环境决策的伦理向度

Ethical Dimension of Environmental Decision-making

环境决策是指决策在环境领域中的具体应用,即依据需求、偏好和价值观等一系列因素对开发、利用和保护环境等多项行为进行思考和评估,进而选择出最优决策方案的过程。相比一般的公共政策决策,环境决策表现出高度的不确定性、在时间和空间维度上的延展性以及广泛的社会性等特点。其实质是解决利益冲突问题,实现经济、社会与环境利益的协调平衡与可持续发展。它的深层根源在于人与人以及人与环境之间的价值冲突,而化解这些多元价值冲突离不开伦理判断。在实际环境决策中,主要有功利主义、道义论和美德伦理三种伦理形式作为支撑,但是作为一种人际伦理,它们在处理环境决策问题时都表现出不同程度的局限与束缚。环境伦理是对人际伦理的一种深度融合,它关注人与自然、人与社会以及自然与社会等多个层次的关系,主张环境正义、代际平等、尊重自然和环境协同等多项原则。其优势在于,它纳入了对动物、植物、整个生态系统的道德关怀,力图通过对自然内在价值的确立去消除传统的主客二元对立,从而更能为化解多元价值冲突提供合理有效的判断标准和衡量尺度。因此,从人际伦理走向环境伦理,是应对环境决策困境的应然之路,也是其最终伦理归宿。环境决策需要环境伦理的指导,而环境伦理也必然要对当前的环境决策困境做出回应。

Environmental decision-making is a specific application of decision-making in the field of environment, which is a process based on needs, preferences and values etc. to select the optimal decision after considering and evaluating a number of behaviors related to development, utilization and protection of the environment. Compared to the general decision-making in public policy, environmental decision-making is characterized by high uncertainty, extensibility in time and space dimensions, and wide sociality. Its essence is the handling of interest conflicts, and then to achieve coordinative, balanced and sustainable development of economics, society and environment. Environmental decision-making deeply rooted in value conflicts between humans and the environment, and the resolution of these plural value conflicts depends on ethical guidelines. There are mainly three basic ethical guidelines used in practical enviromnental decision-making： utilitarianism, deontology and virtue ethics. However, as interpersonal ethics, they all have their own limitations and constraints in making environmental decisions. Environmental ethics is a comprehensive integration of interpersonal ethics, which focuses on the muhi-level relations between man and nature, man and society, and nature and society, and it advocates environmental justice, intergenerational equality, respect for nature, environmental synergism and so on. Its advantage is that it gives moral consideration to animals, plants, the entire ecosystem, and tries to eliminate the traditional subject-object oppositions through establishing the intrinsic value of nature, which could give us more reliable criteria and guidelines to tackle plural values conflicts. Therefore, turning from interpersonal ethics to environmental ethics is not only the best way to help us out of the dilemma of environmental decision-making, but also the final ethical basis. Environmental decision-making needs the guidelines of environmental ethics, and it is also necessary for environmental ethics to respond to the current difficulties in environmental decision-making.