by Ho-won Jeong
-not for use without permission of the author
The way environmental problems are conceptualised and constructed through redrawing boundaries between humans and the environment reflects value issues. Policy differences are based on different conceptions of the role of humans in changing the environment.
In anthropogenic views, the value of environmental objects lies in their usefulness to humans. Nature is manipulated, conquered, and changed to provide material bases for industrial, agricultural and other economic activities. Resources needed for national economic growth are provided by cutting tropical rainforests. Nature's relationship to humans is established with its conversion to an object to increase wealth. The anthropogenic attitudes and patterns of thought represent a traditional Western industrial society's assumption that nature exists to serve humans and to be exploited for human benefit.
Humans assume power over the material world with the rise of modern scientific research and technology which provides an ideology of progress. In the idea of treating nature as something separate from value, which culminated in the Enlightenment thinking, change in the means of knowing the world is based on the development of scientific methods. Modern science does not lend nature its own value, independent of human beings. Material and social prosperity of industrial society depends on the subjugation of nature through scientific knowledge and technology. As nature is not regarded as an end but as a means, knowledge acquired by scientific analysis could be put to work to give the human race mastery over nature.
Nature exists completely outside of the moral sphere for Western developmentalism. The modernisation of economy with industrialisation destroyed the image of the earth as a living organism. Cultural constraints restricting the actions of human beings do not exist in modern scientific traditions that consider the application of technology to nature as improvement. The domination and mastery of nature became core concepts of the modern world as Western culture became increasingly mechanized with continuation of commercialization and industrialization that altered the earth.
The current relations between humans and the environment will not be dramatically changed as long as the environment is seen as having only instrumental values for human beings. In managerial approaches, humans are superior to other components of the planet's biophysical system. If the environment is seen instrumentally to be controlled to contribute to progress in material well being, technological solutions are enough to meet challenges of resource scarcity and other environmental problems.
Overemphasis on technological solutions reflects a lack of ethical constraints in dealing with nature. The instrumental view neglects value intrinsic in wildlife and landscapes. A response to pollution in industrialized countries has primarily to protect human health and a few species of special interest. Conservation of resources is required for sustainable growth. Technocentric resource management approaches to nature are compatible with a faith in the capacity of technology to harness nature. It aims at reducing the extent and speed of exploitation and pollution of nature that has been pursued to the extent to ignore a potential for collapse of ecosystems.
Solutions of environmental problems would have to rely on re-establishing relations between humans and nature if human behaviour is perceived to be mostly responsible for environmental crisis. The present assumption of human-environment relations would not help alter human behaviour. Non-anthropocentric views recognise the intrinsic value of environmental objects and rights to their own existence. "Ecological values embody an appreciation of nature in all its varieties ... Humans are seen as but one species among many, but also as the one species whose dominance could be so thoroughly going as to threaten many, if not most, other species and thereby itself'.
In considering that humans are an integral part of nature, an ethical argument can be made that they have no rights to distort the natural environment. The dominant values of society and existing political order promote materialism that cannot be supported forever. Life on the planet is threatened by greed. An imbalanced relationship between biosphere and human society can be redressed by structural level changes. Communalists advocate resource preservation with limited growth. Sustainability can be achieved through decentralized initiatives of social movements. Changes in underlying institutional structures, social values, government policies and economic functions are prerequisite in a holistic approach to establishing a new relationship between humans (humankind) and their environment.
Social ecology, deep ecology, and ecofeminism oppose established institutions and reject compromise for a thorough transformation of advanced industrialized society. In bioethicist views, humans have to respect intrinsic value in all nature and live in harmony with it since human centredness is one of the major roots of environmental problems. Social ecology focuses on an analysis of ecological problems in terms of human social hierarchy by drawing on Western anarchist traditions. On the other hand, ecofeminism emerged in the 1970s with an increasing awareness of the connections between women and nature. Biospherical egalitarianism (ecological egalitarianism) is represented in the principles of diversity and symbiosis with a deep-seated respect for ways and forms of life. In deep ecology, humans adapt themselves to nature based on the recognition of their equal values to other species. Organisms are considered as knots in the biospherical net or field of intrinsic relations.