Environmental ethics, animal rights and the law

Abstract

Introduction This chapter, which is closely related to the previous one, examines the complex issue of animal rights, particularly in connection with whaling. It has been established in the previous chapter that certain States claim the right to cultural diversity, which includes taking whales. The question may be posed how this claim can be reconciled with the rights of animals (including whales). The animal rights theory, which is diversified, is part and parcel of ethics and philosophy. There are several very different schools of thought regarding the rights of animals. We can ask the following question: can whaling be banned on the basis of the animal rights approach, or does the theory of cultural diversity of nations, which identifies itself with the hunting of whales, override concerns for the rights of animals? There is not one simple answer to this very complex problem; and this chapter does not purport to give one. It analyses the issue of the rights of animals and their importance in relation to whaling. Cultural diversity and the rights of animals command a very individual approach, as they concern sensitive questions of which each and every person has a very different understanding. Animal rights: outline of general issues This section concerns the position of animals in overall nature from the standpoint of ethics and philosophy. For, as was stated by Coyle and Morrow, ‘[e]nvironmental law without a sense of philosophy and history is a pale and bloodless creature’. The discussion in the field of philosophy regarding the relationship between humans and nature, be it the natural habitat or other animals, is as old as philosophical inquiry itself. This relationship has puzzled all manner of thinkers, including lawyers, philosophers and anthropologists. Levi-Strauss noted that animals are good to think with, not just good to eat. There are different approaches to assessing what the value of nature might be, including doing this on a utilitarian basis, thus finding that it has essentially an instrumental value, or on a more discursive basis with a view to finding some inherent or intrinsic value. The first of these approaches is based on the material purpose; it serves the use to which it may be put. Inherent value, on the other hand, is premised upon the value that each entity possesses of itself, not as an object of utility.