Due to the significant and often careless human impact on the natural environment, there are serious problems facing the people of today and of future generations. To date, ethical, aesthetic, religious, and economic arguments for the conservation and protection of the natural environment have made relatively little headway. Another approach, one capable of garnering attention and motivating action, would be welcome. There is another approach, one that I will call a rights approach. Speaking generally, this approach is an attempt to (...) address environmental issues via the language and theory of legal and moral rights. Ultimately, it is our duties to our fellow humans that explain why we have duties regarding the natural environment. There are three main contenders among theories that can be called rights approaches to environmental issues. The first identifies the (alleged) human right to a healthful environment as the source of our obligations to conserve and protect nature. The second approach has it that our duties to nature arise from the rights of the constituents of nature themselves, its flora and fauna. The third approach to addressing environmental problems via rights is, I argue, the best path to environmental conservation and protection. This approach—which grounds duties toward nature on the human right to health—has the benefits of being a straightforward, uncontroversial, and simple approach to issues and problems that desperately need to be resolved. (shrink)

This paper presents a framework for understanding the value systems inherent in landscape architectural practice. It is based upon a close analytical reading of the academic and professional literature, supported by a series of in-depth interviews with mid- and late-career British landscape architects. The empirical results of these interviews will be presented in a future paper. A tripartite classification of values is suggested, based upon the categories of the aesthetic, the social and the environmental, each of which is internally complex. (...) This framework is offered as a tool for future landscape architectural criticism. The relationships between values both within and between these value areas are discussed. The conclusion reached is that there is no overarching value which can be used to arbitrate between conflicting values. However, while it is possible to identify areas where values conflict, there can also be significant convergence between aesthetic, social and ecological values, and the paper suggests that it is possible to create landscapes which have positive value in all three areas. (shrink)

In 'Non-Anthropocentrism? A Killing Objection', Tony Lynch and David Wells argue that any attempt to develop a non-anthropocentric morality must invariably slide back to either anthropocentrism (either weak or strong) or a highly repugnant misanthropy in cases of direct conflict between the survival needs of humans and nonhuman species. This reply argues that their attempt to expose the flaws in non-anthropocentrism deflects attention away from the crux of the ecocentric critique, which can best be understood if we replace the confusing (...) terms anthropocentrism/non-anthropocentrism with 'human racism'/ecocentrism (understood as a more inclusive moral perspective which encompasses nonracist humanism). Human racism manifests when a reconciliation of human and nonhuman needs is possible but is nonetheless concealed and/or denied. That is, the best test for discerning prejudice against nonhuman nature is not when individual or social choice are severely circum-scribed but rather when such choices are relatively unconstrained. Moreover, their concluding argument that human concern for nonhuman nature should be understood in terms of aesthetic values rather than moral values does not provide reliable grounds for the systematic protection of nonhuman nature. (shrink)