Land Ethic Research Articles

Thinking like a mountain: A land ethical approach to healthcare resource.

Human activity is now having a defining influence on global systems. The Anthropocene epoch requires revisiting our ethical presuppositions to understand our relationship to the earth's life support systems. The Land Ethic of Aldo Leopold proposes an ethic that is diachronic, holistic, and biocentric, in contrast to the synchronic, individualist, and anthropocentric axioms of mainstream bioethics. I argue that these features of the Land Ethic make it more suitable to engage with the ethics of healthcare resource allocation in the Anthropocene; that understanding sustainability in a Land Ethical fashion requires that we view it as placing a side-constraint on all permissible healthcare resource use such that this use remains within planetary boundaries; and outline how this might re-shape debates around healthcare resource allocation.

Knowledges “In the Land”? A Process Phenomenological Reading of Deborah Bird Rose’s “Exploring an Aboriginal Land Ethic”

Abstract Inspired by a (process) phenomenological reading of Deborah Bird Rose’s 1988 article “Exploring an Aboriginal Land Ethic,” and drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s claim that knowledge is “in the hands,” this paper explores the intersection of Merleau-Ponty’s embodied, process phenomenology and Indigenous Australian place-based ontologies. Rather than the moral demands or consequences of adopting an “Aboriginal land ethic,” the present paper is concerned with the ontological and epistemological – or, broadly speaking, the phenomenological – underpinnings of such a land ethic. Contra Rose’s claim that, in the Western tradition, we “have very little idea of what a non-human-centred cosmos looks like and how it can be thought to work,” it is argued that Merleau-Ponty’s fundamental thought provides us with a viable pathway towards a non-human-centred phenomenological ontology that, somewhat paradoxically, is nevertheless grounded in the lived body. It is suggested that such an approach is compatible with, and complimentary to, the traditional Indigenous Australian ways of being and knowing outlined by Rose.

Environmental Ethics and the Philosophy of Sustainability

Purpose: The general objective of this study was to explore environmental ethics and the philosophy of sustainability. Methodology: The study adopted a desktop research methodology. Desk research refers to secondary data or that which can be collected without fieldwork. Desk research is basically involved in collecting data from existing resources hence it is often considered a low cost technique as compared to field research, as the main cost is involved in executive’s time, telephone charges and directories. Thus, the study relied on already published studies, reports and statistics. This secondary data was easily accessed through the online journals and library. Findings: The findings reveal that there exists a contextual and methodological gap relating to environmental ethics and the philosophy of sustainability. Preliminary empirical review revealed that integrating ethical principles into sustainability practices was essential for achieving long-term ecological balance and social justice. It found that environmental ethics provided a necessary moral framework, encouraging proactive environmental protection and fostering sustainable behaviors through education. However, the study also identified gaps in current practices, noting that many policies still prioritized short-term economic gains over ecological health. The research emphasized the importance of bridging these gaps by developing comprehensive frameworks that blend ethical principles with practical sustainability strategies, ultimately underscoring the critical role of environmental ethics in realizing the philosophy of sustainability. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The Deep Ecology Theory, The Land Ethic and Social Ecology Theory may be used to anchor future studies on the philosophy of sustainability. The study highlighted the need for an integrated theoretical model combining ethical principles with sustainability practices, and suggested incorporating diverse philosophical perspectives. It emphasized embedding environmental ethics into organizational cultures and education curricula to foster sustainable practices and behaviors. The study also advocated for integrating ethical dimensions into policy frameworks and adopting the precautionary principle in environmental policymaking to safeguard against unforeseen impacts. These recommendations aimed to advance theoretical discourse, guide practical sustainability efforts, and inform robust, equitable environmental policies.

Thinking like an economist while reading the land: using reading quizzes to show environmental studies and sciences intersecting with economics in Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac

AbstractReading quizzes for Aldo Leopold’s classic, A Sand County Almanac, that I give students in my upper-level environmental economics class provide an excellent opportunity to explore the intersection of what some consider signature pedagogies of environmental studies and sciences and economics. This paper gives a pedagogical rationale for this strategy while providing details on one of these reading quizzes. Because Leopold links his push for a land ethic and his passion for the outdoors with beautiful writing while incorporating lots of economics at the same time, reading the land and thinking like an economist—two signature pedagogies—can uniquely blend together. Reading quizzes can be useful for faculty teaching any class in the environmental studies and sciences arena and provide students with an incentive to read and think critically while also sparking excellent classroom discussion. In getting students to think about economic concepts as they are brought up by Leopold, they learn the process of thinking like an economist while reading the land. Seeing topics such as valuation, externalities, and more in Leopold’s writing gives students a perspective on economics that is likely to generate deeper interdisciplinary thinking on environmental matters. And with deeper thinking comes better understanding as our students prepare to design policies to solve our toughest future environmental problems. Faculty with an eye toward introducing economic concepts into an environmental class and a willingness to use Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac to accomplish this will find the net profit to be significant.

The Impacts of Climate Change on Tourism Operators, Trail Experience and Land Use Management in British Columbia’s Backcountry

Climate change, natural resource industries, and an expanding outdoor tourism sector have recently increased access to sensitive backcountry environments in Western Canada. Trail managers are struggling to manage trail conditions with the mounting effects of smoke, dust, fire, flood, area closures, and beetle outbreaks in their regions. Outdoor recreation trail managers are linking these events and are thinking critically about the history and interconnectedness of land use management decisions in the province of British Columbia (BC). As the effects of climate change continue to challenge both trail managers and sport recreationists, guides and trail associations have been identified as key education facilitators in the development and dissemination of environmental consciousness. Guided by a community-based participatory research approach, this study used personal interviews with trail managers across the province to highlight how a connection with local ecosystems can develop a more robust land ethic for recreational trail user communities in BC.

Innovative Property for Innovative Land Policy: Four Normative Principles

Innovative land policy does not yield to the pressure of short-term capital exploitation. Rather, innovative land policy establishes a fair balance between the interests of landowners and the public interest. As a keystone of land policy, property – particularly if open to innovation – plays a vital role in achieving this balance. This commentary explains four normative principles that help design innovative property. Since the four principles derive from long-standing ideas about property in land, the commentary uses a distinctly conservative approach. This approach, however, is quite innovative in the face of the reductionist view of property as a right that only serves the purposes of its owners. According to the first principle, innovative land policy must pay attention to the nexus between private and common property. Under the second principle, property in land must account for the government’s positive duty to provide for adequate land uses for all. The third principle distinguishes between property rights of natural and legal persons: personal property guarantees individual liberty, but corporate property is a social function, not a right at all. The fourth principle reminds of the inseparable bond between property in land and land ethics.

The Coevolution of Descriptive and Evaluative Beliefs in Aldo Leopold’s Thinking

Abstract The founder of conservation biology, Michael Soulé, set out a vision for conservation biology that was explicitly value-laden, analogous to cancer-biology. In so doing, he drew on the writings of Aldo Leopold, known among philosophers primarily for his land ethic. Employing and extending the work of Anderson (2004) and Clough (2020), I argue that the Leopoldian views that Soulé was drawing on were the product of the coevolution of descriptive and evaluative beliefs over the course of Leopold’s life, grounded in his experiences, resulting in tested and reliable—albeit defeasible—values underlying conservation biology.

Exploring Environmental Ethics: From Exclusion of More-than-Human Beings Towards a New Materialist Paradigm

Environmental ethics deals with discussing the ethical framework of environmental values, their organization and regulation, and their ethical premises. One of the main cul-de-sacs that environmental ethics has is its anthropocentrism that can be observed through its diverse ethical approaches—even ecocentric ones, developed as non-anthropocentric egalitarian alternatives. This article aims to question the exclusiveness of Anthropos, the practices, values, and discourses that determine the scope and course of environmental ethics, and the exclusion of nonhuman animals or more-than human beings from its focus. It first examines the main approaches in environmental ethics (land ethic, deep ecology, social ecology, and postmodern environmental ethics)—biocentric, ecocentric, anthropocentric, socialist, postmodern—and reveals that they are but limited to the human perspective, deeply rooted in human exceptionalism. All of these approaches provide us with a critical frame that still needs to be deconstructed so that they will not project an anthropocentric orientation. This article posits that the compass of environmental ethics, recently aligning itself to embrace the more-than-human world in its ecocentric attitude, still needs to be revisited for its discourses of exclusion. At this point, new materialism functions as a prolific theoretical site as it diminishes the classical boundaries between human and animal or subject and object that anthropocentric environmental ethics relies on. With such concepts as “agential realism” (Barad), “transcorporeal ethics” (Alaimo), “vibrant matter” (Bennett), or “storied matter” (Oppermann and Iovino) the new materialist view of the human and the nonhuman evolves to end set dualities in the discourses of environmental ethics. This article concludes that the new materialist theory destabilizes any anthropocentric position in environmental ethics and includes more-than-human beings in its ethical focus, discarding any dualities that serve anthropocentrism or human exceptionalism.

Forest as a Therapeutic Space in Sarah Orne Jewett’s “A White Heron”: A Deep Ecological Perspective

This paper seeks to analyze as to how forest has healing power in Jewett’s “A White Heron” that helps the protagonist, Sylvia, take a positive decision— not to show the nest of the white heron to the hunter, who otherwise would love to collect the birds and stuff them. This paper argues that earlier decision of Sylvia to help the hunter out by showing the nest of the beautiful white heron changes when her greater sense of involvement to the forest through the cow touches her consciousness. The root cause of this change is the therapeutic impact of the forest (Nature) to the protagonist. This study takes recourse to ecocritical stance, more particularly Barry Commoner’s four laws of ecology and Aldo Leopold’s ideas of “land community”, and “land ethics” to analyze the mentioned text as to how it advocates for biocentric world view that places emphasis on equal status of each and every organisms on this planet and hence, they must be equally treated and protected to maintain the stronghold of human-nature relationship. Aside from that, executing the idea of deep ecology, more specifically advanced by Fritjof Capra, which gives the utmost importance to the idea that humans are a part of nature but not apart and everything in the nature is interdependent and interconnected for the healthy operation of the whole system, this paper also argues that the mentioned story is a faithful literary text, which, by exhibiting the pitfalls of citified life, appeals the entire humanity to safeguard the nature to get its therapeutic effect for healthy and holistic life.

Dark Laboratories of the Soil

Abstract Faced with the ecological crisis, it is necessary to elaborate a cosmopolitical stance. Such a cosmopolitics indicates the degree to which traditionally political categories are in fact products of the ecological landscape. Bruno Latour helps us theorize just such a cosmopolitics. I argue that Latour allows us privileged access to the diverse agencies composing our ecological condition. Latour is primarily an ecological thinker. I explore Latour's own formulations of a cosmopolitics and points of contact between Latour and the broader tradition of political ecology as exemplified by the American environmental theorist Aldo Leopold. I claim that Latour's cosmopolitical program benefits from being placed into dialogue with classic ecological formulations such as Leopold's conception of the land community and its various normative implications—his so-called “land ethic.”

New Age and Environment: New Forms of Spirituality and Lifestyle in the Context of Secularization?

From the middle of the 20th century, the rise of anthropocentric beliefs partly inherited from the Abrahamic religions led to a change in mentality about ecosystems. The measurable signs of environmental exploitation and destruction and their consequences for human health, the shift to post-materialist values, and the growth of ethical philosophies (Land ethics, the Gaia Hypothesis, and Deep Ecology) were predictors of global ecological awareness. Progressively, human cultures (which are inseparable from religion) have become a priority for understanding relationships with the natural world. Alongside beliefs, individual subjectivities, influenced by the New Age, also positively affect sustainable values and practices. One of the community manifestations that demonstrate this is the ecovillage phenomenon. The sociological study of these new social realities influenced by the New Age is a relevant field of research in the frame of secularization or the criticism of this paradigm.

The Precious Knowledge of Oral Cultures: Converging Analyses of Italian Peasantry and the Haudenosaunee First Nations People. A Case Study

This case study documents the ancestral oral knowledge of Italian peasant culture and the Haudenosaunee people in informing an ecologically sustainable land ethic. In preserving the knowledge of their oral traditions and comparing the two oral cultures, humanity gains a deeper understanding into the insight and wisdom of oral stories. These two oral cultures point towards a sustainable and interdependent way of knowing and living on the land that will ensure a healthy and nurturing Earth for future generations.

The Trouble of Rocks and Waters

This article considers the possibility of constructing an authentic environmental ethic from Buddhist sources. It first outlines the major critiques of historical Buddhist approaches to the natural world and parses some of the philological and linguistic barriers to such a construction. It then considers some of the recent philosophical critiques of such a project and reviews the major points of tension between the Buddhist philosophical tradition and the kinds of environmental ethics found in the land ethic and deep ecology. Ultimately, this article asserts that such tension is relieved if we begin from Buddhist philosophical principles and construct an environmental ethic from the ground up. It argues a Buddhist environmental ethic emerges from the combination of the goal of liberating all sentient beings from duḥkha, an understanding of duḥkha as dependently arising, and a novel recognition of the environment as a major cause of this duḥkha.

Scott’s Reparative Land Ethic

A review essay discussing Susan Oliver's "important and convincing" book Walter Scott and the Greening of Scotland: Emergent Ecologies of a Nation (Cambridge University Press, 2021), noting Scott's land ethic and active role in managing his estate at Abbotsford and in afforestation, and suggesting that Oliver's book presents "a cumulative literary history of Scotland’s ecologies," so that Scott's poetry and novels "assume a new relevance for 21st century readers".

Association rule‐based multilevel regression pricing and artificial neural networks based land selling price prediction based on market value

SummaryIn Tamil Nadu, India, the guideline value (GV) of land for registration typically corresponds to the market price. After registration of land, Tamil Nadu's land registration office determines which areas have GVs that are lower or higher than the government‐fixed value, and depending on the area. Based on determination of price difference, each are GV is raised or lowered. In other countries expect India, different models, including the hedonic price model, quantile, and multivariate regression are used in the current GV fixation. These models have complex relationships with the many different variables that affect the GV of the land. In this article, novel optimized models for fixing land value according to utilitarian land ethics are proposed, including artificial neural networks (ANN) and associative rule‐based multilevel regression pricing models (AMLP). Increase the GV from the current GV in different percentages using the proposed ANN association rule mining method, and then optimize with spatial and infrastructure parameters from the GIS model builder for real‐time GV generation on the website. For real‐time GV generation on the website, the ANN model uses association rule mining and various neural network architectures. Buyer acceptance test validation of the live GV generation reveals 85% accuracy for the proposed model. The proposed models such as ANN and AMLP, prevent problems with GV fixation and boost revenue for the Indian government.

WILDLIFE HEALTH AND THE NORTH AMERICAN MODEL OF WILDLIFE CONSERVATION.

The management of wildlife in the United States and Canada, including the monitoring and maintenance of the health of wildlife populations and the ecosystems on which they depend, are conducted under a set of principles that aim for sustainable use. This set of principles is known as the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation (the Model), and it guides wildlife management and conservation decisions in both countries. The purpose of this perspective is to highlight how wildlife health is an important part of the Model and is vital to its future. It is proposed that wildlife health and the Model support one another. First, the history and fundamental ideas of a public trust that shaped the Model are reviewed. Next, wildlife health is defined and examples are offered that highlight how the Model supports wildlife health and how health affects the Model, as well as the limitations or threats if one moves away from the Model's defining principles. Finally, controversies surrounding the Model are reviewed and a perspective on the future is offered, based in large part on the work of Aldo Leopold. Leopold's thinking about health of the land and its organisms was well ahead of its time, and the scientific underpinnings of his writings in making the case for wildlife health and the Model are recounted. As a simple addendum to Leopold's land ethic, a plea for a health ethic is called for, whereby healthy wildlife and healthy landscapes are an obligation of the Model and modern society because health "tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community."41.

The Sustainability Framework in Anthropology: Applications to Accounting Ethics

The anthropology literature has examined sustainability within the broader context of ecological environment, and business and society. Anthropology has addressed how cultural and social forces have evolved in ecological and land ethics in accounting education and practice. The research contribution of anthropology in accounting education is that anthropology has been concerned for a long time with sustainability, ecology, environmental management, and conservation of natural resources. The purpose is to integrate ecological and land ethics to study the integration of sustainability into the accounting curriculum. When anthropology is integrated with accounting ethics, it broadens the attitudes of students and accounting professionals.

Akibat Hukum Penandatanganan Akta Jual Beli Tanah oleh Pejabat Pembuat Akta Tanah Sebelum Pembayaran Pajak Penghasilan

This study aimed to describe the code of ethics of Land Deed Making Officials in the process of making land sales and purchase deeds and to analyze the responsibilities and legal consequences of signature for the land sale and purchase deed by Land Deed Making Officials before the income tax payment was made. This study used a normative juridical method with a law approach and a conceptual approach. The code of ethics for the Land Deed Official in the process of making the land sale and purchase deed ensured that income tax was paid before the deed was made and signed. The responsibility of the Land Deed Making Official for the signature of the sale and purchase of land before the payment of income tax could be in the form of administrative sanctions, warnings, dismissal from office, or compensation for losses suffered by the parties concerned. In addition, the signature of the sale and purchase deed by the Land Deed Making Official before income tax payment might result invalid the land sale and purchase deed and registered land certificate being legally cancelable.

The Role of Agritourism Microentrepreneurship and Collective Action in Shaping Stewardship of Farmlands

Agritourism has been promoted primarily as a way to mitigate economic challenges faced by small-scale family farmers, but it may also foster land stewardship and promote agricultural literacy. There has been very little research on these relationships. We employed a primarily qualitative approach to assess how farmers’ involvement in agritourism microentrepreneurship shapes their stewardship of small-scale farmlands in southeastern North Carolina. Furthermore, we examined how farmers’ involvement in social structures, summarized in measures of collective action, supported or hindered this relationship. We find that reasons for participation in agritourism differed greatly between conventional farmers and alternative farmers. While both groups expressed a desire to reduce agricultural illiteracy among the public through agritourism, conventional farmers were motivated primarily by sociocultural reasons (e.g., community and youth development) while alternative farmers wanted to educate visitors about land stewardship and environmentally sustainable food production. Involvement in agritourism microentrepreneurship did not directly influence land stewardship by either group of farmers. Alternative farmers expressed that collective action was important in helping them promote land stewardship, but they felt restricted by sociocultural and geographic barriers preventing them from developing trust within their community. Conversely, conventional farmers reported deeper cultural roots in the community. Thus, participation in agritourism does not have a generalizable impact on farmers’ land stewardship; instead, agritourism becomes a stage through which farmers try to demonstrate their pre-existing land ethics.

‘The land question’: William Temple and environmentalism

This article explores Temple’s understanding of the ethics of land in Christianity and Social Order. It explores Temple’s engagement with contemporary issues of land in relation to profit, ownership and invasion. It is relevant to the contemporary invasion of Ukraine and environmentalism.