生态伦理:可持续发展的伦理基础

可持续发展是始源于人类所面面临的生态危机、以人与自然关系的协调发展为基本内容的一种生态化发展模式,它所面对和需要处理的是人类发展需求无限性与自然资源有限性这一矛盾,即人类对自然的价值取向、开发强度是否符合自然规律的问题.目前学界对它的研究已突破"经济-科技-政治"等实践层面,开始深入到"观念-价值-文化"等认识论、价值论领域.生态伦理是对人与自然关系的哲学反思中应运而生的一种革命性的伦理思想,本质上属于人类社会的"观念-价值-文化"领域,其理论构成、研究对象正契合人类的可持续发展.生态伦理作为可持续发展伦理基础是可持续发展的客观要求和必然选择:①生态伦理突破传统的道德定义,将伦理关怀的对象扩展到人与自然界关系的领域,为可持续发展奠定了坚实的思想基础,提供可靠的伦理前提;②生态伦理肯定自然价值和自然权利,直接回应了在可持续发展中人为何要尊重自然价值与权利这一理论课题,为人类对大自然的价值认同寻到理论根基,使可持续发展寻找到坚实的价值支点;③生态伦理在反思和批判传统道德评价标准的基础上,提出全新的道德评价标准,为现实的可持续发展战略的设计与安排提供伦理支持和辩护.     

环境保护中的伦理问题及启示

环境问题产生的根源,是人的思维、决策和行为的失误.环境伦理在解决环境问题的过程中有重大的作用.     

现代生态伦理学的独特视域与时代价值

工业文明在推动经济发展的同时,给人类生态环境带来深重灾难.生态危机实质上是一场伦理道德危机.现代生态伦理学把生态思维与伦理道德思维有机结合起来,从新的视角审视道德关系,其独特视域主要有:重新审视人与自然的关系,把种际义物纳入人类关注的视野;重新审视人类自身的伦理关系,把人际义务从共时人际义务扩展到代际义物;扩展公共伦理的空间,把工业文明的民族主义推向生态文明的世界主义.现代生态伦理学视域的扩展引领了世界观的转变、价值观的转及道德观的转变,对推动生态文明建设、促进社会和谐的伟大实践具有非常重要的现实意义.     

关于加强网络新媒体技术伦理建设的思考

随着互联网和移动通信技术的高速发展,网络新媒体技术波及的群体和范围越来越广,网络新媒体内在的伦理本性所呈现的"双刃剑"效应也越加凸显,已严重威胁社会稳定,影响社会正常发展.只有加强网络新媒体技术的伦理构建,寻求并完善网络新媒体技术伦理的解决之道,才能使网络新媒体及社会得以和谐、健康、有序的发展.参9.     

生态危机的社会伦理根源

从人与自然的关系实际上是人与人之间的利益关系的论点出发,揭示了生态危机发生实质是人类为了获取自身利益的最大化,对自然资源无止境的索取和争夺而导致的;论证了生态危机发生的社会伦理根源是技术理性的扩张导致科学技术的异化、消费主义的盛行加重了对自然的消耗与污染、功利主义的漫延导致代际自然资源分配不公;提出了要缓解人与自然日趋紧张的关系,解决生态危机,不仅要依靠科技、经济手段,最根本的还是要从改变人们的社会伦理观出发,用价值理性自觉地调适技术理性的非理性倾向、改变物质主义的生活方式、摒弃发展理念的功利主义,从而调节好人与人之间的利益冲突,处理好人与自然的"物质变换"关系。     

行政权力控制经济的道德沉思

行政权力控制经济对我国社会经济的发展所产生的阻碍不仅引起了党政、司法、企业等部门的高度关注,而且也引发了对这个问题的伦理大思索.行政权力的滥用有体制上的因素,现实中更是一个伦理道德问题,分析它严重的道德危害,从道德建设的角度阐述了如何控制行政权力控制经济的现象.参6.     

火地岛森林管理:是对环境的又一个威胁还是可持续发展的一个机会?

为这片世界最南端的森林提出的一个主要森林管理和家具木材生产方案的可能影响 ,已经引起广泛关注 .对这些原始森林的未来所给予的注意 ,突出说明了环境保护 /生物多样性保护与经济效益之间的冲突 .火地岛的公共当局和居民处在一个能指定他们合意的生活方式与环境质量的地位 ,而且能参与旨在以适合于其社会、经济和生态的条件和期望的方式确保可持续性的决策 .     

火地岛森林管理：是对环境的又一个威胁 还是可持续发展的一个机会?

为这片世界最南端的森林提出的一个主要森林管理和家具木材生产方案的可能影响,已经引起广泛关注.对这些原始森林的未来所给予的注意,突出说明了环境保护/生物多样性保护与经济效益之间的冲突.火地岛的公共当局和居民处在一个能指定他们合意的生活方式与环境质量的地位,而且能参与旨在以适合于其社会、经济和生态的条件和期望的方式确保可持续性的决策.     

基于复合生态系统理论的丘陵地区乡村景观规划

乡村是一定地域内覆盖了人与自然、人与社会关系的"自然-经济-社会"复合生态系统。城市化的快速发展对丘陵地区乡村景观产生了巨大的冲击,改变了其自然地形并对河流和水塘等天然水体产生了破坏,乡村旅游的泛滥导致丘陵地区乡村的农业文化割裂与景观特色丧失,现存一系列乡村问题的根源其实是乡村复合生态系统的失衡。以四川省简阳市三星镇双桂村为例,针对现状存在的问题,如村民日常生活与生产活动对环境造成污染、乡村劳动力流失严重、耕种效率低下、村庄生活设施落后、村民生活单调等,从景观规划设计的角度提出解决途径,具体包括:通过迁移部分居民点、增加垃圾收集处理站与分散式人工湿地以控制点源污染;生态式改造河流驳岸以提高河流水质与净水能力,提高环境效益;发展"林粮间作"、"水旱轮作"和"立体渔业"3种生态立体农业模式对丘陵地貌进行保护与利用,在降低化肥使用的同时提高资源利用效率和农业产出效率;开展农耕体验与农家乐等经营活动,提升乡村经济效益;增加滨河木栈道、观鸟亭与垂钓平台等滨水休闲设施,提升农村户外活动空间品质,改善村民生活,提高社会效益。通过上述手段既保留乡村的生态价值,又满足生产与生活需求,保证整个复合生态系统的稳定,实现乡村的和谐统一与可持续发展。     

水源地城镇的产业生态化建设--以苏州市相城区阳澄湖镇为例

以阳澄湖镇为实例,基于对阳澄湖镇社会经济发展与环境保护矛盾的分析,提出水源地城镇加快发展、解决"三农"问题与实现"两个率先"的生态建设方案,即在保护水环境的前提下沿产业生态化方向发展。具体有以下措施:建设以"水、绿"为主体的生态景观格局;实行轮休轮养、资源保护与增殖的生态养殖方式;发展生态种植业;恢复沿湖水生植被;实施农业化学品的减量化工程;对农业农村固体废弃物进行集中化处理和资源化利用;对城乡生活污水进行处理。     

生态文明建设的善治结构:三明治模型

在评析西方社会变革"三明治模型"的基础上,将其扩展应用于生态文明建设。借鉴西方社会变革的成功经验,基于我国实际构建生态文明建设的善治结构设计,构建了由生态政府、生态社会和生态公民协同至善的"三明治模型",并详细阐述了这一模型的动态演进过程和治理运行机制,为深化这一领域的研究提供了新视角和新思路。在生态文明建设的善治结构中,生态政府的重要职责是增强国家力量,生态企业发挥主责作用,生态公民的草根运动则是最广泛的基础。     

Ecological Ethics: Building a New Tool Kit for Ecologists and Biodiversity Managers

Abstract:  Ecological research and biodiversity management often raise ethical questions in areas that include responsibilities and duties to the scientific community, public welfare, research animals, species, and ecosystems. Answering these questions is challenging because ecologists and biodiversity managers do not have the equivalent of bioethics, an established field with a support network focused mainly on biomedicine, to guide them in making decisions. Environmental ethics provides some insight into environmental values and the duties these may impose on humans. But for the most part those in the field have not considered many of the common responsibilities and obligations that ecologists and managers have to the scientific profession or to public welfare. There is a need to bring ethicists, scientists, and biodiversity managers together in a collaborative effort to study and inform the methods of ethical analysis and problem solving in ecological research and biodiversity management. We present a series of cases that illustrate the kinds of ethical questions faced by researchers and biodiversity managers in practice. We argue for the creation of an extensive case database and a pluralistic and integrated ethical framework, one that draws from the theoretical (normative), research, animal, and environmental ethics traditions. These tools form the foundations of a new area of inquiry and practical ethical problem solving, that we call "ecological ethics."     

Colony fission affects kinship in a social insect

Establishment of new groups is an important step in the life history of a social species. Fissioning is a common mode not only in group proliferation, for instance, as a regular part of the life cycle in the honey bee, but also when multiple females reproduce in the same group, as in multiple-queen ant societies. We studied the genetic consequences of fissioning in the ant Proformica longiseta, based on DNA microsatellites. In P. longiseta, new nests arise by fissioning from the old ones when they grow large, and the daughter nests consist of workers and queens or queen pupae but never both. Our results show that fissioning is not entirely random with respect to kinship. Workers tend to segregate along kin lines, but only when the initial relatedness in the parental nests is low. Workers in a daughter nest also tend to be associated with closely related adult queens, whereas such an association is not detected between workers and queen pupae. Most queens and workers are carried to the daughter nest by a specialized group of transporting workers, suggesting active kin discrimination by them. Fissioning pattern in P. longiseta is different from that found in other social insects with regular fission (e.g., the honey bee, swarm-founding wasps), where no fissioning along kin lines has been found. It does, however, resemble fissioning in another group of social animals: primates.     

Reputation is valuable within and outside one’s own social group

To find conditions under which humans cooperate within groups of unrelated individuals has been of major interest in the behavioral sciences. The experimental paradigm for studying potential cooperation in social dilemmas is the public goods game. Here humans regularly fail to sustain a public resource cooperatively. However, the need to maintain good reputation for other social interactions, such as indirect reciprocity, has been identified as an effective mechanism to sustain cooperation in public goods situations. As a side effect of building a good reputation through cooperative actions, an individual provides direct benefits to members of his/her own social group. These benefits could be an incentive to reward a good reputation of group members. Here we show experimentally that building a good reputation through cooperative behavior in a public goods situation is rewarded in future social interactions, not only within ones own social group but also, at a similar level, in other social groups: humans regard cooperative behavior of others as an honest signal irrespective of past direct personal benefits. Reputation gained within as well as outside ones own social group can be a driving force for selfish individuals to cooperate in public goods situations, and thereby sustain any public resource.Communicated by T. Czeschlik     

Income inequality and willingness to pay for environmental public goods

We study how the distribution of income among members of society, and income inequality in particular, affects social willingness to pay (WTP) for environmental public goods. We find that social WTP for environmental goods decreases (increases) with income inequality if and only if environmental goods and manufactured goods are substitutes (complements). We derive adjustment factors for benefit transfer to control for differences in income distributions between a study site and a policy site. For illustration, we quantify how social WTP for environmental public goods depends on the respective income distributions for empirical case studies in Sweden and the World at large. We find that the adjustment for income inequality can be substantial.     

Food nanotechnologies and policy challenges

Over the last twenty years, nanotechnology has slowly entered the agrifood sector. Meanwhile, testimonies of possible risks associated with the new nanomaterials were collected. This article investigates the reasons for the delay in regulatory intervention with respect to nanotechnology in the agrifood sector. Findings show that the unregulated introduction of nanomaterials into the food system is the result of the current neoliberal food policy, and the power struggles that govern the economic, social and political dynamics of the global supply chain. It is therefore necessary to put at the center of the regulatory debate the question concerning technology. Specifically, how technology influences power relationships within society should be studied. In other words, attention should be shifted from efficiency issues to power issues. New technologies should be assessed from a political perspective rather than an economic or ethical perspective.     

Large carnivore hunting and the social license to hunt

The social license to operate framework considers how society grants or withholds informal permission for resource extractors to exploit publicly owned resources. We developed a modified model, which we refer to as the social license to hunt (SLH). In it we similarly consider hunters as operators, given that wildlife are legally considered public resources in North America and Europe. We applied the SLH model to examine the controversial hunting of large carnivores, which are frequently killed for trophies. Killing for trophies is widespread, but undertaken by a minority of hunters, and can pose threats to the SLH for trophy-seeking carnivore hunters and potentially beyond. Societal opposition to large carnivore hunting relates not only to conservation concerns but also to misalignment between killing for trophies and dominant public values and attitudes concerning the treatment of animals. We summarized cases related to the killing of grizzly bears (Ursus arctos), wolves (Canis lupus), and other large carnivores in Canada, the United States, and Europe to illustrate how opposition to large carnivore hunting, now expressed primarily on social media, can exert rapid and significant pressure on policy makers and politicians. Evidence of the potential for transformative change to wildlife management and conservation includes proposed and realized changes to legislation, business practice, and wildlife policy, including the banning of some large carnivore hunts. Given that policy is ultimately shaped by societal values and attitudes, research gaps include developing increased insight into public support of various hunting policies beyond that derived from monitoring of social media and public polling. Informed by increased evidence, the SLH model can provide a conceptual foundation for predicting the likelihood of transient versus enduring changes to wildlife conservation policy and practice for a wide variety of taxa and contexts.     

宁波市公众环境意识调查与分析

公众环境意识是一个国家和民族文明程度的重要标志,它从各个方面反映出所调查地区的环境现状、公众对环境问题的认知、环保素质和环保行为,能够为政府的宏观决策提供依据。文章在数据分析的基础上,阐述了宁波市公众在地区环境问题、公民环境责任、环保支付意愿、绿色消费和固体废物收集处理等方面的调查结果,并给出了结论和建议。     

Environmental public health tracking: piloting methods for surveillance of environmentally related diseases in England and Wales

An effective environmental public health tracking system integrates data and intelligence on environmental hazards, exposures, and health outcomes to focus interventions on reducing the impact of environmental contamination on public health. Most work in this area in the UK has focused on assessing data on hazards that are relatively easy to obtain. However, most hazards will present no actual risk and information on exposure is required to make an effective risk assessment. Obtaining exposure data is technically challenging, expensive, and potentially raises ethical concerns. Consequently, the Health Protection Agency is exploring methods for targeting geographical zones for efficient detailed environmental assessment (including exposure assessment). This paper describes and assesses three methods (indirect standardization, statistical process control (SPC) and kernel density contouring) for the surveillance of potentially environmentally related diseases for this purpose. While the evaluation demonstrates the utility of the three methods, particularly SPC, the comparison was limited due to ethical approval issues.