Preface

Abstract

Extract The field of environmental philosophy has its base primarily in North America, and many of its central topics and approaches clearly reflect a North American perspective on environmental issues, for instance regarding the importance of the concept of wilderness, a concept the relevance of which is not obvious in Old World contexts such as Europe. Since 2004, the International Society for Environmental Ethics and the International Association for Environmental Philosophy organize their annual joint meeting in Allenspark, USA, in the heart of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. The Rockies are a beautiful location for an environmental philosophy conference, but locations tend to direct the attention to certain issues while ignoring others. Therefore, in 2010 it was decided that henceforth, the meeting should be held biannually on alternating locations. The intended establishment of a European Network for Environmental Ethics in 2011 provided an excellent opportunity for us to volunteer and organize the 2011 joint meeting in The Netherlands. We hoped the conference would result in a stronger involvement of European environmental philosophers to the field. The central theme of the conference was “Old World and New World Perspectives on Environmental Philosophy.”