Values and Environmental Ethics – Pillars of Changing Human Behaviour Toward Sustainable Development

Sustainable development necessitates the harmonisation of human’s and nature’s needs under the siege of continuous demographic growth and the quest for wellbeing based on material things. This outcome implies important changes to occur at individual, collective and corporate behaviour. How they could be accomplished is a question that animates debates for several decades and revealed that solutions should be related to the process of valuation. Better understanding of value and how it relates to the needs of environmental protection is the aim of our analysis that recalls axiological milestones and compares them with environment related issues. Value as a product of object and subject in the framework of human aspirations is at some extent transposed in economic value. Environmental goods valuation in economic terms encounters numerous difficulties, including high costs and low reliability. Therefore we conclude that decision making should be underpinned not only by economic valuation, but also by value judgement that cannot be expressed in monetary terms.