This award will support the 2011 Cary Conference, Linking Ecology and Ethics for a Changing World: Values, Philosophy, and Action. The conference will bring together leading scholars and practitioners in ecological sciences, environmental ethics, and decision-making to build methodological and conceptual linkages between ecology and ethics. This new integrative foundation can significantly improve environmental management and the implementation of initiatives for global sustainability. The need for environmental decision-making is increasing rapidly, spurred by the rise in human population and global changes in climate, urbanization, pollution, and conversion of natural to managed systems. Wise choices in the face of these massive changes require sound long-term ecological research, as well as long-term socio-ecological research. Integrated socio-ecological research has up till now focused primarily on socio-economic dimensions. What is less evident in current decision-making is that pressing environmental decisions also involve human values, and thus require insights from the discipline of ethics.
Intellectual Merit
The 2011 Cary conference will promote communication among ecologists, environmental philosophers, religious scholars, conservation biologists, restoration practitioners, educators, and decision-makers by developing novel interdisciplinary approaches that integrate scientific as well traditional forms of ecological knowledge, worldviews and ethical values to address global scale socio-ecological problems. In this way the Conference will advance theoretical foundations to better understand the plurality of forms of ecological knowledge and values, as well as the interrelations between them. As a shared starting point, the work of the ecologist, game manager, and forester Aldo Leopold (who was President of the Ecological Society of America in 1947) offers a widely recognized pioneering integration of ethics and ecology. Examining Leopold's work in light of recent advances in both science and ethics and today's global scale of environmental problems will serve to advance the integration of environmental ethics and ecological science.
Potential Broader Impacts
The proposed Cary Conference will stimulate wider development of the field of ecological ethics by focusing the efforts of a broad interdisciplinary network of scholars and practitioners. The conference will also articulate an action plan for improved integration of ecological sciences and environmental philosophy, including interdisciplinary research, undergraduate and graduate training, practice, and place-based projects. There is particular need for careful consideration of the ethical implications of ecological restoration, adaptive management, and management of exotic invasive species. The fundamental importance of broadening socio-ecological research to include an ethical dimension, and better integrating human values in environmental decision making in this rapidly changing age makes this perhaps the most compelling of the topics we have addressed in the 26 years of Cary Conference history.
Intellectual Merit Both the need for effective environmental decision-making are increasing rapidly, spurred by global changes in climate, urbanization, pollution, and conversion of natural ecosystems to managed systems. Wise choices in the face of these daunting changes require sound ecological, as well as economic knowledge. What is less widely appreciated is that these pressing environmental decisions also involve human values, which requires an understanding and application of ethics. This linkage is poorly developed. Therefore, a partnership consisting of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, the Instituto de Ecologia y Biodiversidad (Chile), and the University of North Texas, held a ground breaking Cary Conference, entitled, "Linking Ecology and Ethics for a Changing World: Values, Philosophy, and Action." This conference brought together leading scholars and practitioners in ecology, environmental ethics, and decision making. The ultimate goal of of the conference was to promote a clearer linkage between ecology and ethics in order to improve environmental decisions and the implementation of initiatives for sustainability. The conference, held in 2011, and the 2014 book named after the Conference, Linking Ecology and Ethics for a Changing World: Values, Philosophy, and Action (edited by R. Rozzi, S.T.A. Pickett, C. Palmer, J.J. Armesto, and J.B. Callicott, and published by Springer), have several important outcomes. First, ethical analysis exposed the values associated with the unfolding global environmental crisis. Second, philosophical assessment exposed the fundamental assumptions and values behind important ecological approaches used in environmental problem solving. Benefits of exposing values embodied in scientific knowledge include, on the one hand, a fair assessment of biases, and on the other hand, a method to harmonize ecological messages with societal concerns that reflect human values. These values emerge from culture, tradition, beliefs, and social adaptation of the people who inhabit, benefit from, or govern ecosystems. The 2011 Cary Conference successfully promoted communication among ethicists, philosophers, policy analysts, and ecologists by sharing key foundations and the cutting edge concerns of their disciplines. The group of leading scholars identified new insights in the fields of environmental philosophy and environmental ethics. Products from the Conference have been summarized in the forthcoming book mentioned above. The publication of the book has led to the establishment of a new scholarly book series on Ecology and Ethics to be published by Springer, end edited by Co-Principal Investigator, Ricardo Rozzi. This series will act as an ongoing outcome of the project. Broader Impacts Better understanding of the linkages between ecological sciences and ethics was demonstrated to help guide collaborative decision making, which is becoming a more common approach to solving environmental problems at all levels of governance. Furthermore, philosophical analyses helped understand traditional ecological knowledge and environmental practices, and promote the involvement of local knowledge in collaborative decision making. This approach was also shown to help avoid lapses of environmental justice in the course of applying ecological knowledge. An additional important outcome of this conference was the strengthening and extension of a network of scholars and environmental practitioners interested and informed by the linkage of ecology and ethics. The members of this informal network have gone on to stimulate additional work at this novel interface.
