Geoethics

With Geoethik be ethical ideas and considerations referred to in connection with acts of intervention in the Earth system and the environment as well as large ecological associated and other global consequences. The term is based on other ethical disciplines such as bioethics or neuroethics , which also deal with moral issues in connection with new technical and social developments.

Concept history

The term geoethics first appeared in specialist literature in the early 1990s, on the one hand in connection with questions of human rights-oriented sustainability education, and on the other hand in connection with the responsibility of geoscientists in earthquake risk assessment. According to their own statement, the Czech geoscientists Vaclav Nemec and Lidmila Nemcová also used the term at a conference in 1993 to address ethical dilemmas in connection with mining and “the sustainable use of non-renewable mineral resources”. In connection with new geoethical developments ( geoengineering ) the term was also extended to this area. The futurologist Jamais Cascio finally formulated a somewhat more comprehensive definition:

Geoethics is the set of guidelines pertaining to human behaviors that can affect larger planetary geophysical systems, including atmospheric, oceanic, geological, and plant / animal ecosystems. These guidelines are most relevant when the behaviors can result in long-term, widespread and / or hard-to-reverse changes in planetary systems, although even transient, local and superficial alterations can be considered through the prism of geoethics. Geoethical principles do not forbid long-term, widespread and / or hard-to-reverse changes, but require a consideration of repercussions and so-called "second-order effects" (that is, the usually-unintended consequences arising from the interaction of the changed system and other connected systems).

Cascio stated that geoethics would have to integrate traditional values ​​such as freedom, justice, self-determination, human dignity and human rights. The journalist Gábor Paál introduced the term to the German-speaking area and referred to it primarily on ethics in connection with global ecological issues.

In 2013, Italian geoscientists founded the International Association for Promoting Geoethics . As they see themselves, geoethics touches on those ethical questions that arise where human activities intervene in the geosphere. "" Geoethics deals with the ethical, social and cultural implications of geological research and practice. "Individual approaches place geoethics in a context with the Anthropocene postulated by geoscientists .

Main features

Parallels / differences to other newer ethical disciplines

Paál sees the development of geoethics in analogy to other new "ethics" such as bioethics or neuroethics . These, too, emerged in response to ethical challenges that earlier societies did not face to the same extent. The triggers are often new technologies (cloning, genetic engineering, pre-implantation diagnostics, stem cell research, neuro-enhancement)

The discussion about bioethics ... arose from the progress in biomedicine ... because technical progress has, as it were, pulled certain borderlines - between life and death, between self and external determination and between biological species - under the microscope. There they suddenly appear blurred, permeable and above all: manipulable. Bioethics became necessary because the premises of traditional ethics - every form of human life is always, unconditionally and at any cost to be preserved; other forms of life, on the other hand, only have a conditional right to protection; and only "fate" decides about death - so they could no longer be maintained.

Even the global change leads to problems, did not know the former companies: For this part

• the finiteness of natural resources and sinks
• human intervention in global material cycles (carbon, nitrogen, water, phosphorus)
• the global impact of local emissions
• the globalization of crises and risks (e.g. financial crisis, food crises, epidemics)

features

Geoethics is shaped by the key concept of sustainability and goes beyond pure environmental ethics . It is true that the term “sustainability” is fuzzy and used inflationarily - but that also applies to the central concept of traditional ethics “justice”.

Sustainability is an expanded form of justice that also includes justice for future generations. What is fair in individual cases and what is not can be debated. It is no different with sustainability. However, it is crucial as a point of orientation. Just as there can be no morality without the idea of ​​justice, there is no future without the idea of ​​sustainability.

This results in a further feature of a geoethical perspective: sustainability problems do not arise from individual actions, but from the sum of actions, in particular the growing material demands of a growing world population. But that also makes it difficult to enforce geoethical principles: We therefore usually make moral judgments about actions in which clear cause-harm-consequences can be identified (theft, lies, fraud, murder, ...). Human intuition, on the other hand, struggles with the ethical dimension of decisions in connection with systemic risks - as are typical for the problems of global change.

credentials

1. ↑ Savolainen, K. 1992. Education and human rights: new priorities. In: Adult Education for International Understanding, Human Rights and Peace. Report of the workshop held at UIE, Hamburg, April 18-19, 1991. UIE Reports, 11. Unesco Institute for Education, Hamburg, 43-48
2. ^ Cronin, VS 1992. On the seismic activity of the Malibu Coast Fault Zone, and other ethical problems in engineering geoscience. Geological Society of America, Abstracts with Programs, 24, (7), A284.
3. ↑ Vaclav Nemec: To the roots of geoethics. Retrieved January 3, 2017.
4. ↑ Jamais Cascio (2005): Terraforming Earth, Part III: Geoethical Principles. ( Memento of the original from December 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ We need geoethics. Time online. December 2, 2010.
   For creation or for man? World food from a geoethical perspective. In: Gottwald, Franz-Theo and Boergen, Isabel (Ed.) Essen & Moral. Contributions to the ethics of nutrition. Marburg 2013.
6. ^ Homepage International Association for Promoting Geoethics
7. ↑ Gábor Paál: Opinion: The Anthropocene must remain scientific! In: Spektrum.de. May 20, 2015. Accessed January 31, 2017.
8. ^ Paál, Gábor: Geoethics. The challenge of global change. In: Voigt, Beatrice (Hrsg.): BodenLeben - experience path into the interior of the earth Munich 2013, pp. 124-131
9. ↑ We need geoethics! Zeit-online, 2010