How we should treat nonhuman animals is one of the most important environmental questions that we face. Although most people think of humans as having a qualitatively different moral status than nonhuman animals, there is no morally significant criterion for membership in the moral community that is satisfied by all and only humans. If the criterion is demanding enough (e.g., language), it excludes some humans; if it is permissive enough to include all humans (e.g., sentience), it includes some nonhumans. The discovery that “speciesism” is indefensible opens the door to a range of strong animal-protection philosophies – for example, Peter Singer’s “animal liberation,” which is founded on utilitarianism, and Christine Korsgaard’s “fellow creatures” view, which has a Kantian foundation. These views converge in concluding that many of the ways that we treat animals are wrong.

The words ‘nature’ and ‘environment’ have different senses and referents. The idea of the environment is keyed to what surrounds us, and we can speak of natural and built environments as well as others. This book is concerned with ethical questions about the environment. Many of these concern problems that occur at different scales and cause harms of various types. Environmental problems can be viewed from technological, economic, religious, and aesthetic perspectives, among others. No single perspective provides the sole correct or exhaustive way of viewing environmental problems. There is an ethical dimension to most environmental problems and that is the focus of this book.

The question of how should I live has special resonance in the Anthropocene, which threatens virtually everything we care about. This chapter answers this question by saying that I should live in a way that expresses my values, and that these values should be directed towards making the world better. In practice this means living car-free if possible, avoiding airplane travel, eating a plant-based diet, and having few, if any, children. In addition to living this way, we should try to change law and policy, and support individuals in their efforts to live in this way. Yet, no matter how much we may succeed, we will inevitably live with change and perhaps even disaster. These present threats to living a meaningful life, but they are also the elements from which meaning and joy must be forged.

Normative ethics is divided between ethical theory and practical ethics. Three families of ethical theories are consequentialism, virtue ethics, and Kantianism. Consequentialism is the view that consequences determine what we ought to do. Virtue ethics is the view that right actions should be understood in terms of virtuous agents and their character. Kantianism’s central concern is with how rational agents ought to relate to themselves and to each other. Ethical theory is difficult to disentangle from practical ethics, which is concerned with what we ought to do in particular situations, which – along with the question “How should I live?” – is the most important topic in ethics and perhaps all of philosophy.

Understanding human morality is important in appreciating the ethical dimensions of environmental problems. As a first approximation, morality is a behavioral system, with an attendant psychology, that has evolved among some social animals for the purposes of regulating their interactions. This chapter discusses and rejects challenges to morality from amoralism, theism, and relativism, arguing instead that morality is ubiquitous and difficult to escape, does not need the support of God in order to have content or be motivating, and is not culture-bound. However, this does not imply that there is a single, true morality, that belief in God is inconsistent with morality, or that there is no conflict between morality and individual desire. Armed with this understanding of human morality, we are now prepared to discuss some substantive questions in moral philosophy.

Chapter 2 is a detailed explanation of the theoretical methodology that the remainder of the monograph follows. It begins with an explanation of the main philosophical positions that are traditionally considered as relevant in situations of human–wildlife conflict, including anthropocentric, ecological and animal rights/welfare perspectives. Because the very nature of human–wildlife conflict is centred on differences in held values, these types of value-driven positions are not, by themselves, useful in responding to conflict, because of the alternate value positions that they alienate. The chapter then moves to an analysis of two theories – Martha Fineman’s Vulnerability Theory and Ecofeminism. The purpose of the chapter is to analyse the principles of both sets of theories and combine them to develop a new theory of environmental jurisprudence, which will be referred to as ‘Ecological-Vulnerability’. The chapter demonstrates that an ecofeminist approach to vulnerability theory (eco-vulnerability) not only explains the individual and institutional limitations in current methods of addressing human–wildlife conflict but can help to formulate principles that work to transform it.

Environmental sociology studies societal–environmental relations and interactions. With emphasis given to the inseparability of humanity and nature, this chapter adopts an interdisciplinary approach to environmental sociology in order to link environmental philosophy with nature-based tourism. Environmental philosophy studies philosophical issues pertaining to the human–nature relationship, yet few studies address environmental philosophy in relation to tourism. Here we argue that the application of environmental philosophy to nature-based tourism offers potential insights that are important to the interests of environmental sociologists. Using a theoretical framework of environmental philosophy, we carefully explore how the development of mainland ecosanctuaries in New Zealand is linked with theories of environmental ethics, aesthetics and metaphysics. Under the umbrella of environmental sociology, our analysis identifies challenges and opportunities related to how nature-based tourism operators communicate their environmental understandings and conservation practices to tourists shaped by distinct social norms and value systems. It is argued that the ecocentrism-based environmental philosophy and ecological restoration of mainland ecosanctuaries in New Zealand pose a great challenge to the experiences and interests of international tourists from a wide range of diverse social and environmental ‘home’ contexts.