Welcome to our course on "Environmental Management and Ethics". Today I will like to introduce you to deep ecology. My name is Steffen Foss Hansen and I'm associate professor at the Technical University of Denmark Department of Environmental Engineering. Deep ecology was a term first used by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss. He postulated that humans should respect nature and value the inherent worth of all life forms. In that sense, deep ecology, according to Arne Næss, questions the fundamental values on which the industrial paradigm is built upon. It was formulated in the early 70s and has eight main principles. I'm gonna take you through these eight principles in the following. The first principle is that the well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves. This means that they have a value beyond the value that we humans associate with it. These values are independent of the usefulness of nonhuman world for human purposes. The second principle is that the richness and the diversity of these life forms contribution to the realization of these values and are also of value in themselves. So, the fact that something has a rich diversity is of value and contributes to the overall value of nature and so on. The third main principle is that humans have no right to reduce this richness, the richness of diversity, except to satisfy vital needs. The fourth value or the fourth main principle is that the present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening. So already in the early 70s, did Arne Næss foresee or was the global environment in such a situation that Arne Næss perceived this situation and the human interference with nature as being excessive. The fifth principle is that the flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease. The fifth principle basically means that the current population growth that we have all around the world is not sustainable, and at the time, deep ecology was considered very controversial for this exact principle that states that the current situation with the overpopulation and increasing number of humans on Earth is simply not sustainable. The fifth principle is a call for action. Based on the reflections and the statements in the fourth- the first five principles, the sixth principle argues that policies must therefore be changed. The change in policies affect both basic economic, technological, but also ideological structures making them deeply different from the present. So this is a call for a radical change in how we do economical business, how we perceive technology, and also maybe our ideological standpoints that need to be changed in order for us to become more in sync with ecology. The seventh principle is that the ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality, meaning dwelling on situation of inherent worth, rather than adhering to an increasingly higher living standard. So instead of constantly focusing on, for instance, consumerism or materialism, what Arne Næss is calling for, deep ecology is calling for, is that we have a change in perspective, and then we start appreciating some of the more subtle things in life that surrounds us. And the eighth principle is a call for commitment. It states that those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation indirectly or directly to participate in the attempt to implement the necessary changes. So this means that if you are adhere to the first seven principles, according to deep ecology, then the eighth principle states that then you should take action either directly or indirectly to ensure or to promote that the necessary changes in society are taken so that we can become more in line with deep ecology and the philosophy of deep ecology. Very often when we discuss deep ecology, we often discuss it versus what is known as shallow ecology. Shallow ecology is- shallow ecology is kind of defined as the way that we currently do environmental management and protection. It's based on technological advances. It values industrial economy. And examples that are often providing is the way that we fight pollution or the way that we try to protect natural resources or that we try to constantly recycle various elements that we have. It doesn't really address maybe the fundamental underlying problems that are actually the cause of, for instance, pollution, the overexploitation of natural resources, and the need to constantly recycle. Instead, deep ecology requires a more drastic change in policy and in our mindsets. It requires a redesign of the society's values to respect and value nature independent of its use to humans. There are not many examples of deep ecology out there. What we would much like you to do is to help us identify examples of deep ecology, applied deep ecology. So, the question is, do you know of any examples of deep ecology? If you do, please present them in five sentences in the discussion forum of this course. Include how, when, what, and where in regards to the circumstances of your specific example of deep ecology. And also, please remember to explain why each of your examples is a good example of deep ecology. Please also add a few links to your comment where one can find more information about these specific example that you have listed. Thank you very much for your attention.
