This study addresses two questions: (1) what visions of nature do lay people subscribe to? (2) to what extent do these visions reflect those of professional philosophers? Four philosophical images of the human-nature relationship were discussed with respondents; Master, Steward, Partner and Participant. Respondents recognise these images, but prefer to construct their own. Elements of their images are (1) that humans are part of nature, but (2) that they are responsible for nature as well. This study indicates that empirical philosophy (...) can contribute to the further development of environmental philosophy. Through an empirical turn we can discover people's own voice. (shrink)

UK radioactive waste management policy making is currently taking place within a participatory and analytic- deliberative decision-making framework; one that seeks to integrate public and stakeholder values and perspectives with scientific and technical expertise. One important aspect of this socio-technical reframing of the radioactive waste problem is an explicit recognition that legitimate and defensible policy making must take into account important ethical issues if it is to be a success. Thus, there is a need for tools to incorporate adequate assessment (...) of ethical issues in a way that is compatible with this approach. The ' ethical matrix ' is one such tool used recently to address a range of agricultural and natural resource issues that shows promise for this field. This paper assesses the strengths and limitations of the matrix and outlines a framework for the development of alternative tools to better satisfy the needs of ethical assessment in radioactive waste management decision making processes. (shrink)

This paper examines three forest value orientations - clusters of interrelated values and basic beliefs about forests - that emerged from an analysis of the public discourse about forest planning, management, and policy in the United States. The value orientations include anthropocentric, biocentric, and moral/spiritual/aesthetic orientations toward forests. Computer coded content analysis was used to identify shifts in the relative importance of these value orientations over the period 1980 through 2001. The share of expressions of anthropocentric forest value orientations declined (...) over this period, while the share of biocentric value expressions increased. Moral/spiritual/aesthetic value expressions remained constant over time. The observed shifts in forest value orientations have implications for identifying appropriate goals for public forest management and policy, developing socially acceptable means for accomplishing those goals, and dealing with inevitable conflict over forest management. (shrink)

The journal Environmental Values is thirty years old. In this retrospective, as the retiring Editor-in-Chief, I provide a set of personal reflections on the changing landscape of scholarship in the field. This historical overview traces developments from the journal's origins in debates between philosophers, sociologists, and economists in the UK to the conflicts over policy on climate change, biodiversity/non-humans and sustainability. Along the way various negative influences are mentioned, relating to how the values of Nature are considered in policy, including (...) mainstream environmental economics, naïve environmental pragmatism, the strategic role of corporations, neoliberalism and eco-modernism/techno-optimism. At the same time core value debates around intrinsic value in Nature and instrumentalism remain relevant, along with how plural environmental values can be articulated and acted upon. Naturalness, human relations to non-humans, and Nature as other, remain central considerations. The broadening of issues covered by the journal (e.g. covering social psychology, sociology and political science), reflect the need to address both human behaviour and the structure of social and economic systems to confront ongoing social-ecological crises. (shrink)

Hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking') has enabled the recovery of previously inaccessible resources and rendered new areas of the underground ‘productive’. While a number of studies in the US and UK have examined public attitudes toward fracking and its various impacts, how people conceptualise the deep underground itself has received less attention. We argue that views on resources, risk and the deep underground raise important questions about how people perceive the desirability and viability of subterranean interventions. We conducted day-long deliberation workshops (two (...) in each country), facilitating discussions among diverse groups of people on prospective shale extraction in the US and UK. Themes that emerged in these conversations include seeing the Earth as a foundation; natural limits (a greater burden than the subsurface can withstand versus simply overuse of natural resources); and ideas about the fragility, instability and opacity of the deep underground. We find that concerns in both countries were not limited to specific, localised impacts but also addressed ecosystem links between surface and subsurface environments and broader questions about the use, identification and value of natural resources. (shrink)

Although much attention has been given to the role of community stakeholders in developing environmental risk- management policies, most local and national initiatives are better known for their failings than their successes. One reason for this continuing difficulty, we contend, is a reluctance to address the many difficult value trade-offs that necessarily arise in the course of creating and evaluating alternative risk- management options. In this paper we discuss six reasons why such trade-offs are difficult and, for each, present helpful (...) techniques from the decision sciences along with case study examples of successful applications. (shrink)