Environmental Philosophy and the Public Interest: A Pragmatic Reconciliation

Most environmental philosophers have had little use for 'conventional' philosophical and political thought. This is unfortunate, because these traditions can greatly contribute to environmental ethics and policy discussions. One mainstream concept of potential value for environmental philosophy is the notion of the public interest. Yet even though the public interest is widely acknowledged to be a powerful ethical standard in public affairs and public policy, there has been little agreement on its descriptive meaning. A particularly intriguing account of the concept in the literature, however, may be found in the work of the American pragmatist John Dewey. Dewey argued that the public interest was to be continuously constructed through the process of free, cooperative inquiry into the shared good of the democratic community. This Deweyan model of the public interest has much to offer environmental philosophers who are interested in making connections between normative arguments and environmental policy discourse, and it holds great promise for enhancing environmental philosophy's role and impact in public life.Environmental philosophy, public interest, pragmatism, John Dewey

The new conservation debate: ethical foundations, strategic trade-offs, and policy opportunities

a b s t r a c t The ''parks vs. people" debate -i.e., the dispute over whether conservation projects and policies should prioritize biodiversity and landscape protection or poverty alleviation and human livelihood improvement -should be quite familiar to most conservation scientists and policy scholars today. Yet, it is clearly a more expansive debate than the argument over whether a particular conservation project should emphasize biodiversity protection or development: it is also a wider disagreement about the proper value and ethical foundations of biological conservation in the age of sustainability, as well as the wisdom and consequences of making complex trade-offs among rivalrous conservation goals in practice. This essay introduces a special section of Biological Conservation focused on this larger dispute, what we are calling the ''New Conservation Debate" to distinguish it from the historical debate in the US between ''wise use" conservationists and preservationists at the turn of the 20th century. Articles in this special section explore the normative and ethical dimensions of the debate, as well as more pragmatic considerations relating to trade-off analysis and decision-making in real-world conservation plans and projects that impact both biodiversity and human well-being. Collectively, the papers in this section clarify many of the ethical and strategic divisions in the New Conservation Debate, while also revealing opportunities for reconciliation and principled compromise among advocates of strong nature protection and human welfare in the conservation community

Reconstructing conservation : finding common ground

xiii, 417 p. ; 24 cm

Managed Relocation: Integrating the Scientific, Regulatory, and Ethical Challenges

Managed relocation is defined as the movement of species, populations, or genotypes to places outside the areas of their historical distributions to maintain biological diversity or ecosystem functioning with changing climate. It has been claimed that a major extinction event is under way and that climate change is increasing its severity. Projections indicating that climate change may drive substantial losses of biodiversity have compelled some scientists to suggest that traditional management strategies are insufficient. The managed relocation of species is a controversial management response to climate change. The published literature has emphasized biological concerns over difficult ethical, legal, and policy issues. Furthermore, ongoing managed relocation actions lack scientific and societal engagement. Our interdisciplinary team considered ethics, law, policy, ecology, and natural resources management in order to identify the key issues of managed relocation relevant for developing sound policies that support decisions for resource management. We recommend that government agencies develop and adopt best practices for managed relocation