Editorial Introduction

In this introduction, the cases of India, South Africa, and Brazil are connected. The contributions from these countries, in different ways, discuss the dramatic moral impacts of government approaches to the pandemic. The three countries are part of the BRICS platform, in which Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa participate. With 40 percent of the world’s population, the BRICS platform concerns a substantial part of the world. The principles of the platform and its mutual “economic, political, cultural an environmental philosophy” are summarized by Marco Ricceri (2019). The members support the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS), and they will contribute to the quality of global development. At the 13th BRICS Summit in September 2021, the New Delhi Declaration was presented (BRICS 2021). This declaration conveys a thorough normative mission statement. It therefore renders an interesting common frame of reference from which to analyze and judge the contributions from the three countries, as well as from China and Russia.

Transdisciplinary Status of the Ecological Modernization Theory and Its Role in the Development of Environmental Paradigm

The article examines the specificity of transdisciplinary orientations in modern scientific knowledge and reveals the multidimensionality of transdisciplinarity as a phenomenon of post-nonclassical science. Since transdisciplinarity is largely formed as a response to the challenge of increasing complexity and uncertainty of the future transformations in the “nature – man – society” system, the most appropriate area of transdisciplinary research today is environmental knowledge. In the example of the Ecological Modernization Theory (EMT), we investigate the interdisciplinary structure and transdisciplinary status of contemporary social ecology. The aim of the article is to analyze the various modes of transdisciplinarity in the structure of the ecological modernization theory and to identify its role in the dynamics of modern environmentalism. The epistemological status of EMT is explicated through philosophical and methodological reflection on the alternative discourses of sustainability as well as by using the principles of a systematic approach, methods of comparative analysis and semantic interpretation. The idea of sustainable development and the values of environmentalism are considered important factors in the formation of concepts and categories of this theory, its initial postulates and principles. The article substantiates the synthetic character of this theory, which meets the requirements of the post-non-classical type of scientific rationality. A conclusion is substantiated that EMT can be classified as a post-normal science. As a result of the analysis, it is argued that environmental philosophy has a special understanding of the goals of social development, principles of justice, social harmony, and human well-being. The reinterpretation of these concepts is a basis for adoption of novel theoretical schemes and methodological orientations in the system of modern socio-environmental studies.

On the Formation of Environmental Normative Criteria: Bioethics as a Dead End

The need to reflect upon the environment and the creation of a concept of environmental philosophy resonated in the philosophical thinking of the 1980s and 1990s. It seems that the advent of national and international institutions, which were “given” the responsibility for environmental issues, the importance of creating environmental principles, and pursuing environmental goals, has seemingly dwindled. The relationship with the environment has turned into the relationship of a citizen to his or her country, and with the principles and standards taking the form of legal regulations, the issue quickly became a matter of abiding by the law. Whilst discussion on how the normative criteria are set continued, its focus shifted to the questions of how and why they should be gradually made stricter, factoring in the economic interests of enterprises, and the time needed for setting up the processes, and developing new technologies. Environmental philosophy gradually integrated into bioethics in a broader context. This paper discusses the question of whether the integration of the environmental philosophy of bioethics helped to better promote the idea of environmental responsibility and environmental ethics, or otherwise. The study aims to initiate a discussion on whether this was a step in the right direction, and to assess how effective it was in relation to the pursuit and formation of environmental criteria.

Distribution of Responsibility for Climate Change within the Milieu

This article approaches the challenges of the distribution of responsibility for climate change on a local level using the framework of the milieu. It suggests that the framework of the milieu, inspired by Japanese and cross-cultural environmental philosophy, provides pathways to address the four challenges of climate change (global dispersion, fragmentation of agency, institutional inadequacy, temporal delay). The framework of the milieu clarifies the interrelations between the individual, the community, and the local milieu and is open to a conservative view of human communities and an inclusive view of multispecies communities. On this basis, an account of individual responsibility that is anchored in the local milieu and includes a responsibility to collaborate across milieus is developed. It consists of a forward-looking responsibility that balances a degree of contributory responsibility for one’s imprints on the milieu with a degree of capacity-responsibility that varies regarding the individual’s knowledge and powers, and the acceptability of practices within the local milieu.

From the concept of Environmental Reason to a Global Ethics project

The contribution of the environmental philosophy to the XX and XXI centuries philosophy renovation and their capacity to be applied to all aspects of social life is the core of this essay. The history of philosophy on the West is focused on the human condition, the environmental philosophy drive its thought to a global view of biodiversity and geodiversity, enlarged by the concept of biosphere. The dominant perspective of the modern philosophy set the morale in the order of the rules and social conventions and leave the ethics on the field of personal experience. Analyzing the concept of Kantian reason, and its ethic’s corollaries, this essay propose develop them to a new concept, “Environmental Reason”. Conceptualized as a new categorical imperative to the men’s action, beyond the principle that prescribe that we must conform individual acts with a universal law, configuring the human conduct within the limits that safeguard the continuity of life, but also the intrinsic values of earth and its biodiversity and geodiversity. A new perspective ethics founded in the principles of the critique of anthropocentrism and the critique of ethnocentrism represent a new ontology, and a new epistemology, that could lead to a new ethics universal theory.