Environmental ethics: philosophy, ecology and other species

This chapter focuses on the dominant Western frames while acknowledging a welcome rise of alternative voices – often captured by the expression of “indigenous and local knowledge” – which will hopefully enrich the depth and breadth of our pathways into the future. Environmental ethics and its internal debates and tensions can provide precious insights to global environmental politics. The ethical conversation was the most lively and dynamic within environmental philosophy, giving rise to environmental ethics, which became an established discipline. Environmental ethics can therefore contribute to disciplinary pluralism in global environmental politics by engaging with the philosophical landscape that underpins the meta-narratives that shape our ideas of the human connection and dependence on nature. Early environmental ethics concentrated on attributing an intrinsic value to nature, above and beyond the instrumental one that had dominated the previous few centuries.