protection did not really exist in antiquity, the Stoa was convinced that individual decisions had a direct impact on this world. Following the concept of environmental humanities, the ancient (...) texts and authors are collected as historical ideas of the multifaceted interactions between nature and men that can be fruitfully mirrored with the arguments of the current Anthropocene discourse and its focus on (post)industrialism. By doing so we might come across helpful approaches deeply rooted in our cultural heritage that we could possibly adopt and find practical answers for our age in terms of individual behaviour as well as management decisions to face the ecological and social challenges ahead. (shrink)

Is it possible to reconcile a classical liberal approach to economics with a concern for the environment? The contributors to Economics and the Environment: A Reconciliation contend that it is. But they fail to distinguish properly between classical liberalism and a widespread orthodoxy in environmental policy communities in Europe and North America to the effect that economic instruments for environmental policy need more serious attention than they have hitherto received. Once this orthodoxy is distinguished from classical liberalism, the (...) latter is seen to be implausible. In particular, the classical liberal approach fails to deal with the practical and administrative problems involved in enforcing private property rights solutions to problems of environmental protection, wrongly generalizes from the failures of U.S. environmental policy to the failure of public regulation as such, and fails to take into account the claim that nature should be accorded intrinsic value. (shrink)

This paper assesses the problem of the possible tension between development and environmental protection, especially for developing countries. Some leaders of these countries like Jacob Zuma claim for example that poor countries should only join the fight against climate change if it does not compromise their economic development, thus suggesting that environmental protection is more often than not an obstacle to economic development. I argue that this argument is if not misleading, at least incomplete because it (...) does not take the diversity of environmental protection seriously and reduces development to economic development. In fact, some aspects of environmental protection may clearly clash with some kinds of economic development. In that line, when countries are still very poor, their economic development should take priority over some ecological-friendly policies. But this is only one side of the truth. The other side of the truth is that some ecologically-friendly policies can also make poor countries richer, more democratic and fairer. (shrink)

The value of anthropocentric indirect arguments, as stated by Elliott, is to focus on non-environmental benefits that derive from actions or policies that also benefit the environment...

The penetration process of structures traditionally assigned to civil law into administrative law, especially administrative law aiming environmental protection, has been more noticeable through recent years. This process resulted in deepening the absence of a clear separation of private law norms from public law norms. It led to the existence of so-called quasi civil solutions, which can be found for example in the Act on prevention from damages in environment and its repair. Their specificity consists in the fact (...) that they cannot be regarded as civil law structures due to the differences between them and the civil law structures. This legal status sets new challenges for legal theorists as well as practition- ers. They concentrate on interpretation of administrative law provisions which were penetrated by civil law structures, taking into account differences between interpretation of administrative and civil law provisions. We should not reject specific character of the civil law provisions’ interpretation and interpret these provisions only by taking into account specificity of administrative law inter- pretation. Civil law institutions are characterized by a larger field for action, which is left for parties or performers, in comparison to the institutions of ad- ministrative law. This specificity of civil law structures should be considered as its advantage that should not be removed in the activities of public authorities. (shrink)

This essay deals with the following issues: (1) whether corporations can have moral responsibilities; (2) whether, granting that corporations can have moral responsibilities, nature can be an object of these responsibilities; and (3) what moral theory can appropriately justify why corporations ought to contribute to the cause of environmental protection. It is here argued that while it can be shown that corporations can have moral responsibilities, such responsibilities are limited towards humans and other corporations. The main reason is (...) that the morally relevant functional capacities which corporations can be shown as possessing are limited to those functional capacities that give moral status to humans. As such, natural nonhumans are beyond the scope of these responsibilities. But this does not mean that it becomes justifiable for corporations to disregard environmental concerns. For part of the moral responsibilities of corporations towards humans is to respect the right of humans to a livable natural environment. In addition, because of their enduring existence and long-term goals, corporations can act as a bridge between humans of the present generation and those of future generations. This bridge makes it meaningful to speak of the moral responsibilities of humans of the present generation towards those of future generations. (shrink)

Those designing sustainable development implementation schemes will inevitably look to scientists to help them understand sustainable development problems. Scientists have already made important contributions to the understanding of many serious environmental problems, such as the causal relationship between certain synthetic chemicals and destruction of the ozone layer. If scientists had not identified the relationship between upper atmospheric ozone concentrations and releases of chloroflorocarbons, government decisionmakers would not have agreed to action limiting their production. However, although causes and effects of (...) some environmental problems are understood well, others are not, such as the timing and magnitude of climate change caused by greenhouse gases. If global environmental problems are serious, there is an obvious and urgent need to increase scientific understanding of which human actions cause environmental degradation and how nations can proceed with needed development programs without causing further environmental damage. (shrink)

Although managers must stay abreast of all socictal concerns in developing organizational objectives, protecting the environment seems to be a major issue for consumers in the 1990s. This increased environmental concern leaves managers no choice but to go beyond mere social obligation when it comes to protecting the environment. Society is demanding social responsiveness at a minimum, and the call for social responsibility seems to be getting louder and clearer. This paper reviews the response business has made to this (...) call for responsibility for the environment. Specifically, this paper will address the impact of increased business awareness on: (1) the passage of laws and legislation to protect the environment (social obligation); (2) specific organization actions to meet consumer demands (social responsiveness); (3) specific organization endeavors which reflect a sincere attempt to address the environmental issue (social responsibility). An awareness of these activities should aid managers in developing future plans which will allow them to become more responsible for our environment. (shrink)

Business Ethics: A European Review, EarlyView.

Not understanding that doing nothing can be much more preferable to doing something potentially harmful. Recent developments in cognitive science have highlighted the power that stories, metaphors, and archetypes have on human thinking. In fact, to a large extent they are our thinking. Consider the archetypal image of the young adult male hero. He is brave, active, adventurous, innovative, knowledgeable, clever, confident, independent, in control, and not constrained by family, tradition, or public opinion. He is a character that appears in (...) myths, in histories of conquest and discovery—from Odysseus to the Medusa-slayer, the.. (shrink)

Článek se věnuje genezi a vývoji hlavních myšlenkových teorií zaměřených na ochranu životního prostředí. Přináší zamyšlení se nad základními principy a hlubším smyslem neoklasické environmentální ekonomie, ekologické ekonomie a tržních přístupů k ochraně životního prostředí, které reprezentují hlavní paradigmata ekonomie životního prostředí. Článek se dále soustředí na metody výzkumu jednotlivých teoretických přístupů z hlediska metodologických odlišností. Závěrečná část článku je věnována dvěma hlavním principům ochrany životního prostředí. Je zde zhodnocena aplikace principu udržitelného rozvoje a principu předběžné opatrnosti v environmentálních politikách.