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Environmental issues are often complex with many different constituents operating according to a broad range of communication techniques. In order to foster negotiations, different perspectives need to be articulated in lucid ways sensitive to various viewpoints and circumstances. In my thesis I investigate how certain approaches to environmental discourse effect dialogue and negotiation. My first two chapters focus on environmental problems surrounding rangeland ecology along the U.S./Mexico border; whereas the last two chapters explore more theoretical conflicts concerning the philosophy of nature. Throughout the thesis I show the significance of nonhumans (prairie dogs, cattle, biological assessment sheets, environmental laws, etc.) in the human community. Only by considering the roles of nonhumans do we broaden and enrich the conversation between ourselves concerning environmental issues.

Depuis les années 1970, les philosophies environnementales se sont essentiellement préoccupées de la question de la valeur morale de la nature rare et remarquable qui subsiste dans quelques régions de la planète. Héritant de la pensée américaine de la wilderness, les philosophes de l'environnement se sont efforcés de donner des fondations théoriques à la valeur intrinsèque d'une nature, dont l'homme se devait d'être absent. Ce faisant, Ils laissaient à penser que sur les terres habitées ou transformées par les hommes, qui couvrent la quasi-totalité de la surface de la planète, il fallait renoncer à penser la nature. A rebours de cette idée, nous soutenons qu'il y a de la nature dans les sociétés humaines, que nous faisons société avec la nature En suivant cette hypothèse, nous ferons apparaître, il partir d'un matériau descriptif varié, que nos activités productives et reproductives engagent, en effet, de nombreux acteurs naturels, mais aussi que, très souvent, nous nous conduisons mal avec ces derniers. C'est ce qui nous semble motiver l'élaboration d'une éthique de la nature ordinaire. / Since the 1970s, environmental philosophy has been mainly concerned with the intrinsic value of nature and with the preservation of some rare and remarkable forms of nature which stand in remote areas, Influenced by the American classical idea of wilderness, which excludes humans from nature, environmental philosophers worked to elaborate intrinsic value theories of nature. By doing so, they suggested that nature had disappeared from the hum an inhabited world, i.e. from almost the whole Earth. Against this idea, I argue for nature being part of our societies. Humans and nature share a living mutual interdependence. Following this hypothesis, we will see how natural beings could be considered partners in most of our productive and reproductive activities, while we often act wrongly with these natural members of our communities. That's why there is a need for an ethics of everyday nature.

xii, 167 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / Butte, Montana has served as the epicenter of hard rock mining and mineral processing in the Upper Clark Fork River Basin (UCFRB) for nearly 150 years. As a result, the UCFRB contains the largest contiguous complex of major environmental clean-up projects in the United States. Contemporary U.S. environmental problem- solving is characterized by an emphasis on meaningful public participation in environmental decision-making. The U.S. is committed to the realization of environmental justice, which requires that affected publics, especially the working classes who tend to bear a disproportionate share of the environmental burdens, influence environmental clean-up efforts. However, much of the critical literature on the subject suggests that in practice the public is rarely included as a significant force in decision-making. In hard-used places like Butte, Montana, the community's ecological problems are compounded by their democratic problems. This constitutes an integrated crisis in ecology and democracy, the problem at the heart of this inquiry. This dissertation presents a pragmatic interrogation of U.S. environmental problem-solving from an ethical and environmental communication research perspective. It is a work of pragmatic moral philosophy in the tradition of John Dewey. The overarching methodology is Systematic Moral Analysis (SMA), which unfolds in five phases: problem recognition, problem diagnosis, moral analysis, evaluation, and moral action. This research concludes by suggesting philosophically defensible principles to guide future U.S. environmental decision-making based on pragmatic criteria emphasizing the health and well-being of both democratic and environmental systems as the highest good in environmental problem-solving. / Committee in charge: Julianne Newton, Chairperson, Journalism and Communication; Stephen Ponder, Member, Journalism and Communication; Thomas Bivins, Member, Journalism and Communication; John Foster, Outside Member, Sociology

[pt] A crise ecológica que enfrentamos hoje nos alerta sobre o perigo que corremos se continuarmos a abusar da natureza explorando-a como fonte inesgotável de matérias primas para os inventos do homem. Como se não bastasse a degradação de boa parte de seus ecossistemas, o uso pelas indústrias farmacêuticas e alimentícias representa uma das principais fontes de exploração desenfreada daqueles que são classificados como carentes de razão, afeto ou vontade. Neste sentido, a busca por uma ética mais ecocêntrica se faz necessária. Para pensar uma ética que abarcasse a relação dos homens com os animais é que recorremos aqui ao conceito de simpatia, elaborado pelo filósofo empirista britânico David Hume. Este conceito é elaborado como um princípio de distinção moral entre os homens, mas está presente também nas operações mentais dos animais entre si. Queremos defender que o conceito de simpatia, como um mecanismo de comunicação de sentimentos entre os humanos e entre os animais, pode ser estendido para a relação entre homens e animais, e assim contribuir para o desenvolvimento da conduta humana em relação ao bem-estar destes seres, principalmente nas produções de escala industrial. Para isso, tomaremos como exemplo a perspectiva daqueles que criam e trabalham com os animais, servindonos da análise de Vinciane Despret e Jocelyne Porcher no livro Être Bête. Aspiramos, ainda, apresentar uma crítica à zootecnia como ciência que mecanizou os animais e os isolou dos homens, transformando-os em produtos e distorcendo o conceito de bem-estar, o qual buscaremos averiguar. / [en] The ecological crisis we face today warns us against the danger involving the continuous and abusive exploitation of nature as an inexhaustible source of raw materials at the service of mankind s inventions. Besides the degradation of a significant part of its ecosystems, the use by the drug and food companies alone, accounts for a great deal of a rampant exploitation of those classified as being deprived of reason, affection or will. In this sense, the pursuit for a more ecocentric ethics is mandatory. To think of an ethics that embodies the relationship between men and animals, we resort to the concept of sympathy, created by the Scottish empirical philosopher David Hume. The concept, elaborated as a principle of moral distinction among men, is also present in the mental operations of animals as they interact among themselves. We advocate that the concept of sympathy, as a means of communication of feelings among humans and among animals, can also be extended to the relationship between the men and animals, thus contributing to the evolution of human conduct towards the welfare of these creatures, especially when it comes to large scale production. In order to do so, we will make use of the perspective of those who raise and work with animals, using the analysis of Vinciane Despret e Jocelyne Porcher to support this thesis, found in their book Être Bête. Also, we aim to express our criticism to animal husbandry as a science which helped reinforce the mechanization of animals, thus isolating them from men, making them into products and twisting the concept of well being itself, which we will try to ascertain.

This study assumes, rather than debates, that there is an increasingly global environmental crisis – global warming, loss of ozone layer, biodiversity loss, deforestation and desertification, natural resource depletion, toxic pollution - brought about by western nations’ abuse of the natural environment during nineteenth century industrialization, continuing through the twentieth century, and, many would argue, into the new millennium as well. Greens have been warning of the dangers of human-induced climate change since the 1960s. And yet, their analysis of the reasons for the wide and global range of ecological problems currently being experienced, of which climate change is only one, is not widely known. And even less so, are their solutions to the ecological crisis. This thesis, “Towards the development of a "green" worldview, and criteria to assess the "green-ness" of a text: Namibia Vision 2030 as example”, poses two research questions, and undertakes three tasks. The first question asks: “What does ‘seeing green’ as worldview mean?” “Green” emerges as not only pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours, but a fundamental challenge to western-cultural views on Self, and on the Self/Other relationship, including our human-nature relationship. It represents a total worldview, with its own legitimating narratives, epistemology, ontology, ethics, and viewpoints on real-world political issues as well. The green worldview differs sharply in its ultimate premises from mainstream sustainable development. On the green view, only the radical changes in Self, the Self/Other relationship, and society’s structures, which a green worldview demands, will be sufficient to avert the impending ecological crisis. A green worldview, while containing considerable diversity, is still sufficiently coherent and consistent that it can be reduced to a set of criteria and indicators for “seeing green”. This was the study’s second task. The study’s third task co-incides with its second research question: “How green is Namibia Vision 2030s worldview?” Namibia Vision 2030 is Namibia’s premier policy text designed to guide Namibia through a generation of sustainable development. Using the green criteria and indicators developed during the study, it is argued that particularly as far as this text’s ultimate premises on the human/nature relationship are concerned, its worldview is best described as pale green fading into grey. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Psychology / unrestricted

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In 2016, An estimated 15,000 people representing 400 Indigenous Nations and non-indigenous allies gathered at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in solidarity against the Dakota Access Pipeline to protect Mni Sose, the Missouri River. They became known as the Water Protectors. This dissertation analyzes the response in environmental philosophy journals to the #noDAPL protest at Standing Rock. Even though the Stand at Standing Rock became one of the most important and monumental environmental protests of the last decade, neither Standing Rock nor the Water Protectors appear in environmental philosophy journals at all--not once. Why? I suggest a possible answer by exploring the Stand of the Water Protectors as a moment in a much longer continuous history of resistance to settler colonialism. Settler colonialism attempts to facilitate the erasure of Indigenous populations by colonial ones, in order to gain access to territory—to land. The omission of Standing Rock from environmental philosophy journals represents the ease with which environmental philosophy can become complicit in the project of settler colonial erasure and replacement through absence. Drawing on Indigenous land-based philosophies of kinship, Latin American decolonial philosophy, settler colonial theory, and frameworks of Indigenous environmental justice, I show how the geo-politics of colonialism have come to produce environmental injustice and planetary ruin. I work to break the silence on Standing Rock in environmental philosophy and allow the Water Protectors example to guide the project toward an environmental philosophy which centers colonialism and Indigenous resurgence as core concerns.

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