Public Visions of the Human/Nature Relationship and their Implications for Environmental Ethics

Abstract

A social scientific survey on visions of human/nature relationships in western Europe shows that the public clearly distinguishes not only between anthropocentrism and ecocentrism, but also between two nonanthropocentric types of thought, which may be called "partnership with nature" and "participation in nature." In addition, the respondents distinguish a form of human/nature relationship that is allied to traditional stewardship but has a more ecocentric content, labeled here as "guardianship of nature." Further analysis shows that the general public does not subscribe to an ethic of "mastery over nature." Instead, practically all respondents embrace the image of guardianship, while the more radical relationships of partnership and participation also received significant levels of adherence. The results imply that ethicists should no longer assume that the ethics of the public are merely anthropocentric. Finally, they call into question the idea of a single form of ecocentrism and favor a hermeneutic virtue ethics approach to the study of the interface between ethics and action.

Analysing stakeholders’ perceptions of wolf, lynx and fox in a Dutch riverine area

“…Apparently, respondents in general do not clearly see differences between these positions. Previous quantitative research also showed similarities in the adherence to the partner with nature and participant in nature relationship (De Groot et al 2011;Ganzevoort and Van den Born, 2014;Verbrugge et al 2013). In qualitative research, however, respondents do distinguish between partner and participant positions (Van den Born 2008).…”

Moral dimensions of human–wildlife conflict

“…In conservation morals include attitudes about right and wrong related to valued entities in nature. Assessing morals and analyzing their relationship with conservation-relevant behaviors may help predict reactions to policy alternatives (de Groot et al 2011;de Groot 2014). Better understanding and methodologically robust measurements of how morals affect behavior are needed to benefit HWC management and provide decision makers with additional tools for navigating tradeoffs in decision making (Vucetich & Nelson 2013;Sacchi et al 2014).…”

Dimensions of Landscape Stewardship across Europe: Landscape Values, Place Attachment, Awareness, and Personal Responsibility

“…However, in a previous study analysing the places where these same respondents located the greatest amount of landscape values [27], we found that cultural heritage played a very important role and that the percentage of respondents perceiving values connected to culture in their local landscape was slightly higher than those associated with nature (see García-Martín et al [27]). To us, this highlights the importance of landscape hermeneutics, which proposes that to ascribe meaning to cultural experiences this meaning has to be articulated [49,50]. There is a strong and commonly accepted narrative worldwide about the need to preserve nature and biodiversity from the threats that human action subjects them to-now heightened by the immediacy of climate change.…”