IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v25y1993i5p723-739.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Ethics and Sustainability: A Preliminary Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • M G Reed
  • O Slaymaker

Abstract

Geographers or students of human — environment relations have an important role to play in addressing the questions and issues associated with environmental sustainability. It is the authors' thesis that a central weakness in geography's response to environmental problems and to issues of sustainability is the lack of engagement with questions of ethics. An overall ethic of care, respect, and responsibility is proposed. Within this overarching framework, it is suggested that the society — environment relation may be a scale-dependent problem set, with a separate expression of environmental ethics associated with each scale. For example, an ethic appropriate at the planetary scale may differ from that which is pertinent at the local scale. This argument is advanced through examples from religious and secular interpretations of human — environment relations. In a preliminary way, both moral and technical issues associated with different ethical positions are raised and geographers are challenged to consider and debate their implications. It is concluded that without explicit environmental ethical premises, the sustainability debate is indeterminate.

Suggested Citation

  • M G Reed & O Slaymaker, 1993. "Ethics and Sustainability: A Preliminary Perspective," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 25(5), pages 723-739, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:25:y:1993:i:5:p:723-739
    DOI: 10.1068/a250723
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a250723
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/a250723?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. World Commission on Environment and Development,, 1987. "Our Common Future," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780192820808.
    2. R. Kerry Turner, 1988. "Wetland Conservation: Economics and Ethics," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: David Collard & David Pearce & David Ulph (ed.), Economics, Growth and Sustainable Environments, chapter 9, pages 121-159, Palgrave Macmillan.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Richard Cowell & Susan Owens, 1998. "Suitable Locations: Equity and Sustainability in the Minerals Planning Process," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(9), pages 797-811.
    2. Ferhan Gezici & Gunduz Atalik, 1998. "An evaluation of tourism activities in Turkey with reference to sustainable regional development," ERSA conference papers ersa98p477, European Regional Science Association.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. YUNG-JAAN Lee, 1999. "Sustainable wetland management strategies under uncertainties," Environment Systems and Decisions, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 67-79, March.
    2. Mechthild Donner & Anne Verniquet & Jan Broeze & Katrin Kayser & Hugo de Vries, 2021. "Critical success and risk factors for circular business models valorising agricultural waste and by-products," Post-Print hal-03004851, HAL.
    3. Cornelis Leeuwen & Jos Frijns & Annemarie Wezel & Frans Ven, 2012. "City Blueprints: 24 Indicators to Assess the Sustainability of the Urban Water Cycle," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 26(8), pages 2177-2197, June.
    4. CHEN, Helen S.Y., 2020. "Designing Sustainable Humanitarian Supply Chains," OSF Preprints m82ar, Center for Open Science.
    5. Jim Butcher, 2006. "The United Nations International Year of Ecotourism: a critical analysis of development implications," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 6(2), pages 146-156, April.
    6. Denise Ravet, 2011. "Lean production: the link between supply chain and sustainable development in an international environment," Post-Print hal-00691666, HAL.
    7. Mara Del Baldo, 2012. "Corporate social responsibility and corporate governance in Italian SMEs: the experience of some “spirited businesses”," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 16(1), pages 1-36, February.
    8. Megan Devonald & Nicola Jones & Sally Youssef, 2022. "‘We Have No Hope for Anything’: Exploring Interconnected Economic, Social and Environmental Risks to Adolescents in Lebanon," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-17, February.
    9. Rigby, Dan & Woodhouse, Phil & Young, Trevor & Burton, Michael, 2001. "Constructing a farm level indicator of sustainable agricultural practice," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 463-478, December.
    10. Michael Howes & Liana Wortley & Ruth Potts & Aysin Dedekorkut-Howes & Silvia Serrao-Neumann & Julie Davidson & Timothy Smith & Patrick Nunn, 2017. "Environmental Sustainability: A Case of Policy Implementation Failure?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-17, January.
    11. Shiferaw, Bekele & Holden, Stein, 1999. "Soil Erosion and Smallholders' Conservation Decisions in the Highlands of Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 739-752, April.
    12. Ibrahim Ari & Muammer Koc, 2018. "Sustainable Financing for Sustainable Development: Understanding the Interrelations between Public Investment and Sovereign Debt," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-25, October.
    13. Parnphumeesup, Piya & Kerr, Sandy A., 2011. "Stakeholder preferences towards the sustainable development of CDM projects: Lessons from biomass (rice husk) CDM project in Thailand," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 3591-3601, June.
    14. Pengji Wang & Adrian T. H. Kuah & Qinye Lu & Caroline Wong & K. Thirumaran & Emmanuel Adegbite & Wesley Kendall, 2021. "The impact of value perceptions on purchase intention of sustainable luxury brands in China and the UK," Journal of Brand Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 28(3), pages 325-346, May.
    15. Christoph M. Schmidt & Nils aus dem Moore, 2014. "Wie geht es uns? Die W3-Indikatoren für eine neue Wohlstandsmessung," RWI Positionen, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, pages 16, 03.
    16. Katundu Imasiku & Valerie M. Thomas & Etienne Ntagwirumugara, 2020. "Unpacking Ecological Stress from Economic Activities for Sustainability and Resource Optimization in Sub-Saharan Africa," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(9), pages 1-12, April.
    17. Chin-Shan Lu & Kuo-Chung Shang & Chi-Chang Lin, 2016. "Examining sustainability performance at ports: port managers’ perspectives on developing sustainable supply chains," Maritime Policy & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(8), pages 909-927, November.
    18. Kebede, Yohannes, 1993. "The Limits to Common Resource Management: The Bypassed Commons or Commons without Tragedy," MPRA Paper 662, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 01 May 1993.
    19. John Stanley & Janet Stanley, 2023. "Improving Appraisal Methodology for Land Use Transport Measures to Reduce Risk of Social Exclusion," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(15), pages 1-18, August.
    20. Piotr Siemiątkowski & Patryk Tomaszewski & Joanna Marszałek-Kawa & Janusz Gierszewski, 2020. "The Financing of Renewable Energy Sources and the Level of Sustainable Development of Poland’s Provinces in the Area of Environmental Order," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(21), pages 1-19, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:25:y:1993:i:5:p:723-739. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.