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I agree that we need to look again at what is valuable in the natural world
and at why nature should be valued by us. However, I also agree with
Norton that the abstract search for intrinsic value is unlikely to advance the
development of an effective ethical position for environmental protection
based on which decisions might be made and laws devised, because the
arguments advanced are too remote from the way in which people make
value judgments.
109
A better approach, and one that would be more likely
to result in an ethic to which people can relate, would be to revisit and
challenge long-standing perspectives of humanity as having the right to
dominate nature and the knowledge to do so by reference to our new
appreciation of our dependence on natural systems, the signi
cant limits
on our understanding of them and the ease with which our actions can
cause them to lose what is important for their functionality. I argue that a
proper comprehension of our relationship with ecosystems would provide
a basis from which we can appreciate their value to us and develop ethical
positions and principles for guiding our conduct in relation to them.
Indeed, it would be dif
cult for us to value ecosystems intrinsically because
the way in which we attach value to them is inevitably connected with their
ability to provide a support mechanism for our own existence.
Adif
culty with seeking to derive ethical theories from the perception
of nature in ecological science is the maxim that there is no logical con-
nection between what is and what we ought to do.
110
The fact that scientists
consider the preservation of an ecosystem
s resilience to be desirable does
not necessarily mean that we ought, from an ethical perspective, to act in
ways that may preserve it. However, it is also recognised by environmental
ethicists that dogmatic adherence to a divide between facts and determining
what is the right way to behave is not practicable if ethical guidance of
any value for reducing our negative ecological impacts is to be produced.
111
Curry argues that the goal of environmental ethicists should not be to
produce a theory whose rationality is unassailable, but to
'
articulate a rea-
sonably coherent, consistent and clear set of ethical principles, informed by
andconveyingecocentricvalues,whichwilllendthemselvestoincorporation
'
109
B. G. Norton,
in
D. G. Dallmeyer (ed.) Values at Sea: Ethics for the Marine Environment (Athens, GA:
The University of Georgia Press, 2003), pp. 38
'
Marine Environmental Ethics: Where We Might Start
'
9. See also B. G. Norton, Sustainability:
A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2005), pp. 161
-
-
2, 180
-
90 for a fuller critique of intrinsic value theory.
110
Alder and Wilkinson,
'
Environmental Law and Ethics
'
, pp. 46
-
7; Curry,
'
Ecological
Ethics
'
,pp.31
-
2.
111
Curry,
'
Ecological Ethics
'
,p.96.
