This case and teaching note focuses on the efforts of a small, boutique hotel located in North Bali, Indonesia to generate competitive advantage in the marketplace through the adoption of sustainability practices and environmental standards. It raises questions around the nature of innovation and competition, particularly in the context of an emerging economy.

Recent climate change statistics attribute over a quarter of carbon emissions to residential energy use in the United Kingdom. To address this, a building standard was introduced to aim to reduce the levels of carbon dioxide emissions and energy consumption. This paper analyzes how such an environmental standard reconfigures the sociotechnological relations and practices of housing professionals that design, construct, and manage social housing. We focus on how actors engage with the standard’s recommendation for incorporating low and zero carbon (...) technologies into new buildings. We identify diverse practices that emerge from these engagements, which, we contend, have significant consequences for the working relationships of professional actors and for renewable energy provision. By being entwined in, and generative of actors’ practices, we argue that the Code becomes part of the sociotechnological relationships and infrastructures that shape energy provision. (shrink)

The sole anthropocentrism led to environmental crisis, and the ideology of the individual standard of the anthropocentrism of Marxist philosophy aggravatedenvironmental crisis. As a result, some people considered that the theory of Marxist philosophy was outdated and could not guide people in their practice. And then they had a doubtful and negative attitude. But this idea is completely off base.The reason of this idea is that they neglected the future of Marxist philosophy and theory. The environmental anthropocentrism of (...) categorical standard of Marxist philosophy will be able to solve the environmental crisis. (shrink)

The growing assumption thattransnational corporations (TNCs) will apply``best practice'''' and ``international standards''''in their operations in developing countries hasseldom been checked against close observationof corporate behavior. In this article, Ipresent a case study, based on field research,of one voluntary initiative to useinternational standards and best practice forenvironmental protection in the AmazonRainforest, by a US-based oil company,Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) in Ecuador. The moststriking finding is that the company refuses todisclose the precise standards that apply toits operations. This, and the (...) refusal todisclose other important environmentalinformation, make it impossible to verifyindependently Oxy''s claims of environmentalexcellence, or assess the effectiveness of theinitiative. At the same time, Oxy uses theinvocation of international standards to wrapitself in a veneer of corporate responsibility;reassure government officials and localresidents; cultivate confusion about standardsand practices that apply to the operations;deflect meaningful oversight and transparency;and arbitrarily legitimize norms that have beendefined by special interests. In short,international standards offer great promise forneeded environmental improvements; but can alsobe used to impede, rather than advance,corporate responsibility and the development ofeffective environmental law at the nationallevel. These findings suggest that for theapplication of international standards to bemeaningful, the international community needsto move beyond statements of principle anddevelop mechanisms that can be used toevaluate, verify, and monitor independentlyenvironmental claims by TNCs. (shrink)

This study analyzes the adoption and performance implications of two certified management standards in Mexico. Basing our predictions on strategic balance theory we find that those firms seeking for higher levels of differentiation or legitimacy show inferior environmental performance that firms demonstrating higher strategic balance.

In this paper, we develop an argument to show why we expect that multinational companies will ensure that they communicate credibly about their environmental responsibility, across all their subsidiaries. Credible environmental communication helps to increase the firm’s legitimacy and reduce its liability of foreignness on an issue that is globally relevant. We develop a measure to test if there is a standardized level of environmental communication credibility on the country-specific web sites of MNC subsidiaries around the world (...) and find, in fact, that there is considerable variation across countries, among subsidiaries of different firms and among subsidiaries of the same multinational. We discuss the reasons for this and the implications for firm legitimacy. (shrink)

Increasingly, companies implement social and environmental standards as instruments towards corporate social responsibility in supply chains. This is based on the assumption that such standards increase legitimacy among stakeholders. Yet, a wide variety of standards with different requirement levels exist and companies might tend to introduce the ones with low exigencies, using them as a legitimacy front. This strategy jeopardizes the reputation of social and environmental standards among stakeholders and their long-term trust in these (...) instruments of CSR, meaning that all expenses for their implementation are of no avail for the companies. Therefore, this paper highlights which criteria are important for the selection, implementation and improvement in order to achieve a company's aim, but also to strengthen the legitimacy of social and environmental standards. This research is based on conceptual thought and some existing empirical research, comparing four different social and environmental standards, revealing weaknesses and strengths. It exposes the basic conditions for the success of such standards among stakeholders and identifies the need for more empirical data. (shrink)

Increasingly, companies implement social and environmental standards as instruments towards corporate social responsibility (CSR) in supply chains. This is based on the assumption that such standards increase legitimacy among stakeholders. Yet, a wide variety of standards with different requirement levels exist and companies might tend to introduce the ones with low exigencies, using them as a legitimacy front. This strategy jeopardizes the reputation of social and environmental standards among stakeholders and their long-term trust in (...) these instruments of CSR, meaning that all expenses for their implementation are of no avail for the companies. Therefore, this paper highlights which criteria are important for the selection, implementation and improvement in order to achieve a company's aim, but also to strengthen the legitimacy of social and environmental standards. This research is based on conceptual thought and some existing empirical research, comparing four different social and environmental standards, revealing weaknesses and strengths. It exposes the basic conditions for the success of such standards among stakeholders and identifies the need for more empirical data. (shrink)

The European Union (EU) has developed a vast body of environmental law, relying on a treaty title setting out normatively and descriptively complex environmental principles and approaches, as well as on those parts of the treaties focusing on the internal market. This chapter provides some introductory insights into EU environmental law. It explores that the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) shows the potential of an approach to governance that sets environmental norms in a collaborative, problem‐solving forum beyond (...) the face of legislation. The chapter shows harmonization is not a straightforward category in EU environmental law. Much was made of the decentralization and local or national flexibility in the predecessor to the IED. By comparison, the IED places greater emphasis on the mandatory application of EU‐wide environmental standards. However, both the initial decentralization and the recentralization are highly ambiguous. (shrink)

A provocative argument that environmental thinking would be better off if it dropped the concept of “nature” altogether and spoke instead of the built environment. -/- Environmentalism, in theory and practice, is concerned with protecting nature. But if we have now reached “the end of nature,” as Bill McKibben and other environmental thinkers have declared, what is there left to protect? In Thinking like a Mall, Steven Vogel argues that environmental thinking would be better off if it (...) dropped the concept of “nature” altogether and spoke instead of the “environment”—that is, the world that actually surrounds us, which is always a built world, the only one that we inhabit. We need to think not so much like a mountain (as Aldo Leopold urged) as like a mall. Shopping malls, too, are part of the environment and deserve as much serious consideration from environmental thinkers as do mountains. -/- Vogel argues provocatively that environmental philosophy, in its ethics, should no longer draw a distinction between the natural and the artificial and, in its politics, should abandon the idea that something beyond human practices (such as “nature”) can serve as a standard determining what those practices ought to be. The appeal to nature distinct from the built environment, he contends, may be not merely unhelpful to environmental thinking but in itself harmful to that thinking. The question for environmental philosophy is not “how can we save nature?” but rather “what environment should we inhabit, and what practices should we engage in to help build it?”. (shrink)

As a consequence of the changing conditions of doing business, we can observe the emergence of an increasing number of industrial and company-specific codes of conduct, as well as social and environmental standards. This paper considers these initiatives as being self-regulating governance mechanisms, which are characterized by a process of voluntary adherence on the part of firms to certain mechanisms or principles that seek to promote a “good society.” Two specific internationally established standards are discussed: Social Accountability (...) 8000 and AccountAbility 1000. These institutionalized approaches are described and then contrasted in relation to a number of different factors, particularly the degree to which they foster “reflexivity,” in terms of how businesses think about these issues, and “dialog,” in terms of how businesses interact with stakeholders. Such questions are relevant to the ways in which these standards might be introduced and implemented, and which of these institutionalized approaches are the most promising for international businesses in developing countries. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:This paper analyzes how national institutional factors affect the adoption of the international environmental management standard ISO 14001, using a panel of 139 countries from 1996 to 2006. The analysis emphasizes that during the emerging phase of the standard, the potential lack of consensus within the constituents of the national institutional environment concerning the value of a new standard could send mixed signals to firms about the standard. The results show that in the early phase of adoption, regulative and (...) normative forces within the institutional environment can work against each other. Results also show that regulative or coercive forces play a relatively more important role in the early phase of adoption of the standard than in the subsequent phases of diffusion. In the later phases of diffusion of ISO 14001, normative forces, such as the diffusion of other management standards, as well as factors related to trade, play a more important role. Because of the similarities between environmental management standards and corporate social responsibility standards, this study can help identify some of the challenges for diffusion of ISO management standards in the area of social responsibility. (shrink)

A leading international expert on environmental issues, Shrader-Frechette brings a new standard of rigor to philosophical discussions of environmental justice in her latest work. Observing that environmental activists often value environmental concerns over basic human rights, she points out the importance of recognising that minority groups and the poor in general are frequently the biggest victims of environmental degradation, a phenomenon with serious social and political implications that the environmental movement has failed to adequately (...) address. She argues for their equal rights to 'environmental justice' and maintains that they should not have to bear most of the weight of the burdens of pollution and resource depletion. Advocating a greater awareness on the part of professionals in a position to help these victims, Shrader-Frechette proposes a more equitable distribution of environmental resources and, in doing so, makes an important contribution to the fields of environmental ethics and applied philosophy. (shrink)

Using the principles of John Rawls' theory of justice, this book offers an alternative political vision; one which describes a mode of governance that will enable communities to implement a sustainable and socially just future. Rawls described a theory of justice that not only describes the sort of society in which anyone would like to live but that any society can create a society based on just institutions. While philosophers have demonstrated that Rawls's theory can provide a framework for the (...) discussion of questions of environmental justice, the problem for many philosophical theories is that discussions of sustainable development open the need to address questions of ecological interdependence, historical inequality in past resource use and the recognition that we cannot afford to ignore the limitations of growth. These ideas do not fit in comfortably in standard discourse about theories of justice. In contrast, this book frames the discussion of global justice in terms of environmental sustainability. The author argues that these ideas can be used to develop a coherent political theory which reconciles cosmopolitan arguments and the non-cosmopolitan or nationalist arguments concerning social and environmental justice. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environment philosophy and ethics, moral and political philosophy, global studies and sustainable development. (shrink)

The standard approach to environmental issues today is to turn to science, economics, or democratic populism as a means to resolve our environmental debates. Environmental philosophers, on the other hand, focus on the theoretical underpinnings of environmental issues, with possibly a brief reference to a specific case or example. A policy turn in environmental philosophy involves a third way, where philosophers begin from society’s own growing sense of the inadequacy of our conventional ways of addressing (...) environmental problems. (shrink)

While the contemporary biomimicry movement is associated primarily with the idea of taking Nature as model for technological innovation, it also contains a normative or ethical principle—Nature as measure—that may be treated in relative isolation from the better known principle of Nature as model. Drawing on discussions of the principle of Nature as measure put forward by Benyus and Jackson, while at the same time situating these discussions in relation to contemporary debates in the philosophy of biomimicry : 364–387, 2011; (...) Dicks in Philos Technol, doi: 10.1007/s13347-015-0210-2, 2015; Blok and Gremmen in J Agric Environ Ethics 29:203–217, 2016), the aim of this paper is to explore the relation between the principle of Nature as measure and environmental ethics. This leads to the argument that mainstream formulations of environmental ethics share the common trait of seeing our ethical relation to Nature as primarily involving duties to protect, preserve, or conserve various values in Nature, and that, in doing so, they problematically either overlook or dismiss as anthropocentric the possibility that Nature may provide measures, understood in terms of ecological standards, against which our own practices, or at least some of them, may be judged—a way of thinking I call “biomimetic ethics”. The practical consequences of this argument are significant. Whereas mainstream environmental ethics has been applied above all to such issues as wilderness preservation, natural resource management, and animal rights and welfare, biomimetic ethics is applicable rather to the question of how we produce, use, and consume things, and, as such, may potentially provide the basic ethical framework required to underpin the transition to a circular, bio-based, solar economy. (shrink)

ArgumentStandards of botanical practice in Sweden between 1850 and 1950 were set, not only in schools and universities, but also in naturalist societies and botanical exchange clubs, and were articulated in handbooks and manuals produced for schoolboys. These standards were maintained among volunteer naturalists in the environmental movement in the 1970s, long after the decline and disappearance of collecting from the curriculum. School science provides a link between the laboratory, the classroom, and the norms and practices of everyday (...) life: between the various “insides” and “outsides” of educational and research settings. (shrink)

Most environmental philosophers have had little use for 'conventional' philosophical and political thought. This is unfortunate, because these traditions can greatly contribute to environmental ethics and policy discussions. One mainstream concept of potential value for environmental philosophy is the notion of the public interest. Yet even though the public interest is widely acknowledged to be a powerful ethical standard in public affairs and public policy, there has been little agreement on its descriptive meaning. A particularly intriguing account (...) of the concept in the literature, however, may be found in the work of the American pragmatist John Dewey. Dewey argued that the public interest was to be continuously constructed through the process of free, cooperative inquiry into the shared good of the democratic community. This Deweyan model of the public interest has much to offer environmental philosophers who are interested in making connections between normative arguments and environmental policy discourse, and it holds great promise for enhancing environmental philosophy's role and impact in public life. (shrink)

The article is devoted to one of the crucial aspects of sustainable development, with the example of analyzing the possibilities for the development of environmental education in the Russian Federation. The article analyzes the possibilities of the current Russian Federal State Educational Standard for general and higher education in implementing the ideas of education in the interests of sustainable development. The methodological principles and philosophical foundations of environmental education are considered to designate the worldview guideline of ecological thinking. (...) The tasks of the state educational policy of the Russian Federation in the field of environmental education and the implementation of the concept of sustainable development are considered. The article describes the representation of the concept of sustainable development in the state policy of the Russian Federation, in the field of environmental education in the requirements of the Federal State Educational Standard for various subject areas and training courses related to the topic of environmental development in school and university education. The strategic goal of environmental education in Russia is the formation and development of an environmental outlook among students of all ages, which is based on scientific knowledge, environmental culture, and ethics. The continuity, basic principles, and trends of the implementation of environmental education in the Russian Federation are shown. (shrink)

With the rapid development of urban economy and the acceleration of urbanization, the demand for urban traffic is increasing rapidly. The single traffic-oriented planning does not take into account the requirements of traffic development on resources and the impact on the environment. The traffic construction of most cities can not fully meet the standard of ecotype. In this paper, the vehicle distribution route optimization problem under multiresource constraints such as vehicle energy capacity and vehicle loading capacity is studied, and the (...) static and dynamic models of distribution route optimization under multiresource constraints are established. In the static distribution route optimization model, the distribution route optimization problem with subloops is solved by modifying the network structure and adding virtual resource points. In the dynamic model, the spatiotemporal network model is used to avoid the generation of subloops, and the description of the vehicle distribution route planning problem is more intuitive and accurate. The model enriches the vehicle distribution route selection scheme at the cost of expanding the model scale. And it can solve the time when the vehicle arrives and leaves the customer point. This paper provides a good countermeasure for solving the environmental and social problems in the transportation system under the condition of resource constraints. (shrink)

Nearly all current attempts at environmental impact analysis and technology assessment fall victim to an ethical and methodological assumption that Keniston termed “the fallacy of unfinished business.” Related to one version of the naturalistic fallacy, this assumption is that technological and environmental problems have only technical, but not social, ethical, or political solutions. After using several impact analyses to illustrate the policy consequences of the fallacy of unfinished business, I suggest how it might be overcome. Next I present (...) three standard arguments, repeatedly used in technology and environmental impact assessments, by those who subscribe to this “fallacy.” I briefty examine the logical, consequentialist, and historical reasons for rejecting all three arguments in favor of this assumption. If my suggestions are correct, then environmental impact analysis is not only a matter of discovering how to finish our technological business, but also a question of learning how to recognize the ethical and epistemological dimensions of our assessment tasks. (shrink)

The assumption that environmental ethics must be nonanthropocentric in order to be adequate is mistaken. There are two forms of anthropocentrism, weak and strong, and weak anthropocentrism is adequate to support an environmental ethic. Environmental ethics is, however, distinctive vis-a-vis standard British and American ethical systems because, in order to be adequate, it must be nonindividualistic.Environmental ethics involves decisions on two levels, one kind of which differs from usual decisions affecting individual fairness while the other does (...) not. The latter, called allocational decisions, are not reducible to the former and govern the use of resources across extended time. Weak anthropocentrism provides a basis for criticizing individual, consumptive needs and can provide the basis for adjudicatingbetween these levels, thereby providing an adequate basis for environmental ethics without the questionable ontological commitments made by nonanthropocentrists in attributing intrinsie value to nature. (shrink)

Those who wish to deny some instance of environmental injustice often attempt to place inappropriate evidentiary burdens on scientists who show disproportionate pollution effects on vulnerable populations. One such evidentiary standard is the epidemiological-evidence rule (EER). According to EER, legitimate causal inferences about pollution-related harm (and actions to reduce probable environmental injustice) require human-epidemiological data, not merely good animal or laboratory data. This article summarizes the grounds for supporting EER, evaluates central scientific problems with EER, assesses key ethical (...) difficulties with EER, then concludes that EER ought not be used either to deny otherwise-probable environmental injustice or to delay possible action to correct well-documented pollution-related harms. (shrink)

This book argues that the standard arguments for and against the claim that certain Hindu texts and traditions attribute direct moral standing to animals and plants are unconvincing. It presents careful, extensive, and original interpretations of passages from the Manusmrti (law), the Mahābhārata (literature), and the Yogasūtra (philosophy), and argues that these texts attribute direct moral standing to animals and plants for at least three reasons: they are sentient, they are alive, and they possess a range of other relevant attributes (...) and abilities. This book is of interest to scholars of Hinduism and the environment, religion and the environment, Hindu and/or Buddhist philosophy more broadly, and environmental ethics. (shrink)

Environmental functions are defined as the possible uses of the non-human-made physical surroundings on which humanity is entirely dependent. Competing functions are by definition economic goods, indeed the most fundamental humanity disposes of. Environmental sustainability is defined as the dynamic equilibrium by which vital environmental functions remain available for future generations. Environmentally sustainable national income (eSNI) is defined as the maximum attainable production level by which vital environmental functions remain available for future generations. Thus the eSNI (...) provides information about the distance between the current and a sustainable situation. In combination with the standard national income (NI), the eSNI indicates whether the part of the production that is not based on sustainable use of the environment is increasing or decreasing in the course of time. Calculation of the eSNI involves the use of environmental models and a static general economic equilibrium model. It is shown that asymmetric entries are obscuring what is happening with both environment and production and that there is no conflict between employment and safeguarding the environment. (shrink)

Standard approaches to defining and evaluating environmental risk tend to reflect technocratic rather than democratic values. One consequence is that institutional mechanisms for achieving citizen participation in risk decisions rarely are studied or evaluated. This article presents a survey of five institutional mechanisms for allowing the lay public to influence environmental risk decisions: public hearings, initiatives, public surveys, negotiated rule making, and citizens review panels. It also defines democratic process criteria for assessing these and other participatory mechanisms.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 12.2 (2007) 125-127MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Whither Environmental Philosophy?Dale JamiesonBy most reasonable standards, environmental philosophy has been an enormous success since its beginnings in the 1970s. Courses in the subject are now taught around the world, there are many opportunities for publishing, there are two dedicated graduate programs, and there are even some jobs in the field.Yet these marks of success mask (...) some problems. Environmental philosophy is fragmented along many dimensions and there are no widely shared standards of competence. The available jobs often go to surprising candidates whose skills and interests are extremely diverse. Too much publication appears in "specialist" journals, unnoticed by anyone but other contributors. Unconstructive debates, often reminiscent in tone, substance, and rancor of the old and new left, linger. In light of all this, I am no longer surprised when I meet people active in environmental studies and causes who claim to be environmental ethicists but who are almost entirely ignorant of the academic field that bears the name.It is well known that the environment suffers because it is not a well-bounded domain (like the economy, for example), but is rather multi-dimensional and implicated in almost every area of human choice and action. This problem is reproduced in environmental philosophy, [End Page 125] which impinges on many fields, disciplines, and areas of inquiry, but is still struggling to find its own boundaries and identity.One of the core challenges for environmental philosophy is to understand its audience and to whom it is responsible. Historically, the field grew out of the discipline of philosophy, but many who consider themselves environmental philosophers are hostile to the discipline as it is currently practiced. They don't read the journals, go to the conferences, or try very hard to integrate their concerns into the discipline as a whole. Another possible home for environmental philosophy is environmental studies which is a self-consciously interdisciplinary field. Trouble is, environmental studies has many of the same problems as environmental philosophy without even a home discipline to secede from or rebel against. It also carries the added burden of delivering a respectable major to large numbers of eager, but often intellectually impatient, undergraduates. Perhaps one day environmental philosophy will be absorbed into an expanded field of bioethics, which increasingly sees itself as concerned not only with medicine, but with health, a concept that many believe applies broadly across the biosphere.Some put their faith in "public philosophy" or the "policy turn." I can hardly object. When pluralism, pragmatism and inherent value were all the rage in environmental philosophy, I was writing about climate change, zoos, and preserving urban landmarks. Yet it must be acknowledged that with the exception of Peter Singer (whom many would not consider an environmental philosopher), those who have touched the public most deeply in recent years have largely been writing about traditional philosophical concerns rather than about applied, practical, or interdisciplinary problems. Some examples: Paul Boghossian's critique of relativism was favorably reviewed in much of the popular press, including The Wall Street Journal. Anthony Appiah's Cosmopolitanism won the Arthur Ross Book Award from the highly influential Council on Foreign Relations. Books on free will and the philosophy of religion are everywhere; Daniel Dennett has almost become a household name. Most strikingly of all is Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit, originally a critique of deconstruction delivered to a Yale seminar in the 1980s, which beginning in 2005 spent 26 weeks on the New York Times best seller list. It's enough to make you wonder what relevance is and whether it's really relevant.What is to be done? For fear of sounding like a third-rate marriage [End Page 126] counselor, the field needs communication and good will. These are the necessary building blocks for constructing a common sense of identity. The signs are encouraging but equivocal. The June conference in Colorado, now entering its fifth year, has been an important forum for communication, as has the International Society for Environmental Ethics meetings held in conjunction with the divisional meetings of... (shrink)

This volume brings scholarly attention to the Midwest and to how broader concerns of environmental ethics manifest. Consisting of eight essays, a wide range of topics is covered, such as agrarian ethics and Stoicism, the Dakota access pipeline and Indigenous women's activism, philosophy of law and species classification, environmental justice and the Flint water crisis, hog farming and anti-microbial drug resistance, science education standards and climate change education, virtue ethics and ecological restoration, and environmental pragmatism and (...) the Clear Water Act; and more. Each accessibly written chapter brings multidisciplinary complexity to bear on this complex region. The authors include philosophers working in environmental ethics and other subfields of philosophy, and together with scholars in fields such as environmental sociology, American Indian studies, and environmental studies, they provide a fresh and necessary perspective on the American Midwest. (shrink)

This study examines how the match between personal and firm-level values regarding environmental responsibility affects employee job satisfaction and creativity and contributes to three literature streams [i.e., social corporate responsibility, creativity, and person–environment fit]. Building on the P–E fit literature, we propose and test environmental orientation fit versus nonfit effects on creativity, identifying job satisfaction as a mediating mechanism and regulatory pressure as a moderator. An empirical investigation indicates that the various environmental orientation fit conditions affect job (...) satisfaction and creativity differently. More specifically, environmental orientation fit produces greater job satisfaction and creativity when the employee and organization both demonstrate high concern for the environment than when both display congruent low concern for the environmental. Furthermore, for employees working in organizations that fit their personal environmental orientation, strong regulatory pressure to comply with environmental standards diminishes the positive fit effect on job satisfaction and creativity, while regulatory pressure does not affect the job satisfaction and creativity of employees whose personal environmental orientation is incongruent with that of the organization. (shrink)

Environmental ethics is apparently caught in a dilemma. We believe in human species partiality as a way of making sense of many of our practices. However as part of our commitment to impartialism in ethics, we arguably should extend the principle of impartiality to other species, in a version of biocentric egalitarianism of the kind advocated by Paul Taylor. According to this view, not only do all entities that possess a good have inherent worth, but they have equal inherent (...) worth, and in particular no species is superior to any other. In this paper, I elaborate a Heideggerian environmental virtue ethics that slips between the horns of the dilemma. Central to this ethics is the relation of “dwelling” and the many virtues of dwelling, according to which the world is seen as “holy” in a variety of ways. This ethics is importantly local in respect of time and place, but also has universalistic aspects. To understand such an ethics, it is necessary to grasp Heidegger’s notion of truth as “aleithia” or opening, which enables us to escape the metaphysical dilemmas besetting ethics in the analytic tradition, including standard virtue ethics. Elaborating this notion occupies a large part of the paper. (shrink)

Standard virtue ethics approach to environmental issues do not go far enough because they often lack significant attachment to local environments. Place provides the necessary link that enlarges the arena of moral action by joining human well-being to a place -based goal of wildness or biotic harmony. Place defines a niche for human activity as part of nature. Virtuous action, then, is understood as deliberation from a position of being in and of the natural world; respect and gratitude are (...) examples of this type of deliberation. (shrink)

The research aims to assess the extent of Green Business Standard implementation in hotels, determine the efficiency and effectiveness of Green Business Standard implementation in hotels, and define the influencing factors affecting GBSI in hotels. The research was conducted with 132 hotel representatives from six provinces and one municipality, five DoT officials, and 119 people who have experience of staying in hotels. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were employed. To analyze the data, SPSS statistical tools were employed, including simple regression, (...) multiple regression, and descriptive statistical tools. Content analysis was employed to analyze qualitative data. -/- First, the Green Business Standard was implemented to a high degree in hotels regarding energy consumption with the use of efficient energy equipment, water consumption through efficient water materials and equipment, and air quality management, while the GBSI in hotels is low regarding the promotion of green products and local economic development, environmental protection, and local cultural promotion. Second, the practice of GBSI in hotels reduced water use, energy consumption, costs, and guest and profit margins. Third, the GBSI in hotels was predicted by customers’ support, government regulations, perceived benefits, hotel managers' or owners’ behavior, and staff support. -/- Keywords: green business standards, efficiency, effectiveness, and influencing factors of GBSI in hotels . (shrink)

Thomas Hill famously argued that what really bothers us about environmental degradation is best discovered by asking “What kind of person would do such a thing?” Beliefs, some of which are blameworthy, are among the things that define what kind of person one is. What we care about is reflected in whether one’s epistemic practices align with one’s core moral convictions and common standards of decency. Our moral sensitivities are reflected in what we attend to and reflect upon. (...) What we do not notice can be a result of culpable indifference or self-deception. Environmental beliefs formed with negligent disregard for the risks they create for others are reflections of a vicious moral character. Beliefs of citizens have consequences. They determine what politicians will respond to and what policies they will introduce. Ideological commitments have been shown to influence what one takes to be the facts about risks. When the ethical dimensions of environmental beliefs and ignorance are unchallenged society drifts morally. Emphasizing the relationship between commonly shared moral convictions (more basic than ideological commitments) and risky environmental beliefs and actions has more potential to create environmental awareness than the current focus on environmental science and the economic benefits of better environmental policies. (shrink)

Over the last several years, the environmental regulatory system has undergone radical changes. Various private normative schemes, ranging from corporate codes to environmental management systems, environmental reporting standards, project-finance codes and green indexes, have assumed an increasingly important role in the regulatory arena. The emergence of private environmental governance as an important transnational phenomenon raises two interrelated puzzles: efficacy and legitimacy. Underlying the efficacy puzzle is a deep-seated suspicion toward "soft" legal instruments, which to some (...) observers represent nothing but a coordinated form of "greenwash." The legitimacy question reflects a contrary concern — that these private regulatory structures represent new forms of global authority that are in need of distinctive legitimization. The Article begins with an outline of this new global terrain, exploring its historical evolution. It argues that the multiple links and cross-sensitivities between the different global private regimes have created a novel ensemble regulatory structure with positive enforcement and normative externalities. The Article then moves to examine the question of efficacy more generally, developing a nuanced understanding of the social dynamic of "soft-law" regulation, which rejects the binary logic underlying the "soft law"-"greenwash" narratives. Regarding the political dimension, the Article argues that this new ensemble network has brought about a new transnational political sphere which is associated with an extensive, cross-institutional quest for legitimacy. The Article then turns its focus to the field of sustainability indexes, focusing on the two leading global indexes: FTSE4Good Index Series and Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes. These indexes are taken as a prototypical case of transnational private ordering. Drawing on a close analysis of the indexes’ guiding documents and on interviews with senior executives from both organizations, the Article considers the unique features of these indexes as forms of governance and the paths through which they claim to affect society. It then moves to explore the mechanisms of legitimacy employed by FTSE4Good and DJSI, highlighting their distinctive visions of legitimization. A close examination of sustainability indexes generates insights, I will argue, regarding the field of private global environmental governance as a whole. In particular, it highlights both the new political opportunities created by the evolving network of transnational governance and the limits this new structure sets for radical critique. (shrink)

Globalization is hailed by its advocates as a means of spreading cosmopolitan values, ideals of sustainability and better standards of living all around the world. Its critics, however, see globalization as a new form of colonialism imposed by rich countries and transnational corporations on the rest of the world, a process in which the rhetoric of sustainability and equality does not match the realities of exploitation and impoverishment of people and nature. This paper endorses neither view. Globalization is not (...) new, but it continually produces new challenges for conceptions of 'home' and 'belonging'. While some enthusiasts regard the 'liberal' and 'environmental' values of the West as the best remedy for what is wrong with the world, others argue that a resource for resisting the destructive effects of globalization may be found in the sense of identity and importance of place found in the traditional scientific and medical traditions of both India and China. Instead of trying to merge these two views in some grand synthesis, this paper argues that traditional conservative and modern liberal values should continually interact with each other to produce novel ideas in debates about home, place and belonging. (shrink)

We examine the role of socio-demographic factors on consumers’ pro-environmental behavior (PEB)–a subset of ethical behavior and analyze its implications in an emerging market, with a sample study from India. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was performed as research method. Results show that males display higher PEB than their female counterparts. Married consumers score more on PEB than single. Mid-age consumers (36–50) also score high on PEB than young and old-age consumers. Furthermore, highly educated consumers are more pro-environmentalist than (...) graduates and post-graduates. The novelty of this study is that centers on the use of demographic variables interactively in order to form microsegments. For instance, married men score more on PEB scale than unmarried men and women and prefer green channels even more (i.e., public transportation). On the contrary, unmarried women display no hesitation in paying more for energy-efficient goods compared to married men and unmarried men. Marketers may aim in setting such PEBs as the moral standards among consumers being an easily identifiable segment as their prime target. (shrink)

Economists interpret global environmental quality to be a pure public good. Each country should contribute to its provision. However, this is hard to achieve because each government is tempted to take a free ride on the other governments' efforts. Not only has this dilemma been analysed with game theoretical methods but game theory has also been used to think about how to make amends. This paper reviews the game theoretical discussion on how international policy frameworks may be designed to (...) improve the chances for international cooperation. It is also shown that the evaluation of alternative environmental policy instruments deviates from the standard environmental economics model if applied to the international arena. For the benefit of an interdisciplinary readership, the evolution of the debate on global environmental policy is related to the recent history of economic thought. This history is taken to be materialised in the writings of economics' Nobel Prize laureates. (shrink)

The standard sources for Maori ethics are the traditional narratives. These depict all things in the environment as sharing a common ancestry, and as thereby required, ideally, to exhibit certain virtues of respect and responsibility for each other. These environmental virtues are expressed in terms of distinctively Maori concepts: respect for mauri and tapu, kaitiakitanga, whanaungatanga, manaakitanga, and environmental balance. I briefly explore these Maori environmental virtues, and draw from them some messages for the world at large.

Environmental economic valuations of biodiversity are an increasingly active field of academic inquiry, often presented as a prominent means to rationalize decision-making on environmental issues. However, the meaning of this argument is unclear, because it uses the term “rationalize” in a loose way. This argument, as it is typically formulated in the literature, makes it look as though economic valuations do not involve any value-judgment by economists: by emphasizing rationalization, this argument silences value-judgements. This blind spot is critical, (...) since environmental inequalities are pervasive in economic valuations and their applications, and environmental decision making hence unavoidably involves value-judgements. In this article, we identify conditions upon which environmental economic valuations can truly contribute to rationalizing decision making, despite environmental inequalities. We review the main arguments found in the literature to entrench the credentials of economic approaches to rationalize decision-making, and argue that these approaches fail, at a fundamental level. We then argue that the key for economic valuations to truly contribute to rationalization is that their usage should be embedded in the deployment of what we will call a justificatory task. We then take advantage of an analysis of the notion of rationality, when applied to decision-aiding processes, to translate this reasoning in the concrete terms of applications of environmental economic valuations. According to the argument that we articulate here, standard economic valuations, just like any other application of economic tools, can indeed play a role in rationalizing environmental decisions, in spite of the inequalities that they produce. But this possibility is conditioned by the requirement that the economist implementing them should produce justifications. (shrink)

Abstract:Environmental epistemology is at present a rather marginal branch of environmental philosophy. The aim of the present article is to propose a major new approach to environmental epistemology, which I propose to call “biomimetic epistemology,” the guiding principle of which is “nature as mentor,” and which, in keeping with this principle, takes as its subject matter both the idea and the phenomenon of learning from nature. Beginning with a brief sketch of biomimetic epistemology covering both its basic (...) traits and its open questions, I then compare and contrast it with what are probably the two main existing approaches to environmental epistemology: Christopher Preston’s “placed-based epistemology,” which focusses on the role of places in the production of knowledge; and Jim Cheney’s “postmodern epistemology,” which goes beyond standard postmodern views of nature as an “agent” in the production of knowledge to consider nature rather as a “conversation partner.” The key conclusions drawn from this exercise of compare and contrast are first, that much may be gained from articulating biomimetic with place-based and postmodern environmental epistemology, and second, that integrating biomimetic epistemology is likely to prove necessary if environmental epistemology is to establish itself as a significant branch of both epistemology and environmental philosophy. (shrink)

In this essay, I consider three philosophical issues that arise in the environmental sciences. First, these sciences depend on mathematical models and simulations which are highly idealized and are coupled with very uncertain data. Why should we trust these models and simulations? Second, in standard hypothesis testing, the burden of proof is in favor of the null hypothesis which claims some causal factor has no effect. The alternative hypothesis is accepted only when the likelihood of the null hypothesis is (...) very low. Recently, some have argued that we should minimize Type II errors (not rejecting a false null) rather than Type I errors (rejecting a true null) given the environmental risks involved. I consider arguments for shifting this burden of proof when possible environmental harms are significant. Finally, in debates over global climate change, much is made of the apparent consensus concerning the effects of human induced greenhouse gas emissions on average surface temperatures. However, scientific methods are structured around dissent and criticism. Is consensus-based science orthogonal are even harmful to science? (shrink)

Environmental problems have an ethical dimension. They are not just about the efficient use of resources. Justice in the distribution of environmental goods and burdens, fairness in the processes of environmental decision-making, the moral claims of future generations and non-humans, these and other ethical values inform the responses of citizens to environmental problems. How can these concerns enter into good policy-making processes?Two expert-based approaches are commonly advocated for incorporating ethical values into environmental decision-making. One is (...) an 'economic capture' approach, according to which existing economic methods can be successfully extended to include ethical concerns. For example, stated preference methods, especially contingent valuation, have been developed to try and capture ethical responses as 'non-use values' of the environment, in particular 'existence values'. The other is a 'moral expert' approach which confines economic methods to the analysis of welfare gains, and assumes committees of ethical experts will complement economic expertise.Both approaches face problems in terms of addressing many widely held ethical values about the environment. Furthermore, both face problems concerning the democratic legitimacy of their procedures. How can policy-making be made responsive to different ethical values? What role is there for new deliberative and participatory methods? How far do existing decision-making institutions have the capacities to incorporate different modes of articulating environmental values?This policy brief examines the limitations of current attempts to capture ethical values within existing economic instruments and considers how these limitations might be overcome. Section 1 examines the assumptions that standard economic theory makes about individuals when they express values and make choices about the environment. The current models of agents that inform policy-making are seen to be ill-suited to incorporating the ethical responses of agents and this reveals some of the policy failures that may result. Section 2 shows how the physical and social properties of many environmental goods prevent their being treated as commodities. Section 3 considers the problems surrounding conceptions of fairness and legitimacy in processes for environmental valuation. Section 4 raises questions concerning the capacities of policy-making institutions to take cognisance of the results of different methods for articulating environmental values. (shrink)

A central point of debate over environmental policies concerns how future costs and benefits should be assessed. The most commonly used method for assessing the value of future costs and benefits is economic discounting. One often-cited justification for discounting is uncertainty. More specifically, it is risk aversion coupled with the expectation that future prospects are more risky. In this paper I argue that there are at least two reasons for disputing the use of risk aversion as a justification for (...) discounting when dealing with longterm decisions, one technical and one ethical. Firstly, I argue that technically, it implies an inconsistency between theory and practice. And secondly, I argue that discounting for uncertainty relies on a form of individualism which, while reasonable in standard microeconomic theory where an agent chooses how to spread her own consumption over her own lifetime, is inappropriate in the context of intergenerational social decisions. (shrink)

Because complex environmental problems are relegated to scientific experts, the ethical questions that are embedded in these problems are often hidden or distorted in scientific and administrative methodology and communication. The administrative process requires that facts and values be separated. Those values that cannot simply be ignored are usually translated into technical economic language and settled in terms of economic costs and benefits. Calls for regulatory reform-i.e., to reduce or eliminate environmental regulation--create additional pressures on analysts that encourage (...) them to focus on quantitative questions at the expense of qualitative ones. Distortion can also result from the use of standard risk assessment procedures and from the improper placement of burden of proof on govemment agencies. The greatest problem, nevertheless, is the narrow scientific training of technical experts which frequently leaves them unprepared to deal with the ethical and value issues in environmental public policy. (shrink)

This paper argues that education itself, properly understood, is intimately concerned with an individual’s being in the world, and therefore is ineluctably environmental. This is guaranteed by the ecstatic nature of consciousness. Furthermore, it is argued that a central dimension of this environment with which ecstatic human consciousness is engaged, is that of nature understood as the ‘self-arising’. Nature, so conceived, is essentially other and is epistemologically mysterious, possessing its own normativity, agency, and intrinsic value. As such, engagement with (...) nature presents opportunities for consciousness quintessentially to go beyond itself, to be inspired and refreshed, and to receive non-anthropogenic standards in the form of intimations of what is fitting and what is not. It will be argued that these are fundamental to the orientation of human being, providing primordial intimations of the nature of reality and truth. Given their centrality to the idea of a person’s becoming educated, the elucidation of these and the issues to which they give rise must be central to the philosophy of education and in this sense it becomes deeply ecological. (shrink)

This article makes first use of a set of databases that are authoritative, independent, and consistent to examine an old research question: do firms hurt their financial performance by damaging stakeholder interests? The databases are US government on-line listings of fines for environmental breaches, unsafe workplaces, fraudulent accounting standards, and product recalls. These measures are assumed to proxy for signals to stakeholders of the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) risks in transacting with the firm and appear to (...) have fewer biases than conventional measures of stakeholder standards. Using a sample of all non-financial S& P 500 firms during the most recent 1998-2003 full cycle in the market, after controlling for firm-specific differences, sales margins of firms fell by 0.8% if they announced a product recall and by 0.4% if cited by OSHA for an unsafe workplace; and shareholder return was significantly reduced by an EPA or SEC prosecution. This study links the risk of transaction uncertainty, information signaling theory, and the resource-based view of the firm to company financial performance. Results support the normative assumption that a firm's sales margin will be damaged by unethical treatment of stakeholders as evidenced by ESG breaches, presumably because risk-averse customers and suppliers are alert to signals of counterparty risk. (shrink)