An environmental ethical conceptual framework for research on sustainability and environmental education

Abstract

Abstract This article suggests that environmental ethics can have great relevance for environmental ethical content analyses in environmental education and education for sustainable development research. It is based on a critique that existing educational research does not reflect the variety of environmental ethical theories. Accordingly, we suggest an alternative and more nuanced environmental ethical conceptual framework divided into Value-oriented Environmental Ethics and Relation-oriented Environmental Ethics and present two pragmatic schedules for analyses of the value and relation contents of e.g. classroom conversations, textbooks and policy documents. This framework draws on a comparative reading of some 30 key books and 20 key articles in academic journals in the field of environmental philosophy and reflects main traits in environmental ethics from the early 1970s to the present day. Keywords: value-oriented environmental ethicsrelation-oriented environmental ethicseducation for sustainable developmentenvironmental educationconceptual framework Acknowledgements We would like to acknowledge the valuable contributions of Senior Lecturer Anders Melin at Malmö University, Sweden, the SMED research group at Örebro and Uppsala universities and the anonymous reviewers of this article. Notes 1. In this article, EE and ESD refer to educational practices, while 'sustainability and environmental education (EE) research' refers to research into these practices and theoretical questions associated with them. 2. Given the restrictions of the paper, we have been obliged to exclude contributions that do not represent key positions in the debate, e.g. Ecotheology (Gottlieb Citation1996; Northcott Citation1996; Bergmann Citation2004; Bergmann and Gerten Citation2010) and Spiritual radical ecology (Merchant Citation1992), either because they do not contribute anything substantially new to the environmental ethical debate, e.g. Ecocriticism (Glotfeltley and Fromm Citation1996; Garrard Citation2004) or simply being to much material to handle within the limits of this paper, e.g. environmental justice (Paavola Citation2005; Adger et al. Citation2006), ecojustice (Bergmann Citation2004) and environmental ethics from the perspectives of developing countries (Guha Citation1989). 3. Here we use Nigel Dower's distinction between ethic as 'an ethical theory or approach which put forward a set of norms and values to guide our relations with the rest of the world' and ethics as 'the philosophical inquiry into the nature, extent and justification of the ethical claims which are made on human beings …' In this sense, an environmental ethic is the result of philosophical inquiries into environmental ethical claims (see Dower Citation1998, 2–3). However, to Dower's terminology we add the distinction between ethic as theories and approaches developed in research contexts and reserve the term 'moral' for things like people's, groups', institutions' expressions of moral beliefs in certain contexts. 4. Callicott (Citation1989) maintains that the question of nature's intrinsic value is '… the central theoretical problem of environmental ethics' (160). See Norton (Citation1987) for one of the first value theoretical typologies in the field. 5. In this article we use 'intrinsic value' in a broad sense to cover the conceptions of value accounted for below, referring to things/people that are or are perceived to be good in themselves or by virtue of their intrinsic properties. 6. Sauvé (2005) proposed a mapping of 15 'currents' in environmental education in order to explore varieties of pedagogical propositions in the field. Several of these currents are associated with some of the environmental ethical categories and positions presented in our suggested framework. 7. See also Norton (Citation1987) for a similar and successful attempt to categorise the content of Value-oriented environmental ethics. 8. See e.g. Norton (Citation1987) and Marietta (Citation1995) on anthropocentric holism. 9. See also non-anthropocentrists Rolston (Citation1982) and Callicott (Citation1989). 10. Although Cheney and Klaver's positions can hardly be labelled as Value-oriented, we nevertheless introduce their versions of discursive integration for the purpose of illustrating how Value-oriented environmental ethics may include various conceptions of human-nature separation and integration. 11. As noted earlier (n. 5), in this paper the term 'intrinsic value' is neutral, i.e. it does not refer to any specific value theoretical position. 12. We first used the term 'Relation-oriented' environmental ethics in Kronlid and Svennbeck (Citation2008). Since then we have developed the concept to include more environmental ethical theories. 13. An additional critique is that the concept of anthropocentrism is falsely homogeneous and that talk of 'humanity' vs. 'nature' misconstrues the importance of acknowledging hierarchical power-relations and various differences in humanity related to sex, gender, ethnicity, age, wealth, etc. 14. Our distinction between Value-oriented and relation-oriented environmental ethics does not exclude a certain overlap. For example, although deep ecologists would accept that non-human nature has intrinsic value, they would argue that nature encounters and human's personal relationships with non-human nature are keys to developing a 'deeper' moral outlook that can, from a Value-oriented perspective, be described as a respect for nature's intrinsic value. Furthermore, these and other theoretical overlaps strengthen our case that presumably neat or 'pure' distinctions that depart from theory (rather than from investigative questions as in our case) and remain true to these distinctions throughout the analysis may force the empirical result into theoretical purity, rather than observing the sometimes paradoxical content of the empirical result. In addition, although it could be convincingly argued that normative ethical theories should include a conception of what is valuable and what the nature of this value is (see e.g. Fox Citation2007, who argues for value as a relational quality), it is not the same thing as saying that all theories are Value-oriented. 15. Sauvé has identified a feminist current in EE that apparently comprises the classical Ecofeminist twin domination thesis. Ecofeminism has come a long way since its first wave, according to which women, compared to men, are seen as primary caretakers of nature (Warren Citation2000) or, as Sauvé puts it quoting Clover, Follen and Hall (Citation2000), 'women are often the first environmental educators' (2005, 25). For a still valid critical discussion of Ecofeminism's development as critical theory in relation to other discourses of domination, such as neo-colonial critique and cyborg feminism, see Cuomo (Citation1998). 16. Such perspective use of the framework can be descriptive or normative.