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The problem of ethical obligations to plants has rarely been raised in Western traditions of thought. However, it is central to Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, one of the key texts of modern American environmentalism. For Leopold, the effects of a civilisation on the vegetal base of the trophic pyramid are the ultimate measure of its value, and the principal failure of modern civilisation is that it blinds people to this fact. For humans to become proper citizens of the land community, they must build reciprocal relationships with other members of the community, which can be understood as relationships of resonance (H. Rosa). Crucially, this also includes plants, who are thus recognised as vegetal citizens. Leopold’s descriptions of his own relationships to the native flora, built over the course of a decade of ecological restoration work on his property in Sauk County, Wisconsin, must be viewed in this context.

Disposal of the dead differs across culture and times due to prevailing factors including traditional beliefs, normative worldviews, and resource availability. This paper sought to explore the views of the Batswana regarding disposal of the dead through a case study of Ledumang Ward in Gaborone. Interviews were conducted with 42 respondents who included 30 householders around Ledumang cemetery and 12 key informants who included persons in the funeral industry, clergy, and government or council officers. The findings reveal that burial is the most preferred method of body disposal among residents of Ledumang Ward with only a few having knowledge or being open to other forms of body disposal. Most household respondents (70%) cited religious beliefs and providing a resting place for the dead as the reason for their preference. Both residents and key informants expressed worry over negative environmental impacts of burials including them being an unsustainable land use practice. Shortage of land was the biggest concern for the largest portion of residents (40%). On the contrary, only 1% and 10% cited environmental degradation and biodiversity loss, and air pollution as the foremost concerns, respectively. The ethical evaluation using the land ethic shows the current burial practices to be morally wrong as they do not promote the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. The paper recommends some empirical research as well as philosophical research to establish and evaluate metaphysical and normative beliefs that undergird current burial practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eco-conscious writers mitigate environmental drawbacks by not only bringing to the fore existing challenges but also by professing a love for nature and the environment. This article interrogates eco-awareness and consciousness through 10 purposively selected poems from two collections by Niger Delta poet, g'ebinyo ogbowei. I assert that to champion the restoration of ecologically degraded environments, ogbowei manipulates erotic love – which he expresses to the women in his life – and connects this to environmental consciousness and awareness. This is evidential of the writer's intention to foreground the generational existential plight and despair of the Nigerian Niger Delta. In addition, through the intersection of body love and love of land in the selected poems, I engage with how the poet underscores the place of self- and other-love in the discourses around ecocriticism. These are wielded by the poet to call for responsibility in turning the tides and in renewing nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ḥawliyyaẗ Kulliyyaẗ Al-Adāb: Ǧāmiʿaẗ Binī Sūwaīf is the property of Beni Suef University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract Leopold’s land health concept provides a holistic view of the relationship between human health and ecosystem health. Significantly, a similar view is found in the traditional wisdom of Indigenous peoples, as exemplified by the concept of “healthy country, healthy people”. A contemporary formulation of land health is provided by social-ecological resilience, which refers to integrated complex adaptive systems that include social (human) and ecological (biophysical) subsystems in a two-way feedback relationship. Resilience is dynamic and provides the tools for dealing with change and disasters proactively. Building resilience and using social/institutional learning for adaptive governance are relevant to One Health, as are Indigenous concepts for the maintenance of healthy relationships between humans and the ecosystem. One Health Impact Statement The One Health approach centers on the interdependence between the health of humans, animals, and the ecosystem. However, relevant ecosystem concepts have not been developed sufficiently for a comprehensive One Health approach, as pointed out in the editorial by Zinsstag and Crump. The basic idea behind One Health not only goes back many decades in Western science but also to the environmental perception and wisdom of traditional societies. The consideration of these connections is relevant for the development of a solid theoretical basis for One Health.

Human activity is now having a defining influence on global systems. The Anthropocene epoch requires revisiting our ethical presuppositions to understand our relationship to the earth's life support systems. The Land Ethic of Aldo Leopold proposes an ethic that is diachronic, holistic, and biocentric, in contrast to the synchronic, individualist, and anthropocentric axioms of mainstream bioethics. I argue that these features of the Land Ethic make it more suitable to engage with the ethics of healthcare resource allocation in the Anthropocene; that understanding sustainability in a Land Ethical fashion requires that we view it as placing a side-constraint on all permissible healthcare resource use such that this use remains within planetary boundaries; and outline how this might re-shape debates around healthcare resource allocation., (© 2024 The Author(s). Bioethics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

It is clear that environmentalist are failing in their efforts to avert a global ecological catastrophe. It is argued here that Aldo Leopold had provided the foundations for an effective environmental movement, but to develop his land ethic, it is necessary first to interpret and advance it by seeing it as a form of communitarianism, and link it to communitarian ethical and political philosophy. This synthesis can then be further developed by incorporating advanced ideas in ecology and human ecology. Overcoming the division between the sciences and humanities and granting a place to narratives as a highly developed form of eco-semiosis, these provide the foundation for a new grand narrative committed to creating an ecological civilization, a civilization organized to augment the life of ecosystems, including human ecosystems, by augmenting the conditions for its members to flourish and develop their full potential to augment life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the meanings and functions of the seasons in Selma Lagerlöf’s Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige (Nils Holgersson’s Wonderful Journey through Sweden) in view of environmental ethics. By concentrating on the narratology and the ecocritical issues of the classic, it questions how the attention to temporality, and more particularly to the seasons, allows for the emergence of an environmental and land ethic. It shows how the seasons are the means for the expression of all forms of life and their interconnectedness. By reading the embeddedness and the many meanings of the seasons and seasonal patterns in Nils Holgersson, this article also demonstrates the implementation of sustainable development through mutuality and reciprocity between humans and nature.

The relationship between energy and ethics is gaining attention in policy rooms around the world. How does one respond to the competing interests of the environment and posterity while also addressing the energy needs of the present human generation? In Western philosophy, this question is currently subject of debate and research. However, the African philosophical analysis that is required to address this concern is generally absent from discourse/literature on energy ethics. This article aims to bridge this gap, by providing broad analysis that has been lacking from the African context. In a way, it seeks to answer such questions already raised in Western philosophy but from African perspectives. This approach is significant given the fact that Western oriented energy humanities and energy ethics seem to be inappropriate or inadequate to understanding energy dynamics in the African context. Therefore, this paper aims to inform global debate and facilitate African-specific understanding of the complex nexus of human-environment-posterity by building the discourse on Braai filosofie. It discusses specific principles that can be deployed to address trade-offs between ethics and energy, thus providing guide to investment decisions on renewable energy projects in Africa.

Copyright of RumeliDE Journal of Language & Literature Research / RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi is the property of RumeliDE Uluslararasi Hakemli Dil & Edebiyat Arastirmalari Dergisi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article I distill a trio of lessons for Christian environmental ethics from the stewardship model's detractors and rivals. I begin by delineating stewardship and explaining the model's initial prevalence as Christians' primary response to widespread recognition of environmental crisis and their faith's alleged culpability for it. I then distinguish two waves of criticism that, by denouncing stewardship's substance and method, thoroughly discredited the model among Christian ethicists. Yet, as stewardship was being rejected for its susceptibility to anthropocentrism, one of its chief competitors—the land ethic—was being repudiated for its liability to misanthropy. I argue that these developments give Christians cause to (1) affirm a hierarchical non-anthropocentrism that prioritizes human interests; (2) premise such priority in part on human embrace of non-anthropocentrism; and (3) interpret environmental ethics as more than a matter of models like stewardship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though largely a theoretical endeavour, environmental ethics also has a practical agenda to help humans achieve environmental sustainability. Environmental ethicists have extensively debated the grounds, contents and implications of our moral obligations to nonhuman nature, offering up different notions of an 'environmental ethic' with the presumption that, if humans adopt such an environmental ethic, they will then engage in less environmentally damaging behaviours. We assess this presumption, drawing on psychological research to discuss whether or under what conditions an environmental ethic might engender pro-environmental behaviour. We focus discussion on three lines of scholarship in the environmental ethics literature, on 1) intrinsic value, 2) care ethics, and 3) the land ethic. We conclude by commenting generally on both the limits and transformative potential of an environmental ethic in its larger sociocultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The restoration community continues to discuss what constitutes good environmental stewardship. One area of tension is the extent to which the well‐being of wild animals should inform restoration efforts. We discuss three ways that the perspective of wild animal welfare can augment restoration ecology: strengthening people's relationship with nature, reinforcing biotic integrity, and reducing mechanistic uncertainty. The animal welfare movement elevates sentient animals as stakeholders and explores how environmental context directly impacts the well‐being of individuals. Viewing wild animals through this lens may encourage people to think and act with empathy and altruism. Second, we incorporate animal welfare into the concept of biotic integrity for ecological and ethical reasons. Restoring ecosystem processes may enhance animal welfare, and vice versa. Alternatively, there may be a trade‐off between these factors, requiring local decision‐makers to prioritize between restoring ecosystem function and promoting individuals' well‐being. We conclude by discussing how welfare can impact population recovery, thereby adding insights about mechanisms underpinning restoration objectives. Ultimately, restoration ecologists and proponents of wild animal welfare could enjoy a productive union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the conceptual dimension of environmental stewardship from a neoplatonic frame, Patrick Dobel’s theology of nature, and Aldo Leopold’s philosophy on land ethic. Based on a reading of these works, stewardship as an ethical concept is normative. It seeks rational justifications that would define stewardship in relation to natural resources and the natural world. The paper aims to establish ethics of stewardship and relate it with the traditional approaches to environmental ethics, particularly land ethics. It examines how stewardship may be manifested “on the ground” and in the actual farming communities through Community Seed Banking and other seed conservation initiatives.

A clinical ethics fit for the Anthropocene-our current geological era in which human activity is the primary determinant of environmental change-needs to incorporate environmental ethics to be fit for clinical practice. Conservationist Aldo Leopold's essay 'The Land Ethic' is probably the most widely-cited source in environmental philosophy; but Leopold's work, and environmental ethics generally, has made little impression on clinical ethics. The Land Ethic holds that "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." I argue that a Land Ethic helps to re-frame problems in clinical ethics that more common philosophical approaches struggle to handle, and that it can be incorporated into clinical ethics without succumbing to "environmental fascism". I motivate viewing problems in clinical ethics from the perspective of the 'integrity of the biotic community', then illustrate how this perspective can offer guidance where more commonly-invoked theories-such as consequentialism and Kantian-inspired approaches-struggle, using antimicrobial resistance in nosocomial infection as a case study. The Land Ethic equips us to understand human values as arising within and inseparable from a social-ecological context, and by treating communities (both human and biotic) as valuable in themselves rather than just through the aggregate welfare of their individual participants, we can avoid problems with the 'repugnant conclusion' and utility monster that plague utilitarian accounts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the philosophical status and ground of biomimicry's most distinctive principle: nature as measure. Starting with the argument that this principle is ethically normative, I go on to compare the ecological ethic it embodies with Aldo Leopold's land ethic. In so doing, I argue that the ultimate measure against which the ethical rightness of our actions should be judged is the way of being of Gaia, which is to let be her present inhabitants. I then explore the idea that taking as measure Gaia's way of being provides powerful responses to a number of longstanding problems in environmental ethics, including the question of its 'centre', duties to preserve and restore nature, and duties to present and future beings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the idea of endowing rights to nature has become recurrent, which can be seen through an increasing number of theoretical analysis from different outlooks. Its study, therefore, has turned somehow mandatory in the realm of ethics, being even justified as an alternative to cope with the current environmental crisis. An ethical perspective should be assumed as an indispensable source for a theoretical and legal construction of the doctrine of rights of nature, given that great part of law-making in matters of legal status is derivative from moral philosophy. In essence, as Stone magisterially suggests, the interconnectedness between the conferral of [fundamental] rights to new subjects of law and the concomitant expansion of the frontiers of moral standing towards themselves responds to a parallel history. Namely, holders of rights are usually deservers of moral standing. The present article encompasses this historical interrelation. Different ethical interpretations derived over time are described, following the common thread of professor J. Baird Callicott's categorization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on Stendhal's Mémoires d'un touriste (1838) and its eco-conscious bourgeois traveller's exploration of the Dauphiné. Stendhal's account of this Alpine region presents a critical stance in which the landscape is filtered through natural history, art, and recent post-revolutionary history. His resistance to a purely aesthetic experience of nature leads to a productive social model in the local populace's sense of a land ethic: in the Dauphiné, the narrator discovers, the inhabitants can effectively live in harmony with the natural resources that they cultivate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This paper offers a hybrid, place-based ethic drawn from multiple perspectives as a way to reinvigorate ethical thought for technical communicators. Literature review: Aldo Leopold's land ethic asks us to consider actions beyond our immediate surroundings. Martin Buber's dialogic ethics complement a land ethic and interrogate interpersonal communication. Anticipatory technology ethics recommends the integration of ethical discussions and decisions during the design phase of new technologies. Together, these three approaches inform a place-based ethic for technical communicators. Research questions: 1. How might we meaningfully merge the many ways that technical communicators from varying backgrounds approach ethics into a useful ethical model that considers human interaction, technological innovation, and physical place? 2. How might such a merged model, what we call a place-based ethic, affect technical communication design? Methods: We analyze cases including documents from radical environmental defense groups, a restyling of certain federal court rules from legalese into plainer language, the creation of mortgage documents suitable for consumers and industry professionals, and the action-research design phase of a locative mobile application about public art. Results and conclusion: The cases provide concrete examples of the components of a place-based ethic, and we conclude that designing with a place-based ethic includes actively acknowledging the value of the environment, seeking areas for dialogue among involved parties and celebrating dialogue where it occurs, seeking shared spaces, clearly stating anticipated outcomes, and usability testing for potential ethical issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cet article s’intéresse à l’un des auteurs les plus importants de la pensée environnementale américaine, Aldo Leopold, et plus précisément à son "éthique de la terre"—land ethic. Cette idée formulée à la fin des années 1940 était tout à fait pionnière, précédant de plus de dix ans le mouvement environnementaliste. Faces aux limites du préservationnisme issu de la tradition transcendantaliste, ainsi qu’à celles du conservationnisme impliquant une gestion rationalisée des espaces naturels par l’Etat, Leopold proposait un fondement éthique justifiant les politiques de protection de l’environnement. L’homme fait, selon ce naturaliste, partie d’une communauté du vivant dont il a la responsabilité morale. L’anthropocentrisme de la tradition de pensée occidentale est donc remis en question par ce penseur par ailleurs profondément humaniste. Il ne s’agit pas de décrire simplement son travail, mais plutôt de le relire à la lumière des derniers développements de la philosophie environnementale. Le posthumanisme propose une lecture du monde permettant d’inclure le reste du vivant dans l’équation, et c’est en cela qu’il se rapproche de l’éthique de la terre. Si cette pensée d’un après-humanisme est d’un grand intérêt d’un point de vue descriptif, elle n’a pas la même portée prescriptive. Et c’est en cela qu’un dialogue entre Leopold et les posthumanistes s’avère riche: il en ressort une éthique inclusive qui s’appuie sur une compréhension des interactions complexes qui constituent le monde.

Lack of reforestation after timber harvesting or natural disturbances leads to forest loss and degradation in many parts of the world. In this paper, I illustrate that, as the extensive margins of reforestation and timber harvesting differ, some non-reforestation may be justified financially and economically even in places where market and institutional arrangements encourage reforestation. Nonetheless, considering the environmental benefits of reforestation would reduce the potential area of non-reforestation or the gap between the two margins. I further demonstrate with an example the substantial financial costs of delayed reforestation in the U.S. South and explain why reforestation is not taken on some private and public lands. I conclude with comments on reforestation from public policy and ethical perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examined relationships among value orientations (mutualism, domination), property rights, responsibility, and farmers’ willingness to adopt Leopold’s land ethic. Data were obtained from a mailed survey sent to Illinois farmers (n = 974). Domination, mutualism, property rights, and responsibility were derived from previous research. The land ethic was measured using eight variables derived from direct quotes from Leopold. Structural equation models generally supported the hypothesized relationships. Mutualism, responsibility, and property rights predicted willingness to adopt the land ethic and accounted for 72% of the variance. Mutualism positively influenced responsibility and negatively influenced rights. Domination positively predicted rights, but did not influence responsibility. Value orientations explained 65% of the variance in responsibility and 17% in rights. Overall, findings suggested a connection between social psychologists’ approach to mutualism/domination and Leopold’s land ethic. Conservation efforts that tap into deeply held value orientations may result in lasting changes in farmer behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the ideas of American philosopher J. Baird Callicott to shed light on ecological thinking and its inherent commitment to change and the adaptation of US environmental ethics. Callicott is one of the most prominent and longest-serving practitioners of environmental ethics; he is especially known for his support of land ethic, as defined by Aldo Leopold, and ecocentrism, an ethic predicated on the perception of ecosystems as communities. Callicott draws on the works of David Hume, Adam Smith and Charles Darwin to justify a Leopoldian ecocentrism. Extending Hume’s and Smith’s theory of moral sentiments to non-human life and ecosystems, Callicott claims to have continued Darwin’s ethical reflections in The Descent of Man (1871), also taken up by Aldo Leopold after his conversion to the ecological worldview. Callicott argues that the meaning of community can and must be protean, in order to ensure that environmental destruction will not continue unimpeded. Callicott thus calls for a major paradigm shift away from modernity, as defined by the scientific revolution of the 17th century, to a reconstructive postmodernity informed by Darwinism, ecology and the “new” physics spawned by quantum theory. According to Callicott, the only effective way to transcend Cartesian dualism is to bring about a major change in people’s worldview. Short of such a shift in paradigms, the dualities at the root of the environmental crisis will persist. Ironically, one of the main challenges to Callicott’s defense of the land ethic came from within ecology, from what Donald Worster calls the ecology of chaos. If Callicott rescues Leopold’s land ethic from ecological insignificance, this is because of the advent of disturbance ecology in the 1970s and 1980s along with the gradual replacement of the balance-of-nature paradigm by the nature-in-flux paradigm. How can ecosystems be considered communities if they are subject to stochastic and catastrophic change? Distinguishing the scale of non-human change and anthropogenic change, Callicott salvages an ethic whose ecological foundations are precarious and unstable. In doing so, he demonstrates that just as adaptation is part of a natural evolution, it is also the key to intellectual and philosophical evolution. Callicott’s response to disturbance ecology nevertheless highlights the precarious position of environmental philosophers who predicate their moral prescriptions on scientific knowledge, given that the science of ecology is always evolving.