1.

Introduction: The Challenge of Environmental Ethics

Suppose that putting out natural fires, culling feral animals or destroying some individual
members of overpopulated indigenous species is necessary for the protection of the integrity of a
certain ecosystem. Will these actions be morally permissible or even required? Is it morally
acceptable for farmers in non-industrial countries to practise slash and burn techniques to clear
areas for agriculture? Consider a mining company which has performed open pit mining in some
previously unspoiled area. Does the company have a moral obligation to restore the landform
and surface ecology? And what is the value of a humanly restored environment compared with
the originally natural environment? It is often said to be morally wrong for human beings to
pollute and destroy parts of the natural environment and to consume a huge proportion of the
planet's natural resources. If that is wrong, is it simply because a sustainable environment is
essential to (present and future) human well-being? Or is such behaviour also wrong because the
natural environment and/or its various contents have certain values in their own right so that
these values ought to be respected and protected in any case? These are among the questions
investigated by environmental ethics. Some of them are specific questions faced by individuals
in particular circumstances, while others are more global questions faced by groups and
communities. Yet others are more abstract questions concerning the value and moral standing of
the natural environment and its nonhuman components.

In the literature on environmental ethics the distinction between instrumental value and intrinsic
value (meaning “non-instrumental value”) has been of considerable importance. The former is
the value of things as means to further some other ends, whereas the latter is the value of things
as ends in themselves regardless of whether they are also useful as means to other ends. For
instance, certain fruits have instrumental value for bats who feed on them, since feeding on the
fruits is a means to survival for the bats. However, it is not widely agreed that fruits have value
as ends in themselves. We can likewise think of a person who teaches others as having
instrumental value for those who want to acquire knowledge. Yet, in addition to any such value,
it is normally said that a person, as a person, has intrinsic value, i.e., value in his or her own right
independently of his or her prospects for serving the ends of others. For another example, a
certain wild plant may have instrumental value because it provides the ingredients for some
medicine or as an aesthetic object for human observers. But if the plant also has some value in
itself independently of its prospects for furthering some other ends such as human health, or the
pleasure from aesthetic experience, then the plant also has intrinsic value. Because the
intrinsically valuable is that which is good as an end in itself, it is commonly agreed that
something's possession of intrinsic value generates a prima facie direct moral duty on the part of
moral agents to protect it or at least refrain from damaging it (see O'Neil 1992 and Jameson 2002
for detailed accounts of intrinsic value).

Many traditional western ethical perspectives, however, are anthropocentric or human-centered

in that either they assign intrinsic value to human beings alone (i.e., what we might call
anthropocentric in a strong sense) or they assign a significantly greater amount of intrinsic value
to human beings than to any nonhuman things such that the protection or promotion of human
interests or well-being at the expense of nonhuman things turns out to be nearly always justified
(i.e., what we might call anthropocentric in a weak sense). For example, Aristotle (Politics, Bk.
1, Ch. 8) maintains that “nature has made all things specifically for the sake of man” and that the
value of nonhuman things in nature is merely instrumental. Generally, anthropocentric positions
find it problematic to articulate what is wrong with the cruel treatment of nonhuman animals,
except to the extent that such treatment may lead to bad consequences for human beings.
Immanuel Kant (“Duties to Animals and Spirits”, in Lectures on Ethics), for instance, suggests
that cruelty towards a dog might encourage a person to develop a character which would be
desensitized to cruelty towards humans. From this standpoint, cruelty towards nonhuman
animals would be instrumentally, rather than intrinsically, wrong. Likewise, anthropocentrism
often recognizes some non-intrinsic wrongness of anthropogenic (i.e. human-caused)
environmental devastation. Such destruction might damage the well-being of human beings now
and in the future, since our well-being is essentially dependent on a sustainable environment (see
Passmore 1974, Bookchin 1990, Norton, Hutchins, Stevens, and Maple (eds.) 1995).

When environmental ethics emerged as a new sub-discipline of philosophy in the early 1970s, it
did so by posing a challenge to traditional anthropocentrism. In the first place, it questioned the
assumed moral superiority of human beings to members of other species on earth. In the second
place, it investigated the possibility of rational arguments for assigning intrinsic value to the
natural environment and its nonhuman contents.

It should be noted, however, that some theorists working in the field see no need to develop new,
non-anthropocentric theories. Instead, they advocate what may be called enlightened
anthropocentrism (or, perhaps more appropriately called, prudential anthropocentrism). Briefly,
this is the view that all the moral duties we have towards the environment are derived from our
direct duties to its human inhabitants. The practical purpose of environmental ethics, they
maintain, is to provide moral grounds for social policies aimed at protecting the earth's
environment and remedying environmental degradation. Enlightened anthropocentrism, they
argue, is sufficient for that practical purpose, and perhaps even more effective in delivering
pragmatic outcomes, in terms of policy-making, than non-anthropocentric theories given the
theoretical burden on the latter to provide sound arguments for its more radical view that the
nonhuman environment has intrinsic value (cf. Norton 1991, de Shalit 1994, Light and Katz
1996). Furthermore, some prudential anthropocentrists may hold what might be called cynical
anthropocentrism, which says that we have a higher-level anthropocentric reason to be non-
anthropocentric in our day-to-day thinking. Suppose that a day-to-day non-anthropocentrist tends
to act more benignly towards the nonhuman environment on which human well-being depends.
This would provide reason for encouraging non-anthropocentric thinking, even to those who find
the idea of non-anthropocentric intrinsic value hard to swallow. In order for such a strategy to be
effective one may need to hide one's cynical anthropocentrism from others and even from
oneself.

2. The Early Development of Environmental Ethics

Although nature was the focus of much nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy,
contemporary environmental ethics only emerged as an academic discipline in the 1970s. The
questioning and rethinking of the relationship of human beings with the natural environment
over the last thirty years reflected an already widespread perception in the 1960s that the late
twentieth century faced a “population time bomb” and a serious environmental crisis. Among the
accessible work that drew attention to a sense of crisis was Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1963),
which consisted of a number of essays earlier published in the New Yorker magazine detailing
how pesticides such as DDT, aldrin and deildrin concentrated through the food web. Commercial
farming practices aimed at maximizing crop yields and profits, Carson speculates, are capable of
impacting simultaneously on environmental and public health.

On the other hand, historian Lynn White jr., in a much-cited essay published in 1967 (White
1967) on the historical roots of the environmental crisis, argues that the main strands of Judeo-
Christian thinking had encouraged the overexploitation of nature by maintaining the superiority
of humans over all other forms of life on earth, and by depicting all of nature as created for the
use of humans. White's thesis is widely discussed in theology, history, and has been subject to
some sociological testing as well as being regularly discussed by philosophers (see Whitney
1993, Attfield 2001). Central to the rationale for his thesis were the works of the Church Fathers
and The Bible itself, supporting the anthropocentric perspective that humans are the only things
that matter on Earth. Consequently, they may utilize and consume everything else to their
advantage without any injustice. For example, Genesis 1:27-8 states: “God created man in his
own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God
blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and
subdue it: and have dominion over fish of the sea, and over fowl of the air, and over every living
thing that moveth upon the earth.” Likewise, Thomas Aquinas (Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk. 3,
Pt 2, Ch 112) argued that nonhuman animals are “ordered to man's use”. According to White, the
Judeo-Christian idea that humans are created in the image of the transcendent supernatural God,
who is radically separate from nature, also by extension radically separates humans themselves
from nature. This ideology further opened the way for untrammelled exploitation of nature.
Modern Western science itself, White argues, was “cast in the matrix of Christian theology” so
that it too inherited the “orthodox Christian arrogance toward nature” (White jr. 1967, 1207).
Clearly, without technology and science, the environmental extremes to which we are now
exposed would probably not be realized. White's thesis, however, is that given the modern form
of science and technology, Judeo-Christianity itself provides the original deep-seated drive to
unlimited exploitation of nature. Nevertheless, White argued that some minority traditions within
Christianity (e.g., the views of St. Francis) might provide an antidote to the “arrogance” of a
mainstream tradition steeped in anthropocentrism.

Around the same time, the Stanford ecologist, Paul Ehrlich, published The Population Bomb
(1968), warning that the growth of human population threatened the viability of planetary life-
support systems. The sense of environmental crisis stimulated by those and other popular works
was intensified by NASA's production and wide dissemination of a particularly potent image of
earth from space taken at Christmas 1968 and featured in the Scientific American in September
1970. Here, plain to see, was a living, shining planet voyaging through space and shared by all of
humanity, a precious vessel vulnerable to pollution and to the overuse of its limited capacities. In
1972 a team of researchers at MIT led by Dennis Meadows published the Limits to Growth
study, a work that summed up in many ways the emerging concerns of the previous decade and
the sense of vulnerability triggered by the view of the earth from space. In §10 of the
commentary to the study, the researchers wrote:
We affirm finally that any deliberate attempt to reach a rational and enduring state of equilibrium
by planned measures, rather than by chance or catastrophe, must ultimately be founded on a
basic change of values and goals at individual, national and world levels.

The call for a “basic change of values” in connection to the environment (a call that could be
interpreted in terms of either instrumental or intrinsic values) reflected a need for the
development of environmental ethics as a new sub-discipline of philosophy.

The new field emerged almost simultaneously in three countries -- the United States, Australia,
and Norway. In the first two of these countries, direction and inspiration largely came from the
earlier twentieth century American literature of the environment. For instance, the Scottish
emigrant John Muir (founder of the Sierra Club and “father of American conservation”) and
subsequently the forester Aldo Leopold had advocated an appreciation and conservation of
things “natural, wild and free”. Their concerns were motivated by a combination of ethical and
aesthetic responses to nature as well as a rejection of crudely economic approaches to the value
of natural objects (a historical survey of the confrontation between Muir's reverentialism and the
human-centred conservationism of Gifford Pinchot (one of the major influences on the
development of the US Forest Service) is provided in Norton 1991; also see Cohen 1984 and
Nash (ed) 1990). Leopold's A Sand County Almanac (1949), in particular, advocated the
adoption of a “land ethic”:

That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and
respected is an extension of ethics. (vii-ix)

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic
community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. (224-5)

However, Leopold himself provided no systematic ethical theory or framework to support these
ethical ideas concerning the environment. His views therefore presented a challenge and
opportunity for moral theorists: could some ethical theory be devised to justify the injunction to
preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biosphere?

The land ethic sketched by Leopold, attempting to extend our moral concern to cover the natural
environment and its nonhuman contents, was drawn on explicitly by the Australian philosopher
Richard Routley (later Sylvan). According to Routley (1973 (cf. Routley and Routley 1980)), the
anthropocentrism imbedded in what he called the “dominant western view”, or “the western
superethic”, is in effect “human chauvinism”. This view, he argued, is just another form of class
chauvinism, which is simply based on blind class “loyalty” or prejudice, and unjustifiably
discriminates against those outside the privileged class. Furthermore, in his “last man” (and “last
people”) arguments, Routley asked us to imagine the hypothetical situation in which the last
person, surviving a world catastrophe, acted to ensure the elimination of all other living things
and the destruction of all the landscapes after his demise. From the human-chauvinistic (or
absolutely anthropocentric) perspective, the last person would do nothing morally wrong, since
his or her destructive act in question would not cause any damage to the interest and well-being
of humans, who would by then have disappeared. Nevertheless, Routley points out that there is a
moral intuition that the imagined last act would be morally wrong. An explanation for this
judgment, he argued, is that those nonhuman objects in the environment, whose destruction is
ensured by the last person, have intrinsic value, a kind of value independent of their usefulness
for humans. From his critique, Routley concluded that the main approaches in traditional western
moral thinking were unable to allow the recognition that natural things have intrinsic value, and
that the tradition required overhaul of a significant kind.

Leopold's idea that the “land” as a whole is an object of our moral concern also stimulated
writers to argue for certain moral obligations toward ecological wholes, such as species,
communities, and ecosystems, not just their individual constituents. The U.S.-based theologian
and environmental philosopher Holmes Rolston III, for instance, argued that species protection
was a moral duty (Rolston 1975). It would be wrong, he maintained, to eliminate a rare butterfly
species simply to increase the monetary value of specimens already held by collectors. Like
Routley's “last man” arguments, Rolston's example is meant to draw attention to a kind of action
that seems morally dubious and yet is not clearly ruled out or condemned by traditional
anthropocentric ethical views. Species, Rolston went on to argue, are intrinsically valuable and
are usually more valuable than individual specimens, since the loss of a species is a loss of
genetic possibilities and the deliberate destruction of a species would show disrespect for the
very biological processes which make possible the emergence of individual living things (also
see Rolston 1989, Ch 10). Natural processes deserve respect, according to Rolston's quasi-
religious perspective, because they constitute a nature (or God) which is itself intrinsically
valuable (or sacred).

Meanwhile, the work of Christopher Stone (a professor of law at the University of Southern
California) had become widely discussed. Stone (1972) proposed that trees and other natural
objects should have at least the same standing in law as corporations. This suggestion was
inspired by a particular case in which the Sierra Club had mounted a challenge against the permit
granted by the U.S. Forest Service to Walt Disney Enterprises for surveys preparatory to the
development of the Mineral King Valley, which was at the time a relatively remote game refuge,
but not designated as a national park or protected wilderness area. The Disney proposal was to
develop a major resort complex serving 14000 visitors daily to be accessed by a purpose-built
highway through Sequoia National Park. The Sierra Club, as a body with a general concern for
wilderness conservation, challenged the development on the grounds that the valley should be
kept in its original state for its own sake.

Stone reasoned that if trees, forests and mountains could be given standing in law then they
could be represented in their own right in the courts by groups such as the Sierra Club.
Moreover, like any other legal person, these natural things could become beneficiaries of
compensation if it could be shown that they had suffered compensatable injury through human
activity. When the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, it was determined by a narrow majority
that the Sierra Club did not meet the condition for bringing a case to court, for the Club was
unable and unwilling to prove the likelihood of injury to the interest of the Club or its members.
In a dissenting minority judgment, however, justices Douglas, Blackmun and Brennan mentioned
Stone's argument: his proposal to give legal standing to natural things, they said, would allow
conservation interests, community needs and business interests to be represented, debated and
settled in court.
Reacting to Stone's proposal, Joel Feinberg (1974) raised a serious problem. Only items that
have interests, Feinberg argued, can be regarded as having legal standing and, likewise, moral
standing. For it is interests which are capable of being represented in legal proceedings and
moral debates. This same point would also seem to apply to political debates. For instance, the
movement for “animal liberation”, which also emerged strongly in the 1970s, can be thought of
as a political movement aimed at representing the previously neglected interests of some animals
(see Regan and Singer (eds.) 1976, Clark 1977, and also the entry on the moral status of
animals). Granted that some animals have interests that can be represented in this way, would it
also make sense to speak of trees, forests, rivers, barnacles, or termites as having interests of a
morally relevant kind? This issue was hotly contested in the years that followed. Meanwhile,
John Passmore (1974) argued, like White, that the Judeo-Christian tradition of thought about
nature, despite being predominantly “despotic”, contained resources for regarding humans as
“stewards” or “perfectors” of God's creation. Skeptical of the prospects for any radically new
ethic, Passmore cautioned that traditions of thought could not be abruptly overhauled. Any
change in attitudes to our natural surroundings which stood the chance of widespread acceptance,
he argued, would have to resonate and have some continuities with the very tradition which had
legitimized our destructive practices. In sum, then, Leopold's land ethic, the historical analyses of
White and Passmore, the pioneering work of Routley, Stone and Rolston, and the warnings of
scientists, had by the late 1970s focused the attention of philosophers and political theorists
firmly on the environment.

The confluence of ethical, political and legal debates about the environment, the emergence of
philosophies to underpin animal rights activism and the puzzles over whether an environmental
ethic would be something new rather than a modification or extension of existing ethical theories
were reflected in wider social and political movements. The rise of environmental or “green”
parties in Europe in the 1980s was accompanied by almost immediate schisms between groups
known as “realists” versus “fundamentalists” (see Dobson 1992). The “realists” stood for reform
environmentalism, working with business and government to soften the impact of pollution and
resource depletion especially on fragile ecosystems or endangered species. The “fundies” argued
for radical change, the setting of stringent new priorities, and even the overthrow of capitalism
and liberal individualism, which were taken as the major ideological causes of anthropogenic
environmental devastation. (Not that collectivist or communist countries do better in terms of
their environmental record (see Dominick 1998).)

Underlying these political disagreements was the distinction between “shallow” and “deep”
environmental movements, a distinction introduced in the early 1970s by another major
influence on contemporary environmental ethics, the Norwegian philosopher and climber Arne
Næss. Since the work of Næss has been significant in environmental politics, the discussion of
his position is given in a separate section below.

Environmental ethics is the part of environmental philosophy which considers extending the
traditional boundaries of ethics from solely including humans to including the non-human world.
It exerts influence on a large range of disciplines including law, sociology, theology, economics,
ecology and geography.

There are many ethical decisions that human beings make with respect to the environment. For
example:

• Should we continue to clear cut forests for the sake of human consumption?
• Should we continue to propagate?
• Should we continue to make gasoline powered vehicles?
• What environmental obligations do we need to keep for future generations?[1][2]
• Is it right for humans to knowingly cause the extinction of a species for the convenience
of humanity?

The academic field of environmental ethics grew up in response to the work of scientists such as
Rachel Carson and events such as the first Earth Day in 1970, when environmentalists started
urging philosophers to consider the philosophical aspects of environmental problems. Two
papers published in Science had a crucial impact: Lynn White's "The Historical Roots of our
Ecologic Crisis" (March 1967)[3] and Garrett Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons"
(December 1968).[4] Also influential was Garett Hardin's later essay called "Exploring New
Ethics for Survival", as well as an essay by Aldo Leopold in his A Sand County Almanac, called
"The Land Ethic," in which Leopold explicitly claimed that the roots of the ecological crisis were
philosophical (1949).[5]

The first international academic journals in this field emerged from North America in the late
1970s and early 1980s – the US-based journal Environmental Ethics in 1979 and the Canadian
based journal The Trumpeter: Journal of Ecosophy in 1983. The first British based journal of this
kind, Environmental Values, was launched in 1992.

Anthropocentrism
Main article: Anthropocentrism

Anthropocentrism simply places humans at the centre of the universe; the human race must
always be its own primary concern. It has become customary in the Western tradition to consider
only our species when considering the environmental ethics of a situation. Therefore, everything
else in existence should be evaluated in terms of its utility for us, thus committing speciesism.
All environmental studies should include an assessment of the intrinsic value of non-human
beings. [8] In fact, based on this very assumption, a philosophical article has explored recently the
possibility of humans' willing extinction as a gesture toward other beings. [9] The authors refer to
the idea as a thought experiment that should not be understood as a call for action.

What Anthropocentric theories do not allow for is the fact that a system of ethics formulated
from a human perspective may not be entirely accurate; humans are not necessarily the centre of
reality. The philosopher Baruch Spinoza argued that we tend to assess things wrongly in terms of
their usefulness to us.[citation needed] Spinoza reasoned that if we were to look at things objectively we
would discover that everything in the universe has a unique value. Likewise, it is possible that a
human-centred or anthropocentric/androcentric ethic is not an accurate depiction of reality, and
there is a bigger picture that we may or may not be able to understand from a human perspective.

Peter Vardy distinguished between two types of anthropocentrism.[10] A strong thesis

anthropocentric ethic argues that humans are at the center of reality and it is right for them to be
so. Weak anthropocentrism, however, argues that reality can only be interpreted from a human
point of view, thus humans have to be at the centre of reality as they see it.

Another point of view has been developed by Bryan Norton, who has become one of the
essential actors of environmental ethics through his launching of what has become one of its
dominant trends: environmental pragmatism. Environmental pragmatism refuses to take a stance
in the dispute between the defenders of anthropocentrist ethics and the supporters of
nonanthropocentrist ethics. Instead, Norton prefers to distinguish between strong
anthropocentrism and weak-or extended-anthropocentrism and develops the idea that only the
latter is capable of not under-estimating the diversity of instrumental values that humans may
derive from the natural world[11].

Anthropocentrism
Main article: Anthropocentrism

Ecocentrism is taken by its proponents to constitute a radical challenge to long-standing and

deeply rooted anthropocentric attitudes in Western culture, science, and politics.
Anthropocentrism is alleged to leave the case for the protection of non-human nature subject to
the demands of human utility, and thus never more than contingent on the demands of human
welfare. An ecocentric ethic, by contrast, is believed to be necessary in order to develop a non-
contingent basis for protecting the natural world. Critics of ecocentrism have argued that it opens
the doors to an anti-humanist morality that risks sacrificing human well-being for the sake of an
ill-defined ‘greater good’.[11] Deep ecologist Arne Naess has identified anthropocentrism as a root
cause of the ecological crisis, human overpopulation, and the extinctions of many non-human
species.[12] Others point to the gradual historical realization that humans are not the centre of all
things, that “A few hundred years ago, with some reluctance, Western people admitted that the
planets, Sun and stars did not circle around their abode. In short, our thoughts and concepts
though irreducibly anthropomorphic need not be anthropocentric.”[13]
[edit] Technocentrism
Main article: Technocentrism

Ecocentrism is also contrasted with technocentrism (meaning values centred on technology) as

two opposing perspectives on attitudes towards human technology and its ability to affect,
control and even protect the environment. Ecocentrics, including "deep green" ecologists, see
themselves as being subject to nature, rather than in control of it. They lack faith in modern
technology and the bureaucracy attached to it. Ecocentrics will argue that the natural world
should be respected for its processes and products, and that low impact technology and self-
reliance is more desirable than technological control of nature.[14] Technocentrics, including
imperialists, have absolute faith in technology and industry and firmly believe that humans have
control over nature. Although technocentrics may accept that environmental problems do exist,
they do not see them as problems to be solved by a reduction in industry. Rather, environmental
problems are seen as problems to be solved using science. Indeed, technocentrics see that the
way forward for developed and developing countries and the solutions to our environmental
problems today lie in scientific and technological advancement

Economic magic, environmental failures

Pollution. Deforestation. Wildlife trade. The aspirations of more than one billion people. These are
some of the critical issues that India grapples with every day.

But as the country’s population and economy continue to grow, the need to find solutions becomes
more urgent every day.

Across India, concern is mounting over an ever growing list of environmental problems.

More people means increased pressure on natural resources (from water to forests), while an economy in high-
gear is leaving a trail of pollution that’s affecting not only India, but the rest of the world too.

Find out more

• Forest problems globally

• Forests: how they work, why we cannot do without them
Deforestation

India is witnessing a rising demand for forest-based products. This is causing deforestation and encroachment
into forest protected areas, which leads to a severe loss of natural resources.

It is estimated that total industrial roundwood consumption in India could exceed 70 million m per year by the
3

end of the decade (350,000 large shipping containers), while domestic supply would fall short of this figure by
an estimated 14 million m .3 1

As the nation will have to depend heavily on imports to meet this growing demand, there is fear that this could
result in loss of high conservation value forests and biodiversity elsewhere.

Find out more

• Palm oil, oil palm plantations and their impacts

• What is WWF doing about the environmental impacts of oil palm globally?

A thirst for palm oil

India is a big edible oil consumer. In fact, it is one of the three largest importers of palm oil in the world, along
with EU and China. Of these imports, 95% come from Indonesia and Malaysia, causing negative social and
environmental consequences in these exporting countries.

Conversion of natural forests for cultivating oil palm is a major threat to biodiversity and livelihoods in the
tropics. Most of the lowland rainforest on the Indonesian island of Sumatra has already been lost, largely
because of the clearance for oil palm and pulp wood plantations.

With the global demand for palm oil expected to increase from 28 million tonnes at present to about 50 million
tonnes in 2030 , there are very serious concerns that this will happen at the expense of biologically and
2

economically important forests.

Pollution

Increasing competition for water among various sectors, including agriculture, industry, domestic, drinking,
energy generation and others, is causing this precious natural resource to dry up. Increasing pollution is also
leading to the destruction of the habitat of wildlife that lives in waterways.
What is wildlife trade?

Whenever people sell or exchange wild animal and plant resources, this is wildlife trade. It can involve live
animals and plants or all kinds of wild animal and plant products. Wildlife trade is easiest to track when it is
from one country to another because it must be checked, and often recorded, at Customs checkpoints.

Why do people trade wildlife?

People trade wildlife for cash or exchange it for other useful objects - for example, utensils in exchange for wild
animal skins. Driving the trade is the end-consumer who has a need or desire for wildlife products, whether for
food, construction or clothing.

For a more detailed list of the various uses of wildlife, visit the TRAFFIC website.

What is wildlife trade worth financially?

This is a difficult estimate to make. As a guideline, TRAFFIC has calculated that wildlife products worth about
160 US billion dollars were imported around the globe each year in the early 1990s. In addition to this, there is
a large and profitable illegal wildlife trade, but because it is conducted covertly no-one can judge with any
accuracy what this may be worth.

What is the scale of wildlife trade?

The trade involves hundreds of millions of wild plants and animals from tens of thousands of species. To
provide a glimpse of the scale of wildlife trafficking, there are records of over 100 million tonnes of fish, 1.5
million live birds and 440,000 tonnes of medicinal plants in trade in just one year.

Why is wildlife trade a problem?

Wildlife trade is by no means always a problem and most wildlife trade is legal. However, it has the potential to
be very damaging. Populations of species on earth declined by an average 40% between 1970 and 2000 - and
the second-biggest direct threat to species survival, after habitat destruction, is wildlife trade.

Perhaps the most obvious problem associated with wildlife trade is that it can cause overexploitation to the
point where the survival of a species hangs in the balance. Historically, such overexploitation has caused
extinctions or severely threatened species and, as human populations have expanded, demand for wildlife has
only increased.

Recent overexploitation of wildlife for trade has affected countless species. This has been well-publicized in the
cases of tigers, rhinoceroses, elephants and others, but many other species are affected.
This overexploitation should concern us all...

• ...because it harms human livelihoods.

Wildlife is vital to the lives of a high proportion of the world's population, often the poorest. Some rural
households depend on local wild animals for their meat protein and on local trees for fuel, and both
wild animals and plants provide components of traditional medicines used by the majority of people in
the world. While many people in developed countries are cushioned from any effects caused by a
reduced supply of a particular household item, many people in the developing world depend entirely
on the continued availability of local wildlife resources.

• ...because it harms the balance of nature.

In addition to the impact on human livelihoods caused by the over-harvesting of animals and plants is
the harm caused by overexploitation of species to the living planet in a wider way. For example,
overfishing does not only affect individual fishing communities and threaten certain fish species, but
causes imbalances in the whole marine system. As human life depends on the existence of a
functioning planet Earth, careful and thoughtful use of wildlife species and their habitats is required to
avoid not only extinctions, but serious disturbances to the complex web of life.

Biodiversity
Last updated Sunday, June 06, 2010.

The variety of life on Earth, its biological diversity, is

commonly referred to as biodiversity. The number of species of plants, animals, and
microorganisms, the enormous diversity of genes in these species, the different ecosystems on
the planet, such as deserts, rainforests and coral reefs are all part of a biologically diverse Earth.
Appropriate conservation and sustainable development strategies attempt to recognize this as
being integral to any approach. In some way or form, almost all cultures have recognized the
importance of nature and its biological diversity for their societies and have therefore understood
the need to maintain it. Yet, power, greed and politics have affected the precarious balance.

Read “Biodiversity” to learn more.

Why Is Biodiversity Important? Who Cares?

Last updated Wednesday, November 18, 2009.

Why is Biodiversity important? Does it really matter if there

aren’t so many species?

Biodiversity boosts ecosystem productivity where each species, no matter how small, all have an
important role to play.

For example, a larger number of plant species means a greater variety of crops; greater species
diversity ensures natural sustainability for all life forms; and healthy ecosystems can better
withstand and recover from a variety of disasters.

And so, while we dominate this planet, we still need to preserve the diversity in wildlife.

Read “Why Is Biodiversity Important? Who Cares?” to learn more.

Loss of Biodiversity and Extinctions

Last updated Sunday, June 06, 2010.

It has long been feared that human activity is causing massive

extinctions. Despite increased efforts at conservation, it has not been enough and biodiversity
losses continue. The costs associated with deteriorating or vanishing ecosystems will be high.
However, sustainable development and consumption would help avert ecological problems.
Read “Loss of Biodiversity and Extinctions” to learn more.

Nature and Animal Conservation

Last updated Saturday, February 13, 2010.

Preserving species and their habitats is important for ecosystems

to self-sustain themselves.

Yet, the pressures to destroy habitat for logging, illegal hunting, and other challenges are making
conservation a struggle.

Read “Nature and Animal Conservation” to learn more.

Climate Change Affects Biodiversity

Last updated Sunday, June 06, 2010.

Rapid global warming can affect an ecosystems chances to adapt

naturally.

The Arctic is very sensitive to climate change and already seeing lots of changes. Ocean
biodiversity is already being affected as are other parts of the ecosystem.

Read “Climate Change Affects Biodiversity” to learn more.

Coral Reefs
Last updated Saturday, February 13, 2010.
 One type of ecosystem that perhaps is neglected more than any other is
perhaps also the richest in biodiversity—the coral reefs.

Coral reefs are useful to the environment and to people in a number of ways. However, all
around the world, much of the world’s marine biodiversity face threats from human and
activities as well as natural. It is feared that very soon, many reefs could die off.

Read “Coral Reefs” to learn more.

Addressing Biodiversity Loss

Posted Sunday, June 06, 2010.

At the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth

Summit), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was born. 192 countries, plus the EU,
are now Parties to that convention. In April 2002, the Parties to the Convention committed to
significantly reduce the loss of biodiversity loss by 2010.

Perhaps predictably, that did not happen. Despite numerous successful conservations measures
supporting biodiversity, the 2010 biodiversity target has not been met at the global level. This
page provides an overview on how the attempts to prevent biodiversity loss is progressing.

Read “Addressing Biodiversity Loss” to learn more.

Biosafety Protocol 1999

Last updated Monday, March 19, 2001.
The February 1999 Biodiversity Protocol meeting in Colombia broke down because USA, not
even a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity, to which the protocol is meant to be
part of, and five other countries of the "Miami Group" felt that their business interests were
threatened. The safety concerns were unfortunately overridden by trade concerns. Some
technological advances, especially in genetically engineered food, have been very fast paced and
products are being pushed into the market place without having been proven safe. All over the
world, concerned citizens and governments have been trying to take precautionary measures.
However, 1999 was not a successful year in that respect.

Read “Biosafety Protocol 1999” to learn more.

Biosafety Protocol 2000

Last updated Sunday, July 01, 2001.

A Biosafety Protocol meeting was hosted in Montreal, Canada January 24 to January 28.
Compared to the fiasco of the previous year, this time, there had been a somewhat successful
treaty to regulate the international transport and release of genetically modified organisms to
protect natural biological diversity. However, there were a number of important and serious
weaknesses too.

Read “Biosafety Protocol 2000” to learn more.

Biodiversity Links for more Information

Last updated Wednesday, November 18, 2009.

Read “Biodiversity Links for more Information” to learn more.

Climate Change and Global Warming

Last updated Sunday, June 06, 2010.

The climate is changing. The earth is warming up, and there is now overwhelming
scientific consensus that it is happening, and human-induced. With global warming on the
increase and species and their habitats on the decrease, chances for ecosystems to adapt naturally
are diminishing. Many are agreed that climate change may be one of the greatest threats facing
the planet. Recent years show increasing temperatures in various regions, and/or increasing
extremities in weather patterns.
This section explores some of the effects of climate change. It also attempts to provide insights
into what governments, companies, international institutions, and other organizations are
attempting to do about this issue, as well as the challenges they face. Some of the major
conferences in recent years are also discussed.

Read “Climate Change and Global Warming” to learn more.

Climate Change and Global Warming Introduction

Last updated Sunday, June 06, 2010.

The climate is changing. The earth is warming up, and there is now overwhelming
scientific consensus that it is happening, and human-induced. With global warming on the
increase and species and their habitats on the decrease, chances for ecosystems to adapt naturally
are diminishing.

Many are agreed that climate change may be one of the greatest threats facing the planet. Recent
years show increasing temperatures in various regions, and/or increasing extremities in weather
patterns.

This section looks at what causes climate change, what the impacts are and where scientific
consensus currently is.

Read “Climate Change and Global Warming Introduction” to learn more.

Global Dimming
Posted Saturday, January 15, 2005.

Research has shown that air pollutants from fossil fuel use make clouds reflect more of the sun’s
rays back into space. This leads to an effect known as global dimming whereby less heat and
energy reaches the earth. At first, it sounds like an ironic savior to climate change problems.
However, it is believed that global dimming caused the droughts in Ethiopia in the 1970s and 80s
where millions died, because the northern hemisphere oceans were not warm enough to allow
rain formation. Global dimming is also hiding the true power of global warming. By cleaning up
global dimming-causing pollutants without tackling greenhouse gas emissions, rapid warming
has been observed, and various human health and ecological disasters have resulted, as witnessed
during the European heat wave in 2003, which saw thousands of people die.

Read “Global Dimming” to learn more.

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
Last updated Saturday, December 25, 2004.

The world mostly agrees that something needs to be done about global warming and climate
change. The first stumbling block, however, has been trying to get an agreement on a framework.
In 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created by the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meterological Organization (WMO) to
assess the scientific knowledge on global warming. The IPCC concluded in 1990 that there was
broad international

Reactions to Climate Change Negotiations and Action

Last updated Sunday, October 04, 2009.

The United States plus a few other countries, and many large corporations, have been against
climate change treaties due to the fear of the threat to their economy and profits if they have to
make substantial changes.

However, as more climate change science has emerged over the years, many businesses are
accepting this and even asking their governments for more action so that there is quick
clarification on the new rules of the game so they can get on with their businesses.

This section explores some of those fears to see if they are justified or not.

Read “Reactions to Climate Change Negotiations and Action” to learn more.

Global Warming, Spin and Media

Last updated Sunday, October 04, 2009.

For many years, large, influential businesses and governments have been against the idea of
global warming. Many have poured a lot of resources into discrediting what has generally been
accepted for a long time as real. Now, the mainstream is generally worried about climate change
impacts and the discourse seems to have shifted accordingly. Even some businesses that once
engaged in disinformation campaigns have changed their opinions, some even requesting
governments for regulation and direction on this issue. However, a few influential companies
and organizations are still attempting to undermine climate change action and concerns. Will all
this mean a different type of spin and propaganda with attempts at green washing and misleading
information becoming the norm, or will there now be major shift in attitudes to see concrete
solutions being proposed and implemented?
Read “Global Warming, Spin and Media” to learn more.

Climate Justice and Equity

Last updated Wednesday, December 30, 2009.

For a number of years, there have been concerns that climate change negotiations will essentially
ignore a key principle of climate change negotiation frameworks: the common but differentiated
responsibilities.

This recognizes that historically:

• Industrialized nations have emitted far more greenhouse gas emissions (even if some
developing nations are only now increasing theirs);
• Rich countries therefore face the biggest responsibility and burden for action to address
climate change; and
• Rich countries therefore must support developing nations adapt—through financing and
technology transfer, for example.

This notion of climate justice is typically ignored by many rich nations and their mainstream
media, making it easy to blame China, India and other developing countries for failures in
climate change mitigation negotiations.

Development expert, Martin Khor, calculated that taking historical emissions into account, the
rich countries owe a carbon debt because they have already used more than their fair quota of
emissions.

Yet, by 2050 when certain emission reductions are needed by, their reduced emissions will still
add up to be go over their fair share:
However, rather than continue down the path of unequal development, industrialized nations can
help pay off their carbon debt by truly helping emerging countries develop along a cleaner path,
such as through the promised-but-barely-delivered technology transfer, finance, and capacity
building.

So far however, rich nations have done very little within the Kyoto protocol to reduce emissions
by any meaningful amount, while they are all for negotiating a follow on treaty that brings more
pressure to developing countries to agree to emissions targets.

In effect, the more there will be delay the more the poor nations will have to save the Earth with
their sacrifices (and if it works, as history shows, the rich and powerful will find a way to rewrite
history to claim they were the ones that saved the planet).

These issues are explored in more depth here.

Read “Climate Justice and Equity” to learn more.

Climate Change Flexibility Mechanisms

Last updated Sunday, October 04, 2009.

Flexibility mechanisms were defined in the Kyoto Protocol as different ways to achieve
emissions reduction as part of the effort to address climate change issues. These fall into the
following categories: Emissions Trading, Joint Implementation and Clean Development
Mechanism.

However, these have been highly controversial as they were mainly included on strong US
insistence and to keep the US in the treaty (even though the US eventually pulled out). Some of
the mechanisms face criticism for not actually leading to a reduction in emissions, for example.

Summary:
"Green IT" refers to the idea that IT organizations can and should implement practices that are
environmentally friendly. IT organizations' increased attention to green IT has resulted from a number of
factors, including: Rising energy costs, increased publicity regarding global warming, and increased
legislation. This brief examines the drivers of green IT initiatives and provides case examples of how
companies have made IT more environmentally friendly.

Around the world, newspapers are recognizing the value and promise for the future that is
created by implementing a green strategy. The move to be more environmentally friendly is
happening across businesses, consumers and governments. For their part, news publishers are
taking a hard look at efficiencies that can be implemented across their value chains, such as more
aggressive recycling schemes, reducing carbon dioxide emissions, lowering electricity usage and
better ways of handling e-waste, SFN's Going Green reported.

InfoTrends, a U.S.-based market research and strategic consulting firm for the digital imaging
and document solutions industry, partnered with the North American Publishing Company in
January 2008 to create a new quarterly tracking programme called "Emerging Strategies in
Production Print." The project is aimed at polling print service providers on the hottest industry
topics.
For their inaugural survey, the groups chose the topic of green printing and sustainability to find
out how the print industry was adapting to the rapid trends involving green and sustainable
initiatives, and how much was just talk. The survey explored print-for-pay (commercial)
businesses and in-plant trends, and found that more than half of the 768 (283 from in-plants and
485 from commercial print) providers surveyed had implemented a green policy, while almost a
third of those with a green policy in place had also completed one or more certification
programmes. Meanwhile, larger companies (those with 500 or more employees) had a higher
adoption rate of green policy implementation, according to the InfoTrends and NAPCO study,
"Emerging Strategies: Green Printing and Sustainability."

The two primary reasons for adopting green policies are social responsibility and customer
demand, with customer demand driving green policy adoption in commercial printing more than
in-plant companies.

Marketing and public relations also have an impact on implementing green policies, with
expected legislation being rated as less of a factor. This is because many providers routinely
must be in line with local and national regulations in their businesses, making expected
legislation less of a factor, because it is already part of daily policy.

Meanwhile, although there are costs associated with adopting more eco-friendly policies, most
companies were supportive of these initiatives, according to the report, Going Green, released