In order to address the full magnitude of the ecological crisis, communities need points of contact that provide enjoyment, build community, and foster "nature connection." The ability of the local food movement to provide these points of contact has fueled its rapid expansion in the last decade; however, no study to date has examined the impact of direct involvement in the movement on the ecological ethics of local congregations. This study assessed the impact of a communal vegetable garden project on the ecological ethics of an urban and a suburban United Methodist congregation in the Boston area. The study used a participatory action ethnographic model as well as an Ecological Ethics Index scale to assess overall impacts as well as impacts in the areas of ecological spirituality, community, discipleship, and justice. The study found impacts in all four areas, particularly within the suburban congregation, which integrated the project into the central identity and ministries of the church. The urban church had already integrated other food justice ministries into its central identity and ministry; the data also showed impacts in the urban church context, particularly among the project participants. The main findings of the study revealed the influential role of supportive communities, and particularly of elder mentors, in fostering nature connection experiences among the participants. The church-based locations of the gardens, as well as the hands-on, participatory nature of the projects, increased Earth-centered spiritual awareness and practices as well as pro-environmental discipleship behaviors. The visual impact of the gardens in a church context increased awareness of issues related to food justice. The gardens functioned as a means of grace that connected the participants and the wider congregations to the land near their church buildings in new ways; the gardens provided a connection to concepts of the Divine in the Creation as well as enjoyable opportunities to share the harvest among the community and with hungry communities. In these ways, the gardens connected the congregations to the Wesleyan ideas of grace and inspired new forms of Wesleyan responsibility for social and ecological transformation.

abstract: Overall, biofuels play a significant role in future energy sourcing and deserve thorough researching and examining for their best use in achieving sustainable goals. National and state policies are supporting biofuel production as a sustainable option without a holistic view of total impacts. The analysis from this research connects to policies based on life cycle sustainability to identify other environmental impacts beyond those specified in the policy as well as ethical issues that are a concern. A Life cycle assessment (LCA) of switchgrass agriculture indicates it will be challenging to meet U.S. Renewable Fuel Standards with only switchgrass cellulosic ethanol, yet may be used for California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard. Ethical dilemmas in food supply, land conservation, and water use can be connected to biofuel production and will require evaluation as policies are created. The discussions around these ethical dilemmas should be had throughout the process of biofuel production and policy making. Earth system engineering management principles can help start the discussions and allow anthropocentric and biocentric viewpoints to be heard. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Civil and Environmental Engineering 2014

The price of emission permits is deemed too low to mitigate climate change. In three studies, policy approaches to pricing carbon in a market setting are examined. First, the emission permit market is analyzed comparatively to how the ethanol mandate impacted prices in the corn market. This leads to the realization that the marketization of carbon is more like a currency than a physical commodity. The next study examines emission permits as a monetary policy tool. Emissions correlate GDP output, thus central banks can use emission permits as forward guidance, as a means to optimize the price for climate change mitigation, and as an alternative to interest rates. Opinions of thought leaders are used to question the acceptability of emission permits as a monetary policy tool. The final study is an ethical analysis using deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics within a pragmatic philosophical context, analyzing carbon as a monetary policy tool. In order for carbon as a monetary policy tool to be considered ethically acceptable, it must satisfy the temporal, spatial and institutional dilemmas of climate change articulated in Stephen Gardiner’s Perfect Moral Storm. Under this ethical standard, it is found that using carbon as a monetary policy tool can help address these concerns, but not solve them alone. This research is presented using transdisciplinary methods which provide a unique and holistic approach to policy formation not yet presented in the literature. This research is relevant to policy makers in central banking, the IMF and World Bank.

LL.M. (Human Rights Law) / Figures released recently by the South African Department of Environmental Affairs indicate that rhino are being poached in South Africa at an alarmingly high rate, meaning that they are being used like a never-ending commercial resource. It has been debated in South Africa that, if legal trade in rhino horn were to be introduced, it may be a solution to curbing rhino poaching. There are animal rights views that condemn the use and exploitation of nonhuman animals for the financial gain of human beings, one of the foremost rights views being that of Tom Regan. In his view, he proposes ways in which nonhuman animals can be perceived as more than just commercial resources. He elaborates on how nonhuman animals can be regarded as beings in their own right with a unique value that entitles them to respectful treatment and, at the very least, protection from harm and cruel treatment. Analyses and arguments made in this dissertation are not rooted in what the economic consequences of having trade in rhino horn would be. They are rooted in morality and in law to demonstrate why trade should be seen as a solution that is a last resort to curbing rhino poaching. The first chapter of this dissertation concerns itself with unpacking the central tenets and principles of Regan’s rights view in the context of how nonhuman animals can be regarded as beings rather than resources. The second chapter provides an analysis of approaches in environmental ethics that are relevant for preserving the rhino for future generations and how this could be achieved with reference to Regan’s rights view. The third chapter deals with the application of Regan’s rights view to legal and illegal trade in rhino horn. This will also include evaluation of plausible methods for securing rhino horn that are available in the event that legal trade in rhino horn is accepted as a solution to the current rhino poaching situation in South Africa.

A phenomenological inquiry of five place-aware biology teachers was conducted to determine how teachers’ lived experiences in place influence their pedagogy, if at all. High school biology teachers from one public and private school in Victoria, British Columbia were recruited through volunteer sampling. Through in-depth interviews, journal writings and artefacts representative of lived experiences of place, teachers were invited to share their lived experience narratives of places of meaning and teaching experiences of place. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s embodiment phenomenology, a case-by-case thematic analysis was first conducted per informant, followed by analyses of commonalities across informants as appropriate. It was found that teachers shared similar experiences in different places of meaning: a sense of mystery that there is always something to be revealed, an experience of the vastness and complexity of places, a sense of care for nature as the Other and a feeling of fondness for places as shared through close family and community members. However, the degree and manner in which such experiences transferred into teachers’ pedagogies differed, as some teachers demonstrated a stronger intentionality of place-consciousness than others. The study highlights the humanness of teachers and the unique styles that individual teachers bring into their practices. I suggest that the complex and multidimensional notion of places as revealed through the study opens possibilities for holistic approaches in science education, with a focus on embodied, caring consciousness for the places that we inhabit. / Graduate

This thesis aims at bringing about a greater awareness of the interpretive nature of forestry sciences by examining the ethics and values underlying the “Emulation of Natural Disturbance” (END) forest management approach in Canada. The thesis contains four main manuscripts. The first manuscript reports on a mental models analysis of the meaning of the END for academic forestry scientists across Canada. The results of this study indicate inconsistencies and contradictions between scientists’ mental model of the END, which puts into question the utility and appropriateness of the END for forestry policy. The second manuscript discusses the ethics underlying the END and critiques its policy implications from a pragmatic perspective. In the third manuscript the ethics and values underlying the END are put in relation with Holmes Rolston III’s ethics of “Following Nature”. The last manuscript reports on a survey of forestry curricula across North America conducted to ascertain the level of formal training in ethics afforded to professional foresters and natural resource managers. This manuscript contains a proposed course syllabus in forestry ethics. The curricula study complements the other manuscripts in that it is meant as another means by which to promote interdisciplinary dialogue among forestry scientists, environmental ethicists, and social scientists. In this thesis, in addition to trying to illustrate how ethics shape our interpretations of forests, a pragmatic approach is used to dissolve the fact/values and Nature/Culture dichotomies in forestry sciences and to argue for a more democratic approach to forestry policy. / Forestry, Faculty of / Graduate

This thesis examines the intersection between religion and environmental ethics in Jainism. Religious traditions, as they confront the challenges of modernity, are redefining their traditional mores and narratives in ways that appear, and are, contemporary and relevant. One of the most striking ways in which Jains are accomplishing this, is through their self-presentation as inherently “ecological” through their use of “Western” animal rights discourse in tandem with traditional Jain doctrine. This essay seeks to explore the ways in which this is accomplished, and how these new understandings are being established and understood by members of this “living” community.

This research looks at the change in ethical sensibilities towards a mangrove in a fishing colony in the periphery of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and at how they may have changed as the mangrove became a protected area and entered the environmental assemblage. Formerly called Z-1, this was the first of 800 cooperative fishing colonies founded along the Brazilian coast in 1920 as part of a government initiative. The study unveiled the following pattern around the mangrove: from being a source of livelihood and place for communal activities up until the 1970s, it became the locus of an environmental movement in the 80s and 90s after it was devastated by a big fire. The concrete outcome of the movement was the creation of the APARU, Area of Environmental Protection and Urban Regeneration, which meant that after more than seventy years under a system of tutelage by the Navy, the colony and the mangrove were subjected to an environmental form of governance administered by the City Council, and the mangrove went from being a taken-for-granted thing to an environmentally-oriented concept. It finally fell silent and isolated as it became increasingly polluted, even if ‘protected’ by a municipal decree. The main argument presented is that, as the mangrove passed from nature to environment, which implied a change in governance from the Navy to the Department of Environment, people found creative ways of holding on to its thingness, and to ethical values that at times conflict with the broader environmental assemblage. Those local ethics forge the links that sustain an ecological assemblage, and the ethics prescribed by the environmental governance currently in place can be undermined by more embedded values. That said, local knowledge and practices are environmentally informed, and different ways of being political emerge. This community was not only created literally on a mangrove, but it was also symbolically and politically reproduced through the mangrove, and even more so after it became a protected area. The dialectical outcomes of the relationships between human beings and the mangrove, and between human beings as they multiply, transform the landscape continuously, just as the mangrove in its perpetual unfolding impresses itself upon human matters and sustains the social ordering of things. As new elements are assembled around the mangrove, from discarded utensils to stories of environmental activism, the mangrove is enacted as heritage, as nature, as a biome, as culture, as pollution, as an institution, and as environment. This thesis hopes to contribute towards the broader body of literature on environmental anthropology, political ecology, and anthropology of moralities, by focusing on ‘human-disturbed environments’ (Tsing 2013) and bringing attention to the value of local perceptions in policy making.

The contemporary concept of wilderness, which is central to environmental theory and activism, is both a help and a hindrance to government policy and to popular environmental beliefs. The Judeo-Christian religious tradition and Locke's property theory provides much of the western cultural and historical basis of humans' environmental attitudes that basically engender exploitation. I argue that a more precise interpretation of Genesis and of Locke reveals that both sources actually promote environmental stewardship while decrying ecological abuse. Next I analyze the history and shortcomings of various wilderness concepts. These shortcomings are all forms of an exclusionist mentality and result in some harmful theoretical and practical applications. Some of these applications include the separation of humans from nature, and the propensity of governments and the public to allow ecological degradation in non-wilderness areas. Yet there are beneficial aspects to wilderness that contribute to a deeper understanding of human nature and our place in the world. Wilderness helps us to remember our wild and primal aspects that provide a connection with nature. In light of the perils and power of wilderness I offer a new, radical, inclusive, and expansive notion of wilderness that I name "dwellness." Dwellness is a normative ethical position where all areas upon the earth ought to be viewed by people in the same way as wilderness areas are currently viewed, but with some modifications. Unlike wilderness, dwellness includes humans within nature and also contains the idea of sustainable living practices. To support dwellness I turn to Martin Heidegger. By identifying the world as a place where we dwell and in which we belong, we come to a more profound understanding of Being, or existence, in general and of our own particular modes of being. By learning to look at the world in this new, yet old, way we may then understand how important and central is the world, a mode of Being, to the existence and maintenance of our Being. Finally, I answer some possible objections to dwellness. These objections revolve around problems of industrial pollution (waste), which, under dwellness, would have to be considered natural.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Environmentalism has incorrectly, historically been canonized as a primarily white, primarily male, led movement. This thesis argues that the history of the environmental movement has been whitewashed. Women of color have been the main arbiters of change as leaders in their community who organize against the environmental degradation that disproportionately affects communities of color. Change is implemented by these women through representation, grassroots organizing, and coalition but these strategies have been unrecognized and undervalued for decades. As the rate of environmental degradation rapidly increases, specifically affecting communities of color, the voices of women of color need to be recognized, elevated, and heeded in order to make an environmental movement that prioritizes justice and the importance of intersectional voices