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1. Environmental Philosophy: Volume > 7 > Issue: 2
Robert Melchior Figueroa Editorial Preface
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2. Environmental Philosophy: Volume > 7 > Issue: 2
Ricardo Rozzi, Francisca Massardo, Felipe Cruz, Christophe Grenier, Andrea Muñoz Galapagos and Cape Horn: Ecotourism or Greenwashing in Two Emblematic Latin American Archipelagoes?
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True ecotourism requires us to regain an understanding of the inextricable links between the habitats of a region, including its inhabitants, and their habits. With this systemic approach that integrates economic, ecological, and ethical dimensions, we define ecotourism as “an invitation to a journey (‘tour’) to appreciate and share the ‘homes’ (oikos) of diverse human and non-human inhabitants, their singular habits and habitats.” Today, mass nature tourism often denies theselinks and is generating biocultural homogenization, socio-ecological degradation, and marked distributive injustices in iconic places, such as Costa Rica, the Galapagos and Cape Horn. In order to implement genuine ecotourism in Latin America and elsewhere, it is imperative to overcome marketing ambiguities, and pay close attention to local autonomy and biocultural diversity.
3. Environmental Philosophy: Volume > 7 > Issue: 2
Steve Vanderheiden, Melanie Sisson Ethically Responsible Leisure? Promoting Social and Environmental Justice Through Ecotourism
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Ecotourism has been lauded as a potentially effective means for raising revenue for nature conservation, and certification schemes likewise promise to help to “sustain the well-being of local people” in ecotourist destinations. In this paper, we consider the social and environmental justice dimensions of ecotourism through the certification schemes that define the industry, treating the desire to engage in ethically responsible travel as a necessary but insufficient condition for bringing about these desired ends, and one that requires accurate and trustworthy information in order to effectively realize ecotourism’s potential to engage normative concerns through leisure activities.
4. Environmental Philosophy: Volume > 7 > Issue: 2
Keith Bosak Ecotourism as Environmental Justice? Discourse and the Politics of Scale in the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, India
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This paper uses the case of the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve to illustrate how ecotourism can be a vehicle for environmental justice. I use discourse analysis and the politics of scale to argue that an expanded notion of environmental justice does account for the myriad movements for resource rights occurring all over the world. In this case, framing the struggle through ecotourism with a focus on social justice provided local people a way to engage the mainstream environmental movement and address the injustices of its exclusionary and biocentric practices while providing for themselves a viable livelihood option.
5. Environmental Philosophy: Volume > 7 > Issue: 2
Kyle Powys Whyte An Ethics of Recognition for Environmental Tourism Practices
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Environmental tourism is a growing practice in indigenous communities worldwide. As members of indigenous communities, what environmental justice framework should we use to evaluate these practices? I argue that, while some of the most relevant and commonly discussed norms are fair compensation and participative justice, we should also follow Robert Figueroa’s claim that “recognition justice” is relevant for environmental justice. I claim that from Figueroa’s analysis there is a “norm of direct participation,” which requires all environmental tourism practices to feature a forum for meaningful representation andconsideration. This claim motivates a distinction between practices that should be termed “mutually advantageous exploitation” and those that should be termed “environmental coalition development.” We need to ask ourselves whether we should continue to tolerate mutually advantageous exploitation and how we can increase the number of practices that develop coalitions.
6. Environmental Philosophy: Volume > 7 > Issue: 2
Evan Selinger, Kevin Outterson The Ethics of Poverty Tourism
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Poverty tours—actual visits as well as literary and cinematic versions—are characterized as morally controversial trips and condemned in the press as voyeuristic endeavors. In this collaborative essay, we draw from personal experience, legal expertise, and phenomenological philosophy and introduce a conceptual taxonomy that clarifies the circumstances in which observing others has been construed as an immoral use of the gaze. We appeal to this taxonomy to determine which observational circumstances are ethically relevant to the poverty tourism debate. While we do not defend all or even most poverty tourism practices, we do conclude that categorical condemnation of poverty tourism is unjustified.
7. Environmental Philosophy: Volume > 7 > Issue: 2
Erik Anderson Ethics Commands, Aesthetics Demands: Environmental Aesthetics for Environmental Justice in Newark
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I identify a commonly held position in environmental philosophy, “the received view,” and argue that its proponents beg the question when challenged to demonstrate the relevance of environmental aesthetics for environmental justice. I call this “the inference problem,” and I go on to argue that an alternative to the received view, Arnold Berleant’s participatory engagement model, is better equipped to meet the challenge it poses. By adopting an alternative metaphysics, the engagement model supplies a solution to the inference problem and thereby provides a more useful theoretical framework for application to pressing concernsin environmental justice, such as the plight of the historical Ironbound District of Newark, New Jersey.
8. Environmental Philosophy: Volume > 7 > Issue: 2
Robert Melchior Figueroa, Gordon Waitt Climb: Restorative Justice, Environmental Heritage, and the Moral Terrains of Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park
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Recent decades have brought environmental justice studies to a much broader analysis and new areas of concern. We take this increased depth and breadth of environmental justice further by considering restorative justice, with a particular emphasis on reconciliation efforts between indigenous and non-indigenous citizens. Our focus is on the reconciliation efforts taken by the indigenous/non-indigenous jointmanagement structure of Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park. Usinga framework of restorative justice within a bivalent environmental justice approach, we consider the current management policies at the Park, particularly as it pertains to the controversial climb of the rock, Uluṟu. Our exploration of restorative environmental justice depends upon narrative analysis of embodied ecotourism affects in order to determine the capacity and obstacles of reconciliation efforts in the current management policy. Interviews with tourists from the Greater Sydney Metropolitan Area supply us with cases that provide affective experiences and a postcolonial narrative analysis of touring practices that we argue are imbued with nationalism and colonial naturalism that must be transformed in order to meet the requests of the Park’s traditional indigenous owners. We argue that restorative justice, within a bivalent environmental justice framework that already emphasizes other distributive and recognition measures, is vital for overcoming these obstacles for Australian environmental heritage.
book reviews
9. Environmental Philosophy: Volume > 7 > Issue: 2
Jonathan Hook The Pursuit of Ecotopia: Lessons from Traditional and Indigenous Societies for the Human Ecology of Our Modern World
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10. Environmental Philosophy: Volume > 7 > Issue: 2
William Edelglass Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World
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11. Environmental Philosophy: Volume > 7 > Issue: 2
Chris Cuomo Healing Natures, Repairing Relationships: New Perspectives on Restoring Ecological Spaces and Consciousness
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12. Environmental Philosophy: Volume > 7 > Issue: 2
James Hatley If Creation is a Gift
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13. Environmental Philosophy: Volume > 7 > Issue: 2
Ted Toadvine Hijacking Sustainability
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14. Environmental Philosophy: Volume > 7 > Issue: 2
Chelsea Snelgrove Nested Ecology: The Place of Humans in the Ecological Hierarchy
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15. Environmental Philosophy: Volume > 7 > Issue: 2
Hans-Georg Erney Wilderness into Civilized Shapes
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16. Environmental Philosophy: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Jay Odenbaugh Subsistence versus Sustainable Emissions? Equity and Climate Change
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In this essay, I first consider what the implications of global climate change will be regarding issues of equity. Secondly, I consider two types of proposals which focus on sustainable emissions and subsistence rights respectively. Thirdly, I consider where these proposal types conflict. Lastly, I argue under plausible assumptions, these two proposals actually imply similar policies regarding global climate change.
17. Environmental Philosophy: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
David Henderson Valuing the Stars: On the Economics of Light Pollution
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The night sky has been radically altered by light pollution, artificially produced light that obscures the stars. The effects and costs of this are diverse and poorly appreciated. A survey of the economically quantifiable aspects of this problem demonstrates that the value of the starry sky is immense, and yet it remains stubbornly beyond the ken of the market. The attempts to quantify this value and the ultimate impossibility of the task give lie to the economic pretense that the dollar can commensurate all value. The case of light pollution exemplifies the importance of regulation to the protection of environmental value.
18. Environmental Philosophy: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Brian Treanor Turn Around and Step Forward: Ideology and Utopia in the Environmental Movement
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Insufficiently radical environmentalism is inadequate to the problems that confront us; but overly radical environmentalism risks alienating people with whom, in a democracy, we must find common cause. Building on Paul Ricoeur’s work, which shows how group identity is constituted by the tension between ideology and utopia, this essay asks just how radical effective environmentalism should be. Two “case studies” of environmental agenda—that of Michael Schellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, and that of David Brower—serve to frame the important issues of cooperation and confrontation. The essay concludes that environmentalism must lead with its utopian aspirations rather than its willingness to compromise.
19. Environmental Philosophy: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Hui Zou The Philosophical Encounter Embodied by the Yuanming Yuan
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The Yuanming Yuan of the Qing dynasty was a magnificent imperial garden in Chinese history. The garden consisted of three Chinese gardens and a “Western-like garden” designed by the EuropeanJesuits. The garden encounter in the Yuanming Yuan provides a valuable case for studying cultural fusion in early modernity. This article redraws the traditional line of Daoist cosmology in Chinese imperial gardens by analyzing the fengshui layout of the Yuanming Yuan. Based on the Qing emperors’ writings, imperial archives, and the garden representations, the research interprets the design distinction and its cross-cultural accommodation. The article concludes that the exotic depth produced by the linear-perspective views in the European portion demonstrated the typical Daoist attempt of preserving full brightness in one’s mind through seeking the remotest garden scenery, as stated in the Daoist scripture Laozi that “whoever knows his brightness veils himself in his darkness.” This Daoist paradoxical idea, best embodied by the Yuanming Yuan, opens up a comparative understanding of Heidegger’s concept “paradoxa.”
20. Environmental Philosophy: Volume > 7 > Issue: 1
Randall Teal The Process of Place: A Temporal View of Sustainability in the Built Environment
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In the process of creating our built environments, the threat of ecological crises often tempt us to focus on “fixes” of resource management and technological innovation. Yet if such approaches overwhelm the significance of place and our complex existential engagements within those places, then the earth becomes a mere collection of resources. Sustainability undertaken in such a categorical manner results in environments that are either nostalgic or alienating, and neither is sustainable. Sustainability becomes a holistic movement capable of coping with both the specific and peculiar when it is undertaken as a recurring process of response.