Session 1: Conceptual Beginnings

Session 1: Conceptual Beginnings
Chair: Ram Vemuri

The Value of Nature: A Holistic Perception
Arvind Jasrotia
Faculty of Law, University of Jammu, INDIA

The present day consensus reflects three foundational aspirations. First, that human beings should be able to enjoy a decent quality of life, second, that humanity should become capable of respecting the finiteness of the biosphere, and third, that neither the aspiration for good life, nor the recognition of biophysical limits should preclude the search for greater justice in the world. In a planetary system of finite resources, human activities motivated by an attitude of rampant consumerism and unsustainable patterns of production and consumption have never been as inhumane and callous towards environment as in the modern era of scientific and technological innovations. Man’s greed attacks Nature and wounded Nature backlashes on the human future. Earth’s resources are finite and there are ecological limits to growth which, unless we alter our ways, will sooner rather than latter be exceeded. Environmental crisis involves social, political and economic aspects, but it also poses a philosophical problem. The vital and most intractable problem is to build an environmental ethics that constructs an adequate theory of intrinsic value of nature as a whole. Environmentalists fear that without a belief in ‘a Whole that is greater than us’, we have no reason to value nature for itself. How can a purely secular ethic, their argument goes, does justice to our concern for the preservation of things for their own sake rather then for the pleasure they give us?
Ethical dilemmas abound in environmental politics. Does nature have value separate from its role in meeting human needs? Indeed, how to discover intrinsic value in nature is the defining problem for environmentalethics. For if nature lacks intrinsic value, then environmental ethics is nothing but a particular application of human-to-human ethics and environmentalism just becomes an expression of enlightened self-interest. Ecocentrism rejects the human chauvinism of anthropocentrism and argues that all of nature has intrinsic value. Ecocentrics object to human chauvinism, not to humans; they want human and human culture to blossom and flourish, just as they do to other species. Their emphasis on the welfare of the non-human world is an attempt to correct an imbalance in philosophical and social science theory. The endeavour of environmental ethics remains fundamentally incomplete without the clarification of intrinsic value.

Eastern Mysticism
A good environmental sense has been one of the fundamental features of India’s ancient philosophy. In the holistic perception of the traditional system of Advaita Vedanta in India, the entire physical world appears identical with oneself and Brahman. If, as the cosmology of the Upanishads tells us, everything has come out of Brahman and is non-different from Brahman, and if Brahman has entered into all things as it has entered into all human beings, and has stayed there as the antrayamin of all, then it will be no wonder that all this should verily be Brahman. This is the highest knowledge. This is the summum bonum for man to be achieved as a psychological and epistemological process of apprehension of reality by degrees and by stages. The cosmic vision of our planet Earth is based on the fundamental concept of Vasudev Kutumbakam (All indeed is Vasudeva, the Eternal Reality). The way forward will require a turn towards restoration and renewal. Vedic profundity reaffirms the importance of justice, prudence, humility and reverence for life and nature. To live within such a holistic relationship requires our rediscovering the spiritual connection that unites us to the land and that nourishes our souls as well as our bodies. The affirmation of the ‘intrinsic worth’ and something like ‘rights’ of (or duties towards) each individual person and all animal and plant species and in some ways nature and ecosystems carries the correlate of recognizing our own limits in claming the fruits of the earth and in managing and manipulating nature. The BhagvadGita speaks of the highest wisdom as  Avibhaktam vibhateshu– “Undivided even in the midst of division”.
The paper seeks to adopt a holistic analysis of the human-nature relationship and tend to develop a non-anthropocentric or ecocentric ethic that draw our attention to the importance of developing a higher ecological consciousness which encourages us to adopt holistic attitude towards nature and also reconceptualises the concept of sustainable development in this paradigm.

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The Concept of Ecological Debt: An Environmental Justice Approach to Sustainability, Calling for Radical Transitions in Industrialised Countries
Gert Goeminne and Erik Paredis
The Research Foundation, Flanders, Center Leo Apostel, Free University of Brussels and Center for Sustainable Development, Ghent University, Belgium

Whereas the concept of sustainability mainly focuses on (forward-looking) intergenerational equity, environmental justice stresses (historically grown) intra-generational equity issues. It is our view that the concept of ecological debt has the potential of providing an enriched sustainability paradigm through which the essential reactivity of the environmental justice project, and the proactivity of the sustainable development project can be combined.  Ecological debt is a grass-roots concept, mainly developed through NGO-campaigning, which points at a non-equitable and non-sustainable exploitation of nature’s resources and services. Throughout this bottom-up, organic growth of the ecological debt concept, a big potential for a new and enriched sustainability paradigm can be grasped opening up new perspectives on a political, economic, ethical and ecological level that, however, still have to crystallize out.
In this paper we will argue that ecological debt stands for a new sustainability paradigm as it provokes a real “gestalt-switch”: once you adopt the idea of ecological debt, a commodity can no longer be seen without simultaneously realizing the network of environmental and social links, indeed often non-sustainable and non-equitable, that were needed to produce it. In order for ecological debt to grow and stabilize into a powerful and enriching sustainability paradigm able to transcend its status of a mere campaigning instrument, it is in our view necessary to provide it with both an adequate conceptualization accommodating the richness of the different perspectives mentioned above and a scientifically sound methodological foundation allowing for a uniform quantification. Besides addressing these crucial issues, this paper will also briefly discuss if and how such an intended paradigm-shift can become embedded in society.

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