Buddhist Environmental Ethics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Kaza
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
Human History ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Current Thinking ◽  
Moral Dimensions ◽  
Ethical Response ◽  
Promising Avenue

Global pressures on human–environment systems are higher than ever before in human history, generating broad ethical engagement in many quarters. Citizen calls for moral response from world religious and political leaders have grown more urgent as pressures mount. Buddhist philosophy contains a wealth of insight and moral guidance regarding human–environment relations, offering a promising avenue for ethical response. This chapter reviews work to date in Buddhist environmental ethics, noting influences from and on Western ethics and areas of tension in current thinking. Arguments are made for complementary development of both individual virtue ethics and constructivist social ethics. Moral dimensions of consumerism and climate change are examined as case studies, drawing on Buddhist values such as non-harming, compassion, meditative awareness, and skilful means.

scholarly journals Elaborating a systems methodology for cascading climate change impacts and implications

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
NA Cradock-Henry ◽  
J Connolly ◽  
P Blackett ◽  
Judith Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Conceptual Development ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Expert Elicitation ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Visual Aids ◽  
Systems Methodology ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
New Research

New research is drawing attention to the potential for climate change to generate cascading impacts and implications across linked human-environment systems, requiring closer accounting of these interactions to anticipate the emergence of surprises and feedbacks. However, there is little practical guidance for those interested in characterising, identifying or assessing cascades, and few empirical examples. In this paper, we elaborate a systems-based methodology to identify and evaluate cascading climate change impacts and implications. We illustrate its application using the case of a participatory process with urban infrastructure managers, facing the legacy effects of damaging earthquakes and the prospect of future climate change. The results show the proposed approach and visualisation of cascades as causal diagrams provides a robust and flexible analytical framework. The use of systems thinking, visual aids, interactive discussion and expert elicitation generated valuable information about potential cascades, their interactions across domains of interest, and the implications for management. The process can provide a basis for further empirical application and advance methodological and conceptual development. Specifically, the systems methodology: • Identifies interdependencies and interconnections which may serve as transmission pathways for climate-related impacts; • Enhanced stakeholders’ understanding of multiple causes and effects of climate change; and • Produced a useful visual aid for stakeholders to explore cascading impacts and implications, and opportunities for intervention.

scholarly journals Dwelling, Dispossession, and “Slow Violence” in the Time of Climate Change The Representation of Refugees in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide

Il Tolomeo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Pilia
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human History ◽  
Amitav Ghosh ◽  
Deep Time ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Slow Violence ◽  
The Sundarbans

In this essay, I will analyse the crucial issues of dwelling and dispossession concerning refugees in the novel The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh. Political and environmental displacement is addressed within the framework of ‘slow violence’ as proposed by the landmark work of Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (2011). With the intention to define the Morichjhãpi refugees as a foreshadowing of the climate migrations involving the lives of the subalterns in South Asia, as argued by Brandon Jones (2018), the essay provides a historical background of the Morichjhãpi Massacre and studies the forced eviction narrated in the novel through the pages of Nirmal’s diary. Together with Kusum, the Marxist professor experiences the tragedy of the subalterns in the ever-changing ecosystem of the Sundarbans, bridging the gap between environmental and postcolonial categories while providing fruitful insights within the notions of human history and ecological deep time.

scholarly journals Integrating Strategic Environmental Assessment to Climate Change Adaption in the Chao Phraya River Basin: Case Study Flood Management Plans in Ayutthaya

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. p55
Author(s):  
Wilawan Boonsri Prathaithep ◽  
Vilas Nitivattananon
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
River Basin ◽  
Environmental Assessment ◽  
Flood Risk ◽  
Assessment Tool ◽  
Flood Management ◽  
Integrated System ◽  
Strategic Environmental Assessment ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

Traditionally, flood management has concentrated on providing protection against floods using technical measures, but there is currently an international shift towards a more integrated system of flood risk management, whereby flood risk is defined as the probability of flooding multiplied by the potential consequences. Climate change is a great challenge to sustainable development and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Thailand. The main purpose of this paper is to highlight the challenges associated with the current situation and projected impacts of climate change on the disasters and the human environment in Thailand, to review and explore the potential of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), and to propose SEA in making informed decisions relevant to the implementation of the new adaptation framework in a flood management plan. Thus, current measures on how Thailand is responding to the recent impacts of climate change in river basin planning are presented. It is imperative that an appropriate environmental assessment tool, such as SEA be employed in making rational decisions regarding adaptation frameworks. SEA offers a structured and proactive environmental tool for integrating of climate change adaption into formulating Policies, Plans, and Programs (PPPs) among relevant sectors.

scholarly journals The Ugency of the Greening of Ethics

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 592
Author(s):  
Anna Malavisi
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Environmental Policies ◽  
Environmental Philosophy ◽  
Effective Practice ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Environmental Situation ◽  
Salient Features

Richard Sylvan, a vanguard in the field of environmental philosophy published a book in 1994 with David Bennett titled The Greening of Ethics. Nearly twenty-five years later, where the environmental situation of our world is even more serious, and where some governments deny the existence and negative effects of human caused climate change, the greening of ethics is even more urgent. In this paper, I revisit Sylvan’s and Bennett’s work arguing that their approach to environmental ethics should be one that is advocated. I consider the most salient features of their approach, how this translates into practice but also offer an analysis as to why some governments have reached an impasse in regard to implementing environmental policies, and why environmental ethics still remains on the margins. In the final section of this paper, I discuss what an effective practice would mean.

scholarly journals Archaeoecology. The Application of Palaeoenvironmental Sciences for the Reconstruction of Human–Environment Interactions

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (18) ◽  
pp. 8782
Author(s):  
Jordi Revelles
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Sea Level Rise ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Societal Challenges ◽  
Exponential Increase

The study of human–environment interactions is one of the mainstream topics in archaeological research, with increasing interest in the context of current societal challenges concerning environmental shifts related to climate change, sea-level rise, extreme natural events and also the exponential increase in anthropisation in recent decades [...]

Edward Schillebeeckx's Creation Theology as a Resource for Ecological Ethics

Horizons ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-273
Author(s):  
Erica Olson-Bang
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Kingdom Of God ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Ecological Ethics ◽  
Global Community ◽  
Creation Theology ◽  
Present Practice ◽  
Fertile Soil ◽  
Ecological Ethic ◽  
Ethical Response

ABSTRACTAs the global community becomes increasingly attuned to the disastrous consequences of our long-standing environmental prodigality, Christians and Christian theologians are cultivating theological and ethical responses to the ecological crisis with the goal of fostering life-giving understandings of creation and ecophilic lifestyles. While many theologians and ethicists have heeded this call to read the signs of the environmental times, Schillebeeckx's creation theology remains an underutilized resource for developing an ethical response to this contemporary crisis. This article seeks to offer Schillebeeckx's theology of creation as fertile soil for nurturing an ecological ethic. This article highlights Schillebeeckx's growing ecological concerns, illustrates the connection between Schillebeeckx's theology of creation and his ecological consciousness, and transposes Schillebeeckx's emerging ecological themes into the register of environmental ethics. This ecological ethics emphasizes co-creativity with God in creation, ecological asceticism, following Christ's creational praxis, and actualizing the present practice of the coming kingdom of God.

The Green New Deal, Subsidiarity, and Local Action

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-80
Author(s):  
Christopher Rice ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Social Ethics ◽  
Local Action ◽  
Address Climate Change ◽  
Ethical Foundation ◽  
Common Criticism

A common criticism of the Green New Deal proposal to address climate change is that it would centralize too much power at the level of the federal government. However, the Green New Deal can avoid this by centering local action and decision-making in keeping with the principle of subsidiarity from Catholic social ethics. This principle holds that higher levels of society should not override the initiative of lower levels of society but should instead coordinate and support their work whenever possible. A focus on subsidiarity is already present in the framing of the Green New Deal proposal and provides a sound ethical foundation for its development and implementation.

Unchecked Climate Change and Mass Migration

2018 ◽  
pp. 43-59
Author(s):  
Fonna Forman ◽  
Veerabhadran Ramanathan
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Heat Waves ◽  
Probabilistic Approach ◽  
Climate Feedbacks ◽  
Central Values ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Low Probability ◽  
Ethical Response ◽  
Causal Complexity

With unchecked emissions of pollutants, global warming is projected to increase to 1.50C within 15 years; to 20C within 35 years and 40C by 2100. These projections are central values with a small (<5%) probability that warming by 2100 can exceed 60C with potentially catastrophic impacts on every human being, living and yet unborn. Climate is already changing in perceptible ways through floods, droughts, wildfires, heat waves and sea level rise, displacing communities and catalyzing migration. Climate migration describes the voluntary and forced movement of people within and across habitats due to changes in climate. While estimates vary from 25 million to as many as one billion climate change migrants by 2050, achieving reliable quantitative estimates of future climate migration faces forbidding obstacles due to: 1) a wide range of projected warming due to uncertainties in climate feedbacks; 2) the lack of a settled definition for climate migration; and 3) the causal complexity of migration due to variability in non-environmental factors such as bioregion, culture, economics, politics and individual factors. But waiting for reliable estimates this creates unacceptable ethical risks. Therefore, we advocate a probabilistic approach to climate migration that accounts for both central and low probability warming projections as the only ethical response to the unfolding crisis. We conclude that in the absence of drastic mitigation actions, climate change-induced mass migration can become a major threat during the latter half of this century.

scholarly journals Late Holocene droughts and cave ice harvesting by Ancestral Puebloans

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bogdan P. Onac ◽  
Steven M. Baumann ◽  
Dylan S. Parmenter ◽  
Eric Weaver ◽  
Tiberiu B. Sava
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
New Mexico ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Water Availability ◽  
Late Holocene ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Climate Conditions ◽  
Ancestral Puebloan ◽  
Ancestral Puebloans ◽  
Marginal Environment

AbstractWater availability for Native Americans in the southwestern United States during periods of prolonged droughts is poorly understood as regional hydroclimate records are scant or contradicting. Here, we show that radiocarbon-dated charcoal recovered from an ice deposit accumulated in Cave 29, western New Mexico, provide unambiguous evidence for five drought events that impacted the Ancestral Puebloan society between ~ AD 150 and 950. The presence of abundant charred material in this cave indicates that they periodically obtained drinking water by using fire to melt cave ice, and sheds light on one of many human–environment interactions in the Southwest in a context when climate change forced growing Ancestral Puebloan populations to exploit water resources in unexpected locations. The melting of cave ice under current climate conditions is both uncovering and threatening a fragile source of paleoenvironmental and archaeological evidence of human adaptations to a seemingly marginal environment.

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