Environmental Ethics
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Global heating, wildlife extinction and pollution are among the most important ecological matter, they call for our urgent attention and deserve prominent documentation. The Globethics environmental ethics collection aims at gathering all most important sources on this matter. The content in the library is available in multiple languages and is mainly harvested from a wide variety of open access repositories. A limited set of manually submitted documents complete this collection, f.ex. documents published by the Earth Charter Initiative and Green Cross International.
Recent Submissions
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Islam and the EnvironmentThis is a transcript of a presentation at the Thirty-Fourth Annual Peace Studies Conference at the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University on September 18, 2023. The presentation provides (1) some background information about Islam; (2) related ideas about Christianity; (3) a discussion of some verses in the Quran, which relate to the environment, and some Islamic interpretations of them; (4) an analysis of Ibrahim Abdul-Matin’s ideas on Islam and the environment; and (5) a tribute to Father Rene McGraw, OSB.
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The Mpumalanga Highveld Air Pollution Crisis: A South African Reparations Framework for Environmental State–Corporate HarmThe Highveld region in South Africa’s Mpumalanga province has a dense concentration of coal mines and coal-fired power stations. As a result, the area experiences severe levels of air pollution. Despite the government's obligation, little has been done to remedy the harm experienced by the environment and people in the Highveld. The complexity of the relationship between the state and corporations contributes to the government's reluctance to hold mining companies accountable. Obtaining remedies through courts has also yielded limited success. We, therefore, make a case for the creation of African environmental reparations and submit that the Mpumalanga Highveld region evidences the need for such reparations. African environmental reparations must be guided by the principles of Ubuntu, bolstered by the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, and employ restorative justice. Only in this way can air pollution be properly acknowledged as a multifarious harm, and the balance, harmony and unity between people and the environment repaired.
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Digital Materialities & Sustainable Futures Webinar slidesThe series develops an interdisciplinary field that shifts the conversation about digital environmental sustainability from profit and efficiency to geographies of in/justice and decolonisation of digital scholarship and practice. Slides from the launch of the book series Digital Materialities and Sustainable Futures with co-editors, editorial advisory board members and publisher to share information about the series, the support provided, and what is expected in terms of topics, interdisciplinarity, geographies, editorial practices and timelines from this international opportunity. The series aims to attract researchers and practitioners, both seasoned, mid- and early career, with an interest in authoring or editing a book for the series. Research Support staff or Curators/ Producers supporting early career researchers or practitioners to publish for the series might also find this information useful.
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Is air pollution exposure linked to household income? Spatial analysis of Community Multiscale Air Quality Model results for MadridThis study explores the potential correlation between income and exposure to air pollution for the city of Madrid, Spain and its neighboring municipalities. Madrid is a well-known European air pollution hotspot with a high mortality burden attributable to nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5). Statistical analyses were carried out using electoral district level data on gross household income (GHI), and NO2 and PM2.5 concentrations in air obtained from a mesoscale air quality model for the study area. We applied linear regression, bivariate spatial correlation analysis, spatial autoregression and geographically weighted regression to explore the relationship between contaminants and income. Three different strategies were adopted to harmonize data for analysis. While some strategies suggested a link between income and air pollution, others did not, highlighting the need for multiple different approaches where uncertainty is high. Our findings offer important lessons for future spatial geographical studies of air pollution in cities worldwide. In particular we highlight the limitations of census-scale socio-economic data and the lack of non-model derived high-resolution air quality measurement data for many cities and offers lessons for policy makers on improving the integration of these types of essential public information.
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The usable past and socio-environmental justice: From Lady Selborne to Ga-RankuwaThis article presents a case study in forced removals and their ramifications from 1905 to 1977 from the perspective of socio-environmental history. It depicts environmental damages and misunderstandings suffered due to forced removals from Pretoria in a location called Lady Selborne (currently known as Suiderberg) and Ga-Rankuwa where some of the displaced were relocated. The article demonstrates that forced removals did not only result in people losing their historical lands, properties and material possessions, but they lost their inheritance – homes, history and their sense of being and connectedness. The article depicts the complex picture of the ramifications of forced removals among former inhabitants of Lady Selborne where the township was a scenic home, with fertile soils and situated closer to the city centre - where they experienced environmental justice and felt human in the process. With the forced removals and relocation in Ga-Rankuwa the former inhabitants of Lady Selborne were resettled in a place with infertile soil on the outskirts of Pretoria. The article illustrates that successive white governments (from the colonial period till the reign of the National Party under De Klerk) and many scholars have tried to downplay African environmental ethics and to dismiss them as “superstition”. This resulted in forced removals and consequently in Africans being apathetic to environmental issues in the resettlement area; GaRankuwa. This impacted on the oral traditional environmental education on environmental preservation which was ignored by Africans and successive governments and this hastened the deterioration of African environmental settlements in Ga-Rankuwa. Thus, in this article it will be argued that through environmental justice that embraces the “Usable past” of African environmental ethics, environmental education and activism is possible.
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Climate activism, environmental justice and ecopedagogy – a collaboration project between FFF activists and teacher candidates in AustriaThis article contributes to political ecologies of education by connecting climate activism in Austria to questions of environmental justice and ecopedagogy. Based on a collaboration project between trainee teachers and secondary school students in Graz (Austria), the article analyses student group essays and photo reports dealing with ideas and solutions to combat the climate crisis and to enable socio-ecological transformation. Interviews with Fridays for Future (FFF) strike participants complete the analysis. I discuss propositions related to the concepts of activism, ecopedagogy, environmental and climate justice, and especially the principle of responsibility. I show that the school collaboration project and common participation in a climate strike contributed to civic engagement and research-based learning. Trainee teachers and school students exchanged ideas and co-created knowledge to fight against the climate crisis, and the collaboration opened a dialogue in a democratic classroom, arguably helping to develop participants' intrinsic motivation. While some of the ideas proposed are reformist or oppositional, for example to eat less meat, others are propositional, advocating for system change. A conclusion is that the climate movement is represented by a diversity of voices and opinions.
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2020 Near-roadway population census, traffic exposure and equity in the United StatesWe present an updated analysis of the size and demographic composition of the United States (U.S.) population living near high traffic volume roadways where the risk of negative health outcomes from traffic-related air pollution exposure is elevated using traffic data from 2018 and 2020 census data. We also evaluate disparities in traffic exposure by race, ethnicity, and income using refined equity analysis methods and break down our analysis by light-, medium-, and heavy-duty vehicle traffic. We find that 24 % of the U.S. population now lives near high-volume roadways, a larger share than 10 years ago. We also find statistically significant associations between higher levels of traffic exposure and greater proportions of people of color and lower household incomes in 89 % of U.S. counties. The increasing size of the near-roadway population, persistent and widespread inequities, and rapidly growing truck traffic raise significant public health and environmental justice concerns.
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Book Discussion "The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives"DigitalCommons@CSB/SJU, 2024-03-03
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Akteure in Sekretariaten internationaler Organisationen: Das OECD-Sekretariat im Kontext der Policy Coherence for Development-DebatteMit dem zunehmend transnationalen Charakter komplexer politischer Probleme rücken Akteure internationaler Verwaltungen immer stärker in den Fokus. Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Interaktionen von Akteuren am Beispiel der Policy Coherence for Development-Abteilung der OECD und fragt, ob es sich dabei um einen Entrepreneur in der internationalen Kohärenzdebatte handelte. Das Hauptaugenmerk liegt somit auf dem OECD-Sekretariat, wo die Kohärenzidee bereits seit 1990 verankert ist. 2015 wurde Policy Coherence for Development zuletzt im Rahmen der globalen Agenda 2030 für Nachhaltige Entwicklung von Staats- und Regierungschefs bestätigt. Die Untersuchung zeigt, dass die Kohärenzabteilung im Generalsekretariat der OECD in vielschichtigen internationalen Entscheidungsprozessen zu Kohärenzfragen sowohl organisationsintern als auch -extern zunehmend autonom agierte und dabei wechselnde Rollen als Entrepreneur und Broker einnahm. Dadurch soll schließlich zu einem besseren Verständnis dynamischer Interaktionsformen von Akteuren der internationalen Verwaltung beigetragen werden.
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Hydropolitical potentialities in a post-'Day Zero' Cape Town: "Sensemaking" and the Cape Flats AquiferIn the context of the climate crisis, water as a natural resource is under threat globally, and the Global South is of critical interest for political ecological studies. This article argues that environmental crises such as the "Day Zero" drought in 2018 in Cape Town (South Africa) can create possibilities for reformulating the deeply unequal hydropolitics stemming from colonial and apartheid regimes. The drought has enabled the politicisation of underground water, examined through an ethnographic study of a small-scale farming organisation in the Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA) of Cape Town. While tracking ways to secure the protection of natural resources such as aquifers in urban areas, the article further considers how such forms of activism around underground water have sought to "make the invisible, visible," thereby developing more inclusive forms of sensemaking. By providing an analysis of activism taking place during and after a period of acute water scarcity, it contributes to scholarship on emergent political ecological mobilisation in the climate crisis in the Global South.
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ガクサイテキ ナ ケンキュウ ノウリョク イクセイ ノ ココロミ ト ソノ カテイ リンリガク ト シャカイガク オ タイショウ トシタ ブンケン コウドク オ ジレイ ニ現代社会においては、専門性と学際性の両方が必要であると言われている。高度な専門性だけでなく、物事を多角的に捉えるための学際的な視点をも身につけなければ、科学技術が発達し普及した状況で発生する諸問題に対処することは困難である。学際的な研究能力の獲得を学生に促すことはどのようにして可能なのか、そしてその意義とは何かという問いに答えることが、本稿の目的である。筆者が担当する海洋政策文化学科の3年次の学生を対象としたゼミでの文献講読では、倫理学や社会学の文献を精読すると共に、それらを比較する学際的な視点を培うことが試みられている。異なる研究領域の議論を関連づけて捉えるためには抽象が必要であることが、この事例を通じて示される。抽象的な理論は、個々の観察事象を共通の枠組みで捉えることを可能にする。しかし、理論を用いる観察者自身が自己の一貫性を備えていなければ、観察を十全に遂行することはできない。したがって、学際的な研究能力を育成する試みは、教育を通じた学生の人格形成という大学の本質的な役割と深く関係している。
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Environmental noise is positively associated with socioeconomically less privileged neighborhoods in the NetherlandsBackground: Environmental noise has detrimental effects on various health outcomes. Although disparities in some environmental exposures (e.g., air pollution) are well-documented, there is still a limited and uncertain understanding of the extent to which specific populations are disproportionately burdened by noise. Aim: To assess whether environmental noise levels are associated with demographic and socioeconomic neighborhood compositions. Methods: We cross-sectionally examined long-term noise levels for 9,372 neighborhoods in the Netherlands. We linked these noise levels with administrative data on neighborhood characteristics for the year 2021. Linear and non-linear spatial regression models were fitted to explore the associations between noise, demographic, and socioeconomic neighborhood characteristics. Results: Our results showed that 46 % of the neighborhoods exhibited noise levels surpassing the recommended threshold of 53 dB to prevent adverse health effects. The regressions uncovered positive and partially non-linear neighborhood-level associations between noise and non-Western migrants, employment rates, low-incomers, and address density. Conversely, we found negative associations with higher-educated neighborhoods and those with a greater proportion of younger residents. Neighborhoods with older populations displayed a U-shaped association. Conclusions: This national study showed an inequality in the noise burden, adversely affecting vulnerable, marginalized, and less privileged neighborhoods. Addressing the uneven distribution of noise and its root causes is an urgent policy imperative for sustainable Dutch cities.
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How individuals make sense of their climate impacts in the capitalocene:mixed methods insights from calculating carbon footprintsMany people want to play their part to tackle climate change, but often do not know where to start. Carbon Footprint (CF) Calculators pose potential for helping individuals situate themselves in climate impacting systems of which they are a part. However, little is currently known about whether and how individuals who complete CF calculators understand their CF in the context of climate change. This article explores how people make sense of their CFs and locate themselves in the capitalocene. It draws on theories of social practices, environmental ethics, valuation, and knowledge-use to analyse data from 500+ Danes who completed a CF calculator (https://carbonfootprint.hi.is) and interviews with 30 Danes who were asked to complete the CF calculator. In this article, we describe how Danes’ CFs are impacted, looking at how survey respondents rate importance of mitigating climate change, importance of personal actions, and importance of public steering, as well as disposable income, living space, and family type. We also show how interviewees reflect over their consumption activities and possibilities. Those with high income nearly always had high CF but felt like they had little agency to change the system and rather justified their high-emitting practices such as flying, while those with low CF felt they had more agency in the system. The results show that high-CF individuals resist voluntary reduction of their emissions despite the presence of environmental ethics. Thus, we conclude that systemic solutions have the foremost capacity to reduce carbon emissions.
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Protecting the Environment with Human Rights: Mechanism Rooted in Anthropocentric ApproachAnthropocentric and eco-centric are the two existing philosophical views on protecting the environment. The latter emphasises environmental protection for its intrinsic value, while the former is human-centred. This paper explores the relationship between promoting human rights and protecting the environment by arguing that the anthropocentric approach, which places humanity at its centre and is grounded in utilitarianism theory, can be a valuable tool in bridging these two areas. According to utilitarianism, achieving all fundamental human rights will contribute to raising environmental standards. Hitherto, the anthropocentric approach has been regarded to be only advantageous to humans, but in reality, it has a positive which mutually reinforces the effect on both the environment and humans. Humans will naturally turn their attention to environmental protection after they obtain all rights to meet a standard life. In the pursuit of environmental justice, humans will endeavour to improve their surroundings sustainably while upholding their fundamental rights. Through this relationship, a rights-based approach and environmental protection mechanisms are established, allowing individuals to seek redress for any kind of environmental harm as a distinct category of human rights. In conclusion, by establishing a distinct environmental-human right and tying it to human rights, environmental protection can be realised more practically.
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ESG-Berichterstattungen in der aktuellen Praxis: Ein Überblick zur aktuellen Umsetzung von ESG-Berichterstattungen (vor der CSRD) in Wirtschaft, Verwaltung und Kirchen in DeutschlandNach den aktuellen Vorgaben der CSRD werden Unternehmen zukünftig offenlegen müssen, in welchem Umfang sie klimarelevante Emissionen direkt und im Rahmen der jeweiligen Lieferketten zu verantworten haben. In Deutschland wird der Anwenderkreis von derzeit rund 500 Unternehmen mit der CSRD auf knapp 15.000 und europaweit sogar auf ca. 49.000 Unternehmen ausgeweitet, wodurch insbesondere auch der deutsche Mittelstand nun miterfasst wird. Entsprechend den aktuellen und zukünftigen regulatorischen Anforderungen berichten die untersuchten Organisationen in unterschiedlichem Maße über relevante ESG-Themenstellungen: Das Gros der untersuchten (Groß-)Unternehmen hat bereits (einfache) Materialitätsanalysen durchgeführt und berichtet umfangreich über relevante ESG-Sachverhalte. Hierbei stehen in der Regel Environment- und Compliance-Themen im Mittelpunkt. Erstere sind getrieben durch die politischen und gesetzlichen Vorgaben der letzten Jahre. Letztere sind getrieben durch (branchenspezifische) regulatorische Vorgaben (Emissionen, Arbeitsschutz, Datenschutz etc.) und damit verbundene Risikoüberlegungen. Der öffentliche Sektor berichtet hingegen nur zu einem gewissen Maß und die beiden christlichen Kirchen nur in geringem Umfang über ESG-Sachverhalte. Diejenigen Organisationen, die über ESG-Sachverhalte berichten, tun dies nach unterschiedlichen und teilweise parallel nach mehreren Standards.
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La responsabilità ecologicaThis essay explores the concept of responsibility with respect to today’s ecological and pandemic crisis. A fundamental category is identified in the ‘strategic repentance’, i.e. the ability to reconsider previous decisions taken following environmental feedback resulting from one’s activities. The model of this careful and circumspect behavior can be traced back on the one hand to the animal kingdom, on the other hand to the artistic domain. Thus, the bat and Michelangelo the sculptor become masters of a new action scheme, which is based on feedback rings and on in-progress revision of previously adopted strategies.
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Cultivating urban justice? A spatial exploration of urban gardening crossing spatial and environmental injustice conditionsThis paper explores the potential of the global urban gardening movement to mitigate spatial and environmental injustice conditions in the urban space. After a background discussion of the spatial and environmental injustice theory and an assessment of methodologies that have been adopted in relevant studies, we will highlight existing links with urban gardening initiatives in a specific case study, i.e. the city of Rome, Italy. The case study is introduced to investigate the spatial coincidence of urban gardening initiatives in this specific city (assumed as the dependent variable) and spatial and environmental injustice (S&EI) indicators. Several S&EI-related phenomena whose relevance has been demonstrated are mapped, and their goodness of fit in serving as explanatory variables for the spatial distribution of urban gardening agency is investigated. The analysis builds upon a quantitative approach and features a linear spatial regression model. Surprisingly, findings suggest that social-economic variables generally have greater influence on spatial injustice than environmental variables. In fact, from a theoretical perspective, our results challenge the current interpretation of urban gardening as a mere means to address environmental, food or nature-related issues in cities. Instead, they support the increasingly popular interpretation of urban gardening as a political gesture. Our results provide policy-makers with useful observations about key variables related to spatial injustice in the city and contrasting initiatives, notably urban gardening projects. The paper concludes with a critical assessment of the results and the limiting and supporting factors of the featured theoretical and methodological framework.