ESEP DISCUSSIONS FORUMS

These statements emphasize the need to work out, discuss and implement a new ethical concept based on ecological knowledge and striving for compatibility between nature and humanity: eco-ethics (Kinne 1997, 2001). The capacity of ecosystems to support balanced biogeochemical processes is instrumental for sustaining the biosphere’s life-supporting properties. These properties are increasingly endangered by global changes, not least due to the activities of modern human societies.

Our historical ethics constructs, developed over centuries by theologians and philosophers, and adopted and implemented by politicians, must be reconsidered and significantly expanded. Important but now partly outdated, these constructs have created an anthropocentric and geocentric human world — a world increasingly contrasting with the realities around us (Kinne 1997, 2001). We are not the center of Planet Earth and the earth is not the center of the universe. We are one species among millions; the earth is one planet among billions in our galaxy, and there are billions of such galaxies.

Over half a millennium ago, Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) in his famous book On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres already expressed similar views (Copernicus 1543). He stated that the earth is not the center around which the sun revolves. Unfortunately, the fact that Homo sapiensis not the center of Earth’s life processes has not received acceptance as widely as the essence of Copernicus’ vision of the cosmos. The understanding of the role of humanity as part of life on Earth has remained largely unchanged in the hearts and minds of millions of people since pre-Copernican times. Fresh efforts are needed to further investigate, explain and teach the organizational rules that govern the coexistence of a multitude of different species and their capacity to organize in ecosystems. In our opinion, in the long run, humanity can survive only with a new concept of ethics: eco-ethics. The concepts and theses of eco-ethics have been formulated in the brochure of the Eco-Ethics International Union (EEIU). Copies of the printed brochure text can be obtained free of charge from EEIU Headquarters (www.int-res.com). The text can also be downloaded from our website (www.eeiu.org). It is available in English, Russian and German and is presently translated into Portuguese. An Indonesian translation and translations into further languages are planned. For eco-ethics-related information see also Polikarpov (2000).

Advancing scientific knowledge underlines the role of ecosystems and the biosphere in supporting, maintaining and stabilizing the global environment and in determining the conditions for the functioning of evolutionary processes. Important scientific evidence was already presented by Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1868-1945). He enriched our understanding of the biosphere, and his books La géochémie (1924) and La biosphère (1929) made him one of the ‘fathers’ of biogeochemistry. Later, additional evidence for the pivotal impact of living systems on the biosphere and global environment including atmosphere, hydrosphere and climate was obtained by numerous scholars. It is now generally acknowledged that the diversity of life on Earth — biodiversity — is of paramount significance (e.g. Wilson 1988, 1990). Recently new studies of the ecological processes leading to water purification in aquatic ecosystems demonstrated that virtually all aquatic organisms are crucially important contributors to the self-support of water quality and the stability of aquatic ecosystems (Ostroumov 2000). All these findings provide solid arguments in support of the cause of biodiversity conservation (Yablokov & Ostroumov 1991). Successful conservation requires:

1. support of the health status of ecosystems;
2. modernization of historical ethics concepts: eco-ethics;
3. appropriate changes in practically all sectors of human activity and behavior, including changes in our minds and attitudes.