What is the future of ethics teaching in the environmental sciences

Abstract

The article begins with the interaction between scientific knowledge, environmentalism and society, demonstrating how, at the beginning of the environmental movement, the scientific arguments of ecological science served as ethical justification for reporting the causes of environmental degradation. Subsequently, the environmental sciences encompassed the knowledge of human, social, political and economic ecology in which the central question is not the pure denunciation, but the proposals of solutions to the environmental crisis. The environmental knowledge of human and social sciences lead to greater ethical implications because they underlie moral positions. Thus, a question arises: what is a suitable model of ethics for the environmental sciences? There are three models: weak anthropocentrism, mitigated biocentrism, and global biocentrism or ecocentrism. The last seems more consistent with ecology, because it puts the ethical emphasis on the preservation of interdependent sets of living beings. Bearing in mind the environmental science and the resulting model of ethics, what are the objectives of the teaching of ethics in the context of environmental science? Such teaching needs to include emotional and cognitive oriented goals because they are related both to the learning of skills to analyse different situations and to the awakening of ethical sensitivity to critically reflect upon them.