Environmental Conflicts, Territorial Development and Conflicts of Valuation: Considerations for Environmental Ethics and Social Equity

Abstract

The paper proposes an inter-relationship between environmental ethics and critical reflection on the development process, having as focus the analysis of conflicts between value systems that underlie the environmental conflicts affecting traditional communities. It results from a theoretical reflection based on the work carried out under the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Development and the Environment. In this analysis, we highlight the implications of the use of nature as practiced in traditional ways of life to build an ecological ethics that reconciles social equity and expansion of moral consideration beyond humans. It is argued that the identification of these implications would help on the formulation of argumentative strategies to enhance the recognition of the territorial rights of these people and, at the same time, contribute to the formulation of social and environmental sustainability conceptions that advocate uses of nature compatible with its moral consideration, that is, nature uses not held by exclusively instrumental perspectives. The article brings together elements of political ecology, environmental justice and environmental ethics linking them to the field of environmental sociology and the sociology of development.