Ethics for a Green Economy

Abdul Hadi Harman Shah,

LESTARI, UKM

Outline

• Introduction

• Motivations and Justifications for a Green Economy

• Obstacles

• Considerations in a Green Economy

• A possible path towards a green economy

• Conclusion

INTRODUCTION

Distance between self and environmental ethics (what more sustainability and green economy)

WE FOCUS TOO MUCH ON THESE

AND TOO LITTLE ON THESE

questioning mainstream economics

“A macro - economy predicated on continual expansion of debt-driven materialistic consumption is unsustainable ecologically, problematic socially and unstable economically”

UK Sustainability Commission

Myths of Neoclassical Economics

1. A theory of production can ignore physical and environmental realities

a. The economy can be described independently of its biophysical matrix

b. Economic production can be described without reference to physical work

2. A theory of consumption can ignore actual human behaviour a. Homo Economicus is a scientific model that does a good job

of predicting human behaviour b. Consumption of market goods can be equated with well-

being and money is a universal substitute for anything. Gowdy, Hall, Klitgaard and Krall, 2010

MOTIVATIONS AND JUSTIFICATIONS FOR A GREEN ECONOMY

• What are the motivations to act morally? Should they count?

• Motivations for acting morally include gaining benefits as well as a sense of duty. But are motivations also justifications?

J.S. Mill, on Environmental Governance (writing in Principles of Political Economy, 1948/1871, p.797)

• "It may be imagined, perhaps, that the law has only to declare and protect the right of every one to what he has himself produced, or acquired by the voluntary consent, fairly obtained, of those who produced it. But is there nothing recognized as property except what has been produced?

• Is there not the earth itself, its forests and waters, and all other natural riches,above and below the surface? These are the inheritance of the human race, and there must be regulations for the common enjoyment of it. What rights, and under what conditions, a person shall be allowed to exercise over any portion of this common inheritance cannot be left undecided.

• No function of government is less optional than the regulation of these things, or more completely involved in the idea of civilized society."

• The key task for socio-economic research in integrated (& participatory) environmental resources management is not the modelling of socio-ecol-economic systems, it is the MOBILISATION of HUMAN AGENCY in relation to sustainability’s challenges and purposes

– O Connors 2010

Ethical underpinnings

• Utilitarian - benefits, a consequentialist approach towards an ethical green economy

• A deontological or duty based view of an ethical green economy

• Religion?

Beginning probing questions

• What is the Environment ?

• What are species?

• What is economics? Ethics

• Ecosystem - right (good)

• Representing- habitat - wrong(bad)

Questions

• Even with the majority agreeing, is it ethical?

• Do traditional cultures have an environmental ethics ‘an ethic’ vs ‘ethics’ (philosophy)

What amounts to an ethics?

• Anthropocentric ethics

• Non-anthropocentric ethics

Ideas structuring ethics • holism- circle, sphere, cycling continuity in the

dependence vs linearity, goal-distributions, hierarchy-dualism

• respect to all living and living systems

• Earth as gigantic living being (GAIA) hypothesis

• Reciprocity between human and non-human

• Only for thinking people?

ideas…

• Restricting reciprocity

• sacredness of all nature

• present in everything

• West seeing it as anthromorphing nature

• respect for altered status of consciousness

• European- hedonistic/apologetic

• respect for women’s political judgement

• conservation practices

An Ethic…

• 1. Doesn’t reduces to self-interest(egoism) • Calvin Mann: acting out of fear, fear is self interest (heaven

and hell) • - Ethics- requires sacrifice? Willingness to limit goals out of

respect for something that is independent to its usefulness to yourself.

• Ethics vs Habit • 2. Hart, ‘internal aspect’- even when not doing it- can still

criticise • people who have an ethic often behave inconsistently. Can

expect behavioral inconsistency • internal critics • Character traits- ethics, ethnics, ethos, habits moral-mores- social norms

Ethics as a branch of philosophy

• 1) an ethics: a set of norms, ideas, values, practices, actually held by some groups of agents

• 2. systematic reflection upon the ideals that define

– 1) ethics as sense and the particular judgement which even ethics (sense #1) give rise to.

Anthropocentric ethics

• Two kinds of anthropocentrism

– Psychological anthropocentrism

– Ethical anthropocentrism

Two major schools of environmental ethics

• Utilitarianism

– Jeremy Bentham – maximizing utility

– Cost-benefit analysis

• Kantian – Deontological Ethics

– Do as duty requires regardless of consequences

II. Can there be a non- Anthropocentric ethics for a green

economy?

• - Is ethics inconsistent with self interest?

• 1) evaluates human conduct not only (even not primarily) on its impacts on the human beings

• - what makes a being morally considerable

• 2) evaluates conducts of ethical agents not only (or primely) on its impacts or significance for human beings.

Human-Animal Interaction

• Animal rights and liberation

• Inter specific justice

• Priority principles

Holism

Land Ethics – Aldo Leopold, The Sand County Almanac – Thinking like a mountain

– Biotic community – biota

– A-B cleavage

• Silent Spring – Rachel Carson

Wilderness: Economic Resources, Deep Ecology and Biocentric Individualism

• Radical environmentalism

• Ethics of respect for the environment

• Self realization

Social Ecology, Biological Region, Urban Environment

• Social Ecology vs Deep Ecology

• Environmental racism

• Garrrett Hardin, “Lifeboat Ethics”

• The Carrying Capacity Equivocation

• Reproductive Choices

Biological Diversity and the Preservation of Ecosystems

• The diversity of life

• The value of bio diversity

• Two types of preservation of policies

• John Muir (Preservation) and George Perkins Marsh (Conservation)

Options on ethical perspectives: Is there a ‘best option’ for the green economy?

Individualistic Holistic

Jeremy Bentham

Immanuel Kant

Aldo Leopold

Rachel Carson

Anthropocentric

Simons

Baxter

Extension

Singer,

Regan,

VanDeVeeer

Biocentric

Taylor

Deep Ecology Social Ecology

Naess

Ecosophy

Session

Duval

Anarchistic

Bioregion

Bookchin

Sale

Environmntl Justice

Bullard

Eco-feminism

Griffin

OBSTACLES

Difficulties

“With expansion of worldviews and a broader conception of knowledge, we will find little consensus on questions, methodologies and data for determining optima.

Good policymakers will be those who can lead enlightening conversations between scientists with different disciplinary backgrounds and between people of different cultures and knowledges."

— Richard Norgaard (1988), "Sustainable Development: A

Co-evolutionary View", in Futures, 20, pp.606-620.

“ It may seem impossible to imagine that that a technologically advanced society could choose, in effect, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing”

E. Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe

CONSIDERATIONS FOR A GREEN ECONOMY

• A green economy that treats the environment as biota rather than mere resources

• A green economy that is based on respect rather than competition?

• A green economy that considers and is embedded in local culture

Re-valuing the structure of the economy

• Hierarchic vs anarchistic structure

• Participation structure

• Bottom up approach

Re-valuing economic resource

• Environment as resource vs biota – Conservationist/preservationist

• Earlier love/fear of environment

• Shallow vs Deep Ecology (Naess)– which is Sustainability?

• Or is Sustainability closer to Social Ecology (Bookchin)

Re-thinking the actualization of green economy

• Moving from technology to negotiated actions

• Moving from large structures to small structures

• Moving from ideals to incrementals

• Moving from value free economic analysis to value sensitive economic analysis

• Moving towards an ethical green economy

A POSSIBLE PATH

The need for new ethics and values

IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri

“We need a new ethic by which every human being realises the importance of the challenge and starts to take action through changes in lifestyle and attitude”

Ethical value configurations and contradictions

• The permanence of values

• Individual vs public (common) values

• Developing common shared values

• Inter and intra generational equity

• Democratic participation

New suite of values

– Domination of nature becomes ecological sensitivity

– Consumerism replaced by quality of life

– Individualism -> human solidarity

• Governance

• Cultural embeddedness

• Free market/ Laissez faire

Ethics and Values for Strong Sustainability A very different ethical stance is needed by people committing to strong

sustainability; ethics that: • Ensure (universal) material Basic Needs of people are satisfied • Place much greater importance on non-material sources of happiness • Remove the perceived linkage between economic growth and success • Affirm the deep interdependence of all people and mutual respect

between all • Value nature intrinsically through knowing that human society and its

political economy is an integral and interdependent component of nature and the ecosphere of Earth. Humans have reverence for nature and consider themselves stewards of it.

John Peet Chair, Sustainable Aotearoa New Zealand, NZSSES Conference, 30

November -3 December 2010

CONCLUSIONS

Returning to ethics and values

• Each of us, as individuals and as members of society, have our own personal values and ways of looking at the world that guide our actions and reactions. Each of us have our own thoughts about what is right and wrong, and how we should behave – and especially how others should behave. Yet the idea of imposing our own values on others is problematic.

• Why should others accept what we feel is right, and what we feel should not be. Thus we come to the need for a value system, a set of agreed upon common values that allow us to act as a group – a community or a society.

On ethics and values • There is a need, perhaps even an essential need, to structure

values, and come to an agreement as to what we share in common. There is perhaps an even greater need to understand values that are not ours, and to respect the many value systems in existence.

• There is a need to structure values is an attempt to make them consistent, or as consistent as possible, within a seemingly contradictory world. A structure of values might lead us to understand why there are some rights and wrongs that are universal, while others are questioned, and even condemned.

• Understanding these structures might also provide an insight on who we are, individually.

Let’s concentrate on technology for a couple of thousand years, and then we can develop a value system

Thank you

For thinking like a mountain