Deliberative Democracy and the Environment

Graham Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9781134392315
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Contemporary democracies are frequently criticized for failing to respond adequately to environmental problems and our political institutions are often charged with misrepresenting environmental values in decision-making processes. In this innovative volume, Graham Smith argues that the enhancement and institutionalisation of democratic deliberation will improve reflection on the wide range of environmental values that citizens hold.
Drawing on theories of deliberative democracy, Smith argues that institutions need to be restructured in order to promote democratic dialogue and reflection on the plurality of environmental values.
Deliberative Democracy and the Environment makes an important contribution to our understanding of the relationship between democratic and green political theory. Drawing on evidence from Europe and the United States, it systematically engages with questions of institutional design.

1 Value pluralism and the
environment

How are we to understand and respond to the clash of values that we experience when trying to make decisions that affect the environment? Should certain environmental values take precedence over other sorts of values in our decisions and judgements? Is there a single environmental ethic that can guide our interventions in the non-human world? We might hope to fi nd answers to these kinds of questions within environmental ethics – the branch of moral philosophy that concerns itself with the relationship between human and non-human entities. Much of the writing within environmental ethics can be seen as a response to the perceived lack of analysis of, and lack of sensitivity towards, the non-human world in traditional ethical and political theorising. However, there are two infl uential tendencies within environmental ethics that take the debate about the signifi cance of environmental values in a dubious and unhelpful direction. The first of these tendencies is to believe that nature has intrinsic value – a value independent of the contingencies of human valuation. The second tendency is to believe in ethical monism: a desire to generate a single comprehensive environmental ethic that will guide all of our interventions in the non-human world. This chapter explores the problems generated by these two tendencies and offers an alternative conception of how we value the environment. Initially it will suggest that the dichotomy between instrumental and intrinsic value is unnecessarily limiting and that there is a range of environmental values beyond the instrumental use value of the non-human world. Second, ethical monism will be shown to be unsustainable. Value pluralism will be offered as a more effective framework within which to understand this variety of environmental values and better appreciate the value conflicts that arise when deliberating about the environment.

The intrinsic value debate

Environmental ethics emerged in response to environmentally destructive and exploitative attitudes and practices: the ‘technocentric ideology’ that ‘is almost arrogant in its assumption that man is supremely able to understand and control events to suit his purposes’ (O’Riordan, 1981: 1). Environmental ethics aims to move away from the human-centred or anthropocentric understanding of the world that has dominated our relations with the environment, and which tends to value nature simply as a resource, as brute matter to be mastered and controlled to fulfil human preferences and desires and increase material affl uence. This purely instrumental valuation of nature has been charged with being ‘human chauvinist’ in its prioritising of human interests over all other considerations and displaying a narrowness of sympathy in failing to take the position of non-human entities into consideration in our ethical refl ections and judgements (Midgley, 1994: 111; Routley and Routley, 1995: 105ff.; Hayward, 1998).

According to many green theorists, an alternative orientation towards the non-human world is possible, which recognises and appreciates the interconnectedness of the human and non-human world: ecocentrism (Eckersley, 1992). Here, the human subject is ‘decentred’ in the sense that a wider range of non-human interests are taken to be significant, and the non-human world – or at least aspects of it–is valued for its own sake rather than simply instrumentally for the achievement of human ends. Perhaps the most infl uential strategy within ecocentrism, and (arguably) a foundation stone in the development of green political ideology, has been the recognition of intrinsic value in non-human nature. The extent to which intrinsic value has influenced green ideas can be witnessed in the work of deep ecologists. Arne Naess, for example, has argued that the principle of ‘biospherical egalitarianism’ lies at the heart of deep ecology: ‘the equal right to live and blossom is an intuitively clear and obvious value axiom’ (Naess, 1973: 95). For Naess, the fi rst principle of the deep ecology movement is that the ‘fl ourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth has intrinsic value. The value of non-human life is independent of the usefulness these may have for narrow human purposes’ (Naess, 1989: 29). For Naess, life is understood in a broad, non-technical sense, so as to include biologically ‘non-living’ entities. The much-quoted ‘deep ecology platform’ begins with the following three principles:

The well-being and flourishing of non-human life have intrinsic value, independent of human usefulness.
The richness and diversity of life contribute to the realisation of these values and are values in themselves.
Humans have no right to reduce this diversity except to satisfy vital needs.

(Devall and Sessions, 1985: 70)¹

This brief passage highlights two key aspects of intrinsic value theory. First, the distinction between instrumental and intrinsic value is explicitly drawn. The intrinsic value of nature is independent of any particular value placed on it by humans. Intrinsic value rests on the richness and diversity of the non-human world, and nature has value in and for itself. Second, we can see the powerful implications of such an idea: for deep ecologists the intrinsic value of nature places onerous restrictions on human exploitation and use of the environment. The onus of justifi cation is no longer with those who wish to protect the environment, but rather it is shifted onto those who wish to exploit nature.

This is clearly the strength of the intrinsic value approach: the recognition of such value places a brake on the wanton destruction and exploitation of non-human nature. The isolation of a value that resides in nature challenges the attitude that nature is only valuable in so far as it is directly useful to humanity. The power of intrinsic value for the protection of the environment is obvious.

The idea of intrinsic value may be beguiling and appealing, but sympathetic critics have raised a number of philosophical and practical problems.² The belief that nature has intrinsic value generates distinctive problems for understanding the relationship between environmental and other values and, therefore, for making judgements. Given the popularity and infl uence of intrinsic value theories within green politics, it is important to recognise the limitations of such an approach to our understanding of the value of the environment.

One set of criticisms revolves around isolating the grounds or basis of intrinsic value, deciding which natural entities exhibit intrinsic value and considering whether there are different degrees of intrinsic value. Environmental philosophers offer a range of possible candidates as the characteristic or feature of the natural world that is the basis of moral considerability. Aside from the deep ecological focus on richness and diversity, these have included life (Taylor, 1986; Attfield, 1991), complexity (Mathews, 1991), naturalness (Rolston, 1983; Elliot, 1995) and autopoiesis (Eckersley, 1992).³ Debates about the grounds of intrinsic value are intimately tied to the question of the type of entity that is to be considered: the aspect of nature that bears the relevant characteristic of moral considerability. Here we discover a series of debates about the entity within which intrinsic value is said to reside: individuals (whether sentient, living or inanimate), species, ecosystems, the biosphere as a whole or some combination of different entities. Precisely what is the bearer of intrinsic value? Which entities exhibit intrinsic value? This ontological question has led to major tensions within environmental philosophy between those who argue that individual animals have intrinsic value, and thus rights (Regan, 1988), and those who argue for a holistic environmental ethic, with intrinsic value resting in species and ecosystems (Callicott, 1995). The problem we are faced with, then, is that there is a plurality of candidates for the grounds of intrinsic value and hence for the natural entities that exhibit such value. If we are required to make judgements about potential interventions in the natural world, it is unclear what aspects of the environment are to be accorded intrinsic value and for what reasons.

The problem of judgement is compounded when we begin to think about how to judge the signifi cance of intrinsic value. Should all entities that exhibit intrinsic value carry the same weight in our judgements or is there a scale of intrinsic value? Can an entity have more, or less, intrinsic value than another entity? Many theorists wish to make the case for a scale of intrinsic value. For example, Robin Attfield relates moral standing to the capacity of entities to live and fl ourish and then constructs a hierarchy of values based on attributes and capabilities such as sentience, consciousness and cognition (Attfi eld, 1991). Thus the significance of intrinsic value varies between types of life-forms. Similarly, Freya Mathews relates the degree of intrinsic value to the complexity of living systems (Mathews, 1991: 123).

But, even if we are able to decide on (first) the grounds for intrinsic value, (second) the entities that exhibit intrinsic value and (third) the degree of intrinsic value exhibited by entities, there is a further and perhaps more damaging problem facing intrinsic value theories: our ability to judge the signifi cance of intrinsic value in relation to other values. Is it a value that somehow ‘trumps’ other types of value that humans may hold? We are being asked to take into account the independent value of the good of a non-human entity. But the very nature of its independence – independent of the contingencies of human valuation –means that we will have problems even recognising this value.

Here we come up against epistemic limits in knowing the good or interests of non-human entities. To what extent can we realistically have access to knowledge of what ‘flourishing’ might entail for different elements of non-human nature –to know its interests or good beyond the basic conditions of biological functioning? It can be diffi cult to imaginatively project ourselves into the place of another human being, recognising their interests, needs and capacities. It is an even more formidable exercise to attempt to access and understand the interests and good of non-human entities (Nagel, 1979a). We may have a limited ability to understand the interests of certain domesticated and non-domesticated animals that either share our lives or share similar social natures, but when we move to other living creatures, plants, inanimate objects, species and ecosystems our understanding diminishes rapidly. As Tim Hayward argues:‘There is evident risk that anthropocentrism is merely supplanted by a practice of anthropomorphism –that is imaginatively projecting human characteristics, needs and interests on to other beings which may in fact be radically different from anything humans can imagine’ (Hayward, T. 1995: 66). In many cases, we are simply imaginatively projecting our own values and ideals onto non-human entities: after all, the characteristics upon which intrinsic value theories are based are typically those commended within human culture. As Kate Soper contends: ‘there is a pervasive inclination to point to humanly admired qualities – its diversity, richness, autonomy and beauty, for example – as those that endow it with ‘intrinsic’ value’ (Soper, 1995: 225).

This hints at a broader problem inherent within intrinsic value theories and the ecocentric stream of thought more generally:anthropocentrism is unavoidable. The very concept of ecocentrism (often cast as ‘non-anthropocentrism’) may be conceptually and practically contradictory. Within environmental ethics, anthropocentrism is often taken to be the view that only human beings have moral standing, or that it is only the interests of human beings that are significant. This is a crude analysis of the idea and practice of anthropocentrism, focusing attention on one particular (albeit destructive) attitude towards nature. There is a more environmentally enlightened sense of anthropocentrism (often termed ‘weak anthropocentrism’) in which it is recognised that the interests of, and values associated with, other entities should be taken into account. It is human beings who assign value, but it is not only humans that are of value. The fact that value is assigned or recognised by human beings does not in itself imply that values are anthropocentric in the sense of privileging human beings over the rest of nature. There is nothing inconsistent in human beings valuing the interests of other natural entities above their own. In other words, it is important to distinguish who is asking the questions from who benefits from the answer given (Williams, 1995: 234). Only human beings ask these sorts of questions, and values are to that extent necessarily human based or anthropocentric in the weak sense of the term.

The tendency within environmental ethics to posit intrinsic value in nature thus appears incoherent by failing to appreciate the fundamental role played by human consciousness in recognising and attributing value.⁴ As Douglas Torgerson argues, there is a paradoxical quality to ecocentric thought:

Once we take this ecocentric conception seriously, however, we immediately confront a remarkably ironic paradox. For it is a conception that decenters the human and, at the same time, places humanity at the centre of things. As soon as humanity is expelled from its privileged position, it is readmitted, so to speak, by the back door. Human reason is divested of its pretensions, but placed in judgement of all being.

(Torgerson, 1999: 108)

Environmental philosophers are right to react against the preponderance of an arrogant orientation in which nature is seen simply as something to be mastered and controlled: a strongly anthropocentric or technocentric attitude. However, the appeal to non-anthropocentrism and a focus on intrinsic value in nature is misguided. Recognising humans as valuers does not necessarily imply that only narrowly human-centred values are considerable and significant. Humans may well judge that environmental values take precedence over other human values. The target of ecocentrism needs to be more carefully understood: some form of anthropocentrism is inevitable. What is not inevitable is giving ‘exclusive or arbitrary preferential consideration to human interests as opposed to the interests of other beings’ (Hayward, 1998: 45). There is, therefore, a significant distance between considering non-human nature only in terms of its instrumental use value for humans (strong anthropocentrism) and the recognition of intrinsic value (ecocentrism). The dangers for greens in focusing so much attention on the intrinsic value of nature are that, fi rst, it is philosophically and practically ambiguous; and, second, it tends to silence other environmental considerations, commitments and values (Taylor, 1996). We can readily understand the attraction of intrinsic value theories in their attempt to place a moral brake on current levels of environmental despoliation and to reorientate our relationship with non-human nature. However, ecocentrism rests on a universal critique of anthropocentrism, thereby criticising human practices and relationships with nature in toto. The target needs to be much more specifi c, focusing on the particular attitudes and practices that tend towards an exploitative attitude towards nature, while recognising that there is a broad range of non-instrumental values that we associate with the non-human world. It is to the variety of environmental values that we now turn.

Reassessing environmental values

Given our criticisms of the tendency within environmental ethics to develop theories based on the recognition of intrinsic value in nature, it is necessary to offer an alternative account of the values associated with the non-human world from within a weak or environmentally enlightened anthropocentric framework. In light of ecocentric critiques, a useful place to begin is with a recognition (and rehabilitation?) of the significance of the instrumental use value of non-human nature.

There is an obvious sense in which the instrumental use of nature is implicit in human life itself. Non-human nature has a direct use value in that it provides the (raw) material conditions for human existence. We draw upon the biological wealth of nature for food, medicines and other goods, but also, more broadly, the life-support function of nature is a precondition for any human activity. Human flourishing is dependent upon the productive, protective and waste-assimilative functions of ecosystems (Dryzek, 1987: 34; Wilson, 1992). Much of the commitment to sustainable development and environmental protection draws its force from this explicit instrumental value. Whether we are talking about existing or future generations, stable environmental conditions and access to adequate environmental resources for the achievement of basic human needs is fundamental. Current and future generations are reliant on the stability of environmental conditions. Again, the potential scientifi c and medical value of species can provide a strong instrumental case for the preservation of environmental entities that are not obviously useful at present. As Bryan Norton recognises, instrumental valuation of nature creates a persuasive case for the wider preservation of species and ecosystems. The diversity of species is valuable not only for the direct and potential use value of particular species, but also for its contributory value. First, diverse ecosystems provide opportunities for new and potentially useful species to emerge. Second, given our limited and vague knowledge of how complex ecosystems work, the loss of apparently ‘useless’ species is a potential step towards the collapse of important ecosystems and the loss of ‘more useful’ entities. There is a danger in undervaluing the contributory value of species and ecosystems to human well-being (Norton, 1986). Although these kinds of arguments do not take us beyond the recognition and valuation of the environment as resource (the instrumental value of the natural world), they do highlight the centrality of the non-human world to our lives and practices. Further, the recognition of how little we understand of the variety and intricacy of ecosystems and the biosphere provides fertile ground for an attitude of humility and prudence towards non-human entities and processes (Norton, 1987: 205; Wilson, 1992: 335).

There is certainly no shame in recognising this use value of the environment, and it can provide a strong rationale for environmental protection. However, according to many intrinsic value theorists, in contemporary societies we typically consider only the direct use value of nature. But this is a highly inaccurate picture of the broader values that are associated with the non-human world and does a disservice to human sensibilities and perceptions of nature. The dichotomy between instrumental use value and intrinsic value is unhelpful and leads to a false dilemma, unnecessarily limiting consideration of the full range of interactions between humanity and nature. This can only lead to misrepresentation and an impoverished understanding of human experience and well-being.

If we briefl y return to the work of ecocentric theorists, we find that there is a range of characteristics and qualities of the nonhuman world upon which they have attempted to construct theories of intrinsic value. Part of the criticism of such theories is that they rest on humanly admired characteristics such as diversity, complexity and naturalness. Although misguided in their theoretical ambition, intrinsic value theorists have done us a service in reminding us of significant features of the non-human world...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1: Value pluralism and the environment
• 2: Environmental economics and the internalisation of environmental values
• 3: Deliberative democracy and green political theory
• 4: Three deliberative models
• 5: Towards ecological democratisation
• Concluding remarks
• Notes
• References