A Workshop on Linking Ecology and Ethics for a Changing World: Values, Philosophy, and Action - May, 2011, Millbrook, NY

Cary Institute Of Ecosystem Studies, Inc., Millbrook NY

Investigators

Abstract

The proposed workshop focuses the attention of leading environmental philosophers and ethicists on the gap between contemporary ecological science and the most up-to-date understanding of ethics. The contemporary science of ecology has made great strides in long-term understanding of wild, managed, and settled ecosystems, increasingly drawing upon recent connections with social sciences and economics. However, as the need for environmental decision making becomes more pervasive as a result of global changes in climate, urbanization, conversion of wild ecosystems, pollution, and human migrations, the frontier that ecology might share with a rigorous understanding of ethics is undeveloped. This Cary Conference is a pioneering interdisciplinary meeting to help leading philosophers and ethicists on the one hand, and leading ecological scientists on the other, to develop new understanding at the interface between their disciplines. A new interdisciplinary research agenda will be produced as a result of the deliberations at this workshop. Discussions will explore how to exploit the research agenda for ecological ethics in the context of the long-term ecological research network and other research and management platforms in the United States, as well as in the large and growing international arena of socio-ecological long-term research. Environmental decision making draws upon and is evaluated in the context of human values. Consequently, it is a process that has ethical implications. However, it is the scientific, social, political, and economic dimensions of environmental decision making that are most often employed in practice. Pairing an ethical dimension with the scientific foundations of environmental decision making can clarify the nature of the process and make it more effective in situations where equity of the process and outcomes must be ensured. The proposed workshop will explore how to incorporate the emerging understanding of ecological ethics advanced by the dialog of the workshop in educational programs at secondary, undergraduate, and graduate levels. It will also examine the ways in which the frontier between ecology and ethics can improve the application of research results obtained from existing and planned long-term social-ecological research projects. A wide diversity of participants including undergraduates, graduate students and beginning faculty from the U.S. and Chile will participate.