Endangered Ecosystems: Rights of Nature Protection for the Benefit of Both Ecosystems and Individual Species

Environmental justice advocates have for decades stressed the need for a more holistic approach to ecological system (ecosystem) protection, predicated on more respect for everything from non-human animals to bodies of water. For the purposes of this study, ecosystems are defined as follows: An ecosystem is comprised of all the non-living elements and living species in a specific local environment. Components of most ecosystems include water, air, sunlight, soil, plants, microorganisms, insects and animals. Ecosystems may be terrestrial - that is, on land - or aquatic (Harris, 2018, para 1). This kind of justice advocacy follows the thinking of philosophers such as Aldo Leopold with his land ethic approach giving humans the moral responsibility to protect the land, for the land's sake, and with a focus on healthy, self-renewing ecosystems (Leopold, 1949). While this 70-year old line of reasoning may still represent a outlying concept to some, the current state of climate change and the continued human-caused environmental degradation of ecosystems worldwide provides abundant evidence for the need for a plethora of healthy land ecosystems and water ecosystems as well. Numerous countries have already taken steps to address more widespread ecosystem protection, yet the means by which these measures are implemented and enforced vary greatly. The differing success of existing programs and laws aimed at greater ecosystem protection begs the question of how to most effectively speak for the non-human, (White, 2014, pg. 44) in a way that not only expresses the vitality of ecosystems to human life but also captures their intrinsic value in non-anthropogenic terms. This book will explore ethics and justice in ecosystem protection through first examining the role of justice in the natural world, followed by an analysis of the concept of Rights of Nature and a look at instances where ethics and justice have worked in the favor of natural ecosystems in comparison to unethical environmental practices. These analyses will inform a final discussion of potential pathways to ethical ecosystem protection, supported by accounts by sustainability and justice experts and inspired by the ideas of environmentalists such as Aldo Leopold, Peter Singer, and Paul W. Taylor, in order to argue that Rights of Nature and environmental justice principles can be utilized more holistically to create systems of ethical ecosystem protection. See more