Conservation, ecological justice and harm to nature - Environmental Harm: An Eco-justice Perspective - page 71

Parallel developments in the legal field complement calls for ecocide
to be recognised as a crime. For example, the recent Manual on Human
Rights and the Environment produced by the Council of Europe (2012)
provides a platform for the exercise of both procedural and substantive
rights in regard to the environment. Worldwide, public trust and public
interest law have been used to establish future generations as victims
of environmental crime with the victims including human as well as
the environment and nonhuman biota, for which surrogate victims
(such as parents or NGOs) have provided representation (Preston, 2011;
Mehta, 2009). These developments are challenging many longstanding
assumptions about the nature-human relationship.
However, within the broad ecological justice approach there may be
philosophical differences in terms of the value put on the interests of
humans and on the environment itself. Humans may be placed on the
same footing as other species, and cherished and valued as part of the
ecological whole. In some cases, however, the fate of specific individuals
is less important than the prospects facing the biosphere generally. For
some exponents of a deep green or biocentric perspective, for example,
AIDS or famine may be seen as nature's way of controlling population
growth and thus as good for the planet as a whole (see White, 1994).
If radical environmentalists were to invent a disease to bring
human population back to sanity, it would probably be
something like AIDS…the possible benefits of this to the
environment are staggering…just as the Plague contributed
to the demise of feudalism, AIDS has the potential to end
industrialism. (Earth First! journal, quoted in Dobson,
1990: 64)
From this vantage point, an act or omission is not harmful if it ultimately
benefits the biosphere generally. This fundamentally misanthropic
(anti-human) perspective frequently sees humans as the problem, and
therefore it is humans who need to be controlled or in some cases
even eradicated. Related to this attitude, members of the environmental
justice movements are critical of some mainstream environmental
groups precisely because of their 'focus on the fate of “nature” rather
than humans' (Harvey, 1996: 386; see also Sandler and Pezzullo, 2007).
To put it differently, taking action on environmental issues involves
choices and priorities. Many communities who suffer from the 'hard
end' of environmental harm feel that their well-being ought to take
priority over particular natural environments or specific plants and
animals as such.