Environmental Values

We live in a world confronted by mounting environmental problems. We read of increasing global deforestation and desertification, loss of species diversity, pollution and global warming. In everyday life people mourn the loss of valued landscapes and urban spaces. Underlying these problems are conflicting priorities and values. Yet dominant approaches to policy making seem ill-equipped to capture the various ways in which the environment matters to us. Environmental Values introduces readers to these issues by presenting, and then challenging, two dominant approaches to environmental decision-making, one from environmental economics, the other from environmental philosophy. The authors present a sustained case for questioning the underlying ethical theories of both of these traditions. They defend a pluralistic alternative rooted in the rich everyday relations of humans to the environments they inhabit, providing a path for integrating human needs with environmental protection through anunderstanding of the narrative and history of particular places. The book examines the implications of this approach for policy issues such as biodiversity conservation and sustainability. The book is written in a clear and accessible style for an interdisciplinary audience. It will be ideal for student use in environmental courses in geography, economics, philosophy, politics and sociology. It will also be of wider interest to policy makers and the concerned general reader.

John O'Neill is Professor of Political Economy at The University of Manchester Alan Holland is Emeritus Professor of Applied Philosophy at Lancaster University Andrew Light is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Public Affairs at the University of Washington, Seattle