Analyzing the Underlying Ethical Assumptions of Environmental Education

Environmental education (EE) programs often take a stance, sometimes implicit, about the ethically appropriate relationship between humans and their environment. However, this paper's authors argue that most current environmental education research fails to consider the rich diversity of ethical positions within the field of environmental ethics. In this paper, the authors present a framework for analyzing the ethical positions embedded in educational materials and social exchanges.

The authors analyzed 50 key books and articles published since the 1970s in the field of environmental philosophy to generate a comprehensive picture of the various ethical theories that theorists have described. Most EE research, they argue, has been occupied by a simple anthropocentric versus nonanthropocentric dichotomy. Anthropocentric theories assume that only humans need to be considered in our ethical decision making because only humans have intrinsic value. For anthropocentric theorists, animals, plants, and ecosystems only have value insofar as they help fulfill human needs or desires. Nonanthropocentric theories, by contrast, argue that nonhuman entities have intrinsic value that must be considered when deciding an ethical course of action. It is often assumed in environmental education research that anthropocentric views are inherently “nonenvironmentally friendly.” This is not always the case. The authors' framework indicates how diverse positions have been taken up within these two general camps, and there are yet other theories that do not start from a question of value at all.

At the top level of the authors' framework, they distinguish between “value-oriented” and “relation-oriented” ethical theories. Within the value-oriented theories, there are anthropocentric and nonanthropocentric varieties. The authors map the various value-oriented theories on the basis of three dimensions: what moral object(s) demands consideration, how the human-nature relationship is conceived, and how the value of nature is understood. In developing this framework, the authors show how ethical theories are more complex than the standard anthropocentric/nonanthropocentric dichotomy suggests.

For instance, one anthropocentric view might suggest a person only needs to consider other currently living humans when making decisions; that nature is something found mainly in wilderness settings; and that such nature has instrumental value in that it provides a psychological benefit to humans. A different anthropocentric view might maintain that a person needs to consider both living humans and future generations; that nature and humans are more tightly integrated; and nature, thus, has instrumental value in the sense that without nature, humans would lose something essential about their “human-ness.”

Similarly, nonanthropocentric views can be differentiated on the basis of how far they extend the circle of moral consideration. Do they, for example, demand that all sentient animals deserve to be taken into account? Do they demand that the health of entire species be maintained? Additionally, the nature of the reason for this moral consideration may vary. For instance, a snail might be seen to have objective value in itself, regardless of whether a human is there to sense that value, or the snail's value might depend on how one individual appreciates it, or how it contributes to the flourishing of other life in an ecosystem.

In contrast to value-oriented views, the authors describe relation-oriented views as problematizing the human-nature distinction more fundamentally. Many of these theories are considered radical in the sense that they argue that human relationships with nonhuman entities bear the mark of power dynamics similar to those in human societies themselves, such as race-, gender-, and economic-based forms of struggle. These theories also share a concern for the practical and political implications of various ontologies—the fundamental ways we understand the relationships between humans and nature that might be problematic at their very root.

The article includes a decision tree of questions one can ask when analyzing a text or social interaction in order to identify its underlying ethical assumptions within a typology of possibilities. The authors are careful to note that, unlike formal ethics, our moral lives and intuitions can be messy or even contradictory at times. Nonetheless, incorporating a more sophisticated understanding of the diversity of philosophical theories into EE research can help us appreciate these complexities.