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A Basis for Environmental Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Augustin Berque
Augustin Berque*
Affiliation:
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales/CNRS
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Abstract

The overuse of water resources in the upper reaches of the Tarim (Xinjiang, China) jeopardizes the ecosystem of the huyang (Populus diversifolia) in the middle reaches of the river, which has led the authorities to displace the population of Caohu (Luntai-xian) in the name of environmental security. This paper discusses the ethical basis of such operations by comparing different approaches, and concludes that establishing a genuine environmental ethics implies an ontological revolution: one that will replace the ‘being towards death’ (Sein zum Tode) of the modern ontological topos of ‘individual body: individual person’, with the ‘being towards life’ (sei e no sonzai) of what Watsuji defined as ‘the structural moment of human existence’, in which being cannot be dissociated from context and history. This ontological revolution, which links human subjecthood with the environment itself, is by the same token the condition of sustainability, which is the most basic human security of all.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , August 2005 , pp. 3 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2005

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References

Notes

1. In this case the highly orthodox book by Su Haofa and Mai Xueshen (2003), Luntai gu jin [Luntai Yesterday and Today], Urumqi, Xinjiang Renmin Chubanshe, p. 164.

2. We shall see below that there are profound ontological reasons behind this ambiguity: the things in our environment are not objects but relative entities conditioned by our existence and in turn conditioning it. So it is inseparable from them.

3. This is the position claimed in particular in Song Yudong, Fan Zili, Lei Zhidong and Zhang Fawang (eds) (2000), Zhongguo Talimu he shui ziyuan yu shengtai wenti yanjiu [Research on the Ecological Problems and Water Resources of the River Tarim, China], Urumqi, Xinjiang Renmin Chubanshe.

4. Su and Mai, op. cit., p. 164.

5. This ubiquitous theme is the first word in Xinjiang shouce: Zhongguo xibu [Xinjiang Manual: China’s West] by Hu Wenkang et al. (2000), Urumqi, Xinjiang Renmin Chubanshe, which opens as follows: ‘The great development of the West is currently the hottest topic of conversation throughout the country’ (p. 1). Kaifa can also be translated as ‘exploitation’. Indeed ‘great exploitation of the West’ would seem to me closer to the fact, but the phrase is used by its promoters in the sense of ‘development’.

6. The title of the chapter about this operation in Su and Mai, op. cit., pp. 321 et seq.

7. More precisely the start of the season, since high water used to begin in June and reach its height in August.

8. Wang Ranghui et al. (2004), ‘Zhongguo Talimu he xiayou shengtai zhili gongcheng ruogan wenti de sikao’ [Thoughts on Some Engineering Problems in the Ecological Works on the Lower Reaches of the River Tarim, China], pp. 57-60, in Li Peicheng, Wang Wenke and Pei Xianzhi (eds), Zhongguo xibu huanjing wenti yu kezhixu fazhan guoji xueshu yantaohui lunwenji [Contributions to the International Scientific Conference on Environmental Problems and Sustainable Development in the Chinese West], Beijing, Zhongguo Huanjing Kexue Chubanshe.

9. From Lake Bosten, which is well supplied by the Kongqi, four similar transfers (yingji shushui, or emergency pumping) were carried out between 2000 and 2004, the biggest (400 million cubic metres) between 1 April and 17 November 2001.

10. Shengtai zhili qiangqiu gongcheng. This refers to a series of hydraulic works designed to restore an adequate supply of water for ecosystems.

11. Tuigeng huanlin (cao) gongcheng.

12. Xu Yingqin, Wu Shixin, Liu Zhaoxia, Yan Xinhua, Maier (2003), ‘Talimu he xia you ken qu lüzhou shengtaixi fuwu de jiazhi’ [Value of Ecosystem Services in the Oases of the Cleared Areas on the Lower Tarim], Ganhanqu dili, XXVI, 3, 203-16.

13. R. Constanza, R. De Groot, et al. (1997), ‘The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital’, Nature, 387, 253-60.

14. This refers mainly to works carried out between 1957 and 1960 and where the population rose to 38,000 by 1981 and 40,800 by 2001. Op. cit., p. 209.

15. Op. cit., p. 214.

16. The title of chapter IV of Guojia huanjing baohu zongju xuanchuan jiaoyu bangongshi [Education and Propaganda Bureau of the National Office for the Protection of the Environment] (2003), Zhongguo shengtai huanjing jingshi [Warning Signs for the Ecological Environment in China], Beijing, Zhongguo huanjing kexue chubanshi, pp. 94-122. In the same publication reference is made to ‘the desertification caused by artificial enlargement of the oases’ (rengong lüzhou guangda suo dailai de huangmohua, p. 101) and without resorting to euphemisms the ‘ecological migrants’ (shengtai yimin) mentioned elsewhere are here quite straightforwardly ‘ecological refugees’ (shengtai nanmin, p. 105).

17. Op. cit., p. 98.

18. Xu et al., op. cit., p. 215. In real terms this is roughly equal to the same amount in euros (1 euro = 10 yuan in 2004).

19. To quote just one, I refer readers to Catherine and Raphaël Larrère (1997), Du bon usage de la nature. Pour une philosophie de l’environnement, Paris, Aubier.

20. I have discussed these positions and suggested my own in (1996), Être humains sur la terre. Principes d’éthique de l’écoumène, Paris, Gallimard.

21. See Bruno Latour et al. (2002), Cosmopolitiques I. La nature n’est plus ce qu’elle était, La Tour d’Aigues, l’Aube.

22. We should remember that the Greek word kosmos has the threefold meaning ‘order’, ‘world’ and ‘decoration’. The Latin mundus also has these three meanings whose origin signifies that there is an order to the things making up the world, and this order is positive in terms of human values (kalos k’agathos, both beautiful and good). On the other hand the universe of modern physics is axiologically neutral. In other words it is no longer a kosmos.

23. Karl Marx (1867), Capital, Book I.

24. Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees (1996), Our Ecological Footprint. Reducing Human Impact on the Earth, Gabriola Island BC, New Society.

25. Here I am brusquely summarizing views I expounded in detail in (2000), Ecoumène. Introduction à l’étude des milieux humains, Paris, Belin.

26. This is said schematically, with Einstein’s relativity and quantum mechanics in mind; but more profoundly still, non-Euclidean geometries had already rendered outdated the Euclidean space that is the basis for the paradigm in question.

27. In the normal Japanese order the patronym precedes the ‘first’ or ‘Christian’ name.

28. ‘Der Tod als Ende des Daseins ist die eigenste, unbezügliche, gewisse und als solche unbestimmte, unüberholbare Möglichkeit des Daseins. Der Tod ist als Ende des Daseins im Sein dieses Seienden zu seinem Ende.’ Martin Heidegger (1993), Sein und Zeit [Being and Time], Tübingen, Niemeyer, pp. 258-9. Originally published in 1927. Heidegger’s emphasis.

29. Watsuji Tetsurô (1979), Fûdo. Ningengakuteki kôsatsu [Environments. A Humanological Study], Tokyo, Iwanami shoten, pp. 19-20. Originally published in 1935.

30. Which is illustrated by, among other things, funeral rites observable throughout the human race.

31. Reusing the formulation I have shown in Écoumène that this structural moment (‘moment’ to be understood here in the sense German philosophy derived from mechanics, that is, a dynamic coupling) is specifically human because the environment that constitutes ‘half’ of our being - the other ‘half’ being the modern ontological topos- is not only ecological (which would not distinguish us from non-humans) but also technical and symbolic: it is eco-techno-symbolic. This theory leans in particular on the notion of ‘social body’ in Leroi-Gourhan (1964), who (in Le Geste et la parole, 2 vols, Paris, Albin Michel) detailed the processes of ‘exteriorizing’ and developing into technical and symbolic systems the initial functions of our ‘animal body’ over the evolution of our species. This exteriorizing has made every human environment a system of relative entities - resources, constraints, risks and pleasures - that it is radically impossible to consider, in the modern manner, as a collection of objects: it is inseparable from our very being.

32. Environment translates here the French milieu, which translates the Japanese fûdo. Watsuji distinguishes fûdo (phenomenal environment, supposing the existence of the human subject) from kankyô (objective environment). This distinction was inspired by Heidegger’s categories, which themselves were inspired by Jacob von Uexküll’s distinction between Umwelt (the phenomenal environment of a given species) and Umgebung (objective environment, as analysed by the scientist).

33. This brief presentation could not go further than a few principles; more arguments will be found in Être humains sur la Terre and especially in Écoumène, op. cit.