Is the environment is entitled to a direct moral standing and not merely a standing derived from human interests? According to defenders of eco-centric morality (or ethical holism), our obligation to the environment is direct.⁽²⁾ Consequently, species and ecological systems in themselves, and not just human beings, are a fundamental focus of obligation. Unlike other ethical issues, eco-centrism requires a unique approach. Issues such as animal rights are most often addressed by appealing to commonly accepted moral principles. For example, Peter Singer argues that if we accept key moral principles, specifically the right of a sentient creature to be free from unnecessary pain, then we should thereby recognize that sentient nonhuman animals have this right. But eco-centrism cannot be derived in this manner from our commonly accepted normative principles, since these principles are aimed at the well-being of humans (or at most sentient creatures). Consequently, eco-centrism is unique in its attempt to introduce a new principle into our value system rather than the traditional attempt to refine or draw implications from principles which we have already accepted.

Most formulations of eco-centrism draw from Aldo Leopold's brief essay "The Land Ethic," published in 1949 in his A Sand County Almanac. His essay is important both for its concise statement of eco-centrism and as a sounding board for further discussions of environmental ethics. By examining Leopold's principle of eco-centrism, I will consider whether his principle, or similar principles, can be introduced into our value system without serious conflict with our traditional human oriented obligations, such as prohibitions against stealing. I conclude that only a well qualified prima facie principle of eco-centrism will be consistent with traditional normative principles. I will begin with a brief account of his essay.

Leopold opens his essay by noting that the basis of ethics is the evolution of modes of co-operation. He argues that there are three stages in this development. The first stage involves the co-operative relation between individuals (as seen in the Mosaic Decalogue), and the second stage involves the relation between the individual and society (as seen in the Golden Rule). The third stage is the extension of ethics to "man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it."⁽³⁾ He calls this stage the land ethic and notes that it "simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land."⁽⁴⁾ To bring about the land ethic, which is now only in an embryonic state, he argues that we must develop an ecological conscience which is not guided by economic concerns. To do this he suggests that we focus our attention on the class of all ecological food chains, which he calls the biotic pyramid. The bottom layer of the pyramid is the soil, upon which is built a plant layer, an insect layer, a small animal layer, on up to the apex layer which consists of the larger carnivores. Humans share an intermediate layer with "bears, raccoons, and squirrels which eat both meat and vegetables."

Clearly, evolution plays an important role in Leopold's theory. He says that he purposefully presented the land ethic as a product of social evolution, since,
 

Only the most superficial student of history supposes that Moses "wrote" the Decalogue; it evolved in the minds of a thinking community, and Moses wrote a tentative summary of it for a "seminar." I say tentative because evolution never stops.⁽⁵⁾

But there is a risk when attempting any evolutionary projection.⁽⁶⁾ Often claims are made about the past and future with little room for verification. Serious questions have also been raised about how any evolutionary fact can translate into an obligation.⁽⁷⁾ However, these are metaethic problems which need not be addressed to determine whether there is any normative conflict between Leopold's eco-centrism and standard moral principles.⁽⁸⁾

The key to Leopold's eco-centrism is usually seen as his dictum that "A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community; it is wrong when it tends otherwise."⁽⁹⁾ The most extreme interpretation of this principle is that the highest good is the preservation of the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community, and all other duties stem from this.⁽¹⁰⁾ There is some basis for this interpretation since the parallel between Leopold's principle and Mill's principle of utility is striking if not intentional: "...actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness."⁽¹¹⁾ Like Mill's principle of utility, Leopold's principle is a consequentialist theory of morality. For Leopold, though, the highest good is the well-being of the ecosystem, and not the greatest happiness. Interpreted in this way the implications of Leopold's principle are highly unacceptable. William Aiken argues that the logical consequence of this view is the elimination of 90% of all human animals since such a reduction would clearly advance the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community.⁽¹²⁾

An alternative interpretation of Leopold's principle would be to view it as a rule consequentialist theory, according to the tendency of an act to serve the environmental well-being. This would parallel more closely Mill's rule utilitarianism which focuses on the tendency of actions, as a rule, to produce the greatest happiness. On this interpretation, environmental rules or secondary principles would have an obvious connection to Leopold's first principle. For example, one can easily derive the rule that rain forests ought to be protected. However, the above principle could not lead to secondary moral principles, such as "stealing is wrong," which have no obvious connection with environmental well-being. Further, given Leopold's highest good, an argument could be constructed which would show that, as a rule, stealing is morally permissible. Given that (a) a civilized community could not exist where stealing is permissible, and (b) civilized communities are responsible for most environmental damage, then a rule allowing stealing would clearly be better for the environment than the status quo. But the problem with the above principle of eco-centrism involves more than rules about stealing or even human interaction. For, we could not derive from Leopold's principle the rule that it is wrong to maliciously inflict pain upon sentient creatures. The environment is not threatened by the sadistic torturing of a fox or an elephant (or even all foxes and all elephants), so long as their species do not become endangered in the process.⁽¹³⁾

To avoid these problems, Jon Moline has added a twist to the rule consequentialist interpretation of Leopold's eco-centric principle. According to Moline, the spirit of Leopold's principle is that we are to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community, and this community is, for Leopold, identical to the moral community. And luckily, humans are members of the moral community.⁽¹⁴⁾ Moline's point is that once morality is extended to include "the land," then the actual members of the biotic and moral communities are identical (since both would include soil, plants, animals and humans). But even if we grant that membership in these two communities is identical, Leopold's principle is still unacceptable. For, Leopold's criteria of right and wrong is the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic nature of the moral community. As noted earlier, the biota is represented by what Leopold describes as the biotic pyramid and on that pyramid humans share "an intermediate layer with the bears, raccoons, and squirrels which eat both meat and vegetables." Protecting human endeavors at this biotic level in no way entails non-environmental human obligations such as prohibitions against stealing. All that matters is protecting our place on the food chain.

It seems clear that Leopold's principle will not work as a primary principle where environmental well-being is the highest moral good. However, it may be that he did not intended it to function in that way, particularly in view of his more modest claim that "the land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the [moral] community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively: the land." An alternative interpretation, then, would construe Leopold's principle as one of several foundational principles of morality which he mistakenly cast as a primary principle in the spirit of Mill's principle of utility. In spite of Leopold's ecological insight, this possible miscasting is not surprising since he was not a professional philosopher. Further, as Susan Flader notes, Leopold had only a scattered acquaintance with philosophical writings: "Pencil lines in the margins of many books in his personal library, in combination with uncut pages, suggest he dipped into a good many books without finishing them."⁽¹⁵⁾ He may have been influenced by a brief reading of Mill, or perhaps misdirected by the advice of a philosopher colleague.⁽¹⁶⁾

Recently J. Baird Callicott has offered an analogy for understanding this less extreme interpretation of Leopold's principle. According to Callicott, our various environmental and non-environmental obligations are related in a manner analogous to annular tree rings. The inner and most ancient ring of obligation includes duties to family or friends. Successive rings involve duties to the community, country, world community and, finally to the ecosystem.⁽¹⁷⁾ On this analogy, each category of duties has distinct boundaries so that our social duties are not simply a subset of our environmental duties. Callicott notes that inner rings of obligation carry over to the outer rings:
 

...as a general rule, the duties correlative to the inner social circles to which we belong eclipse those correlative to the rings farther from the heartwood when conflicts arise.⁽¹⁸⁾

However, Callicott fails to note that there must also be a consistency between obligations in the opposite direction (from outer to inner rings). The duty to provide for my family does not entitle me to steal from my social community, kill animals which are self-aware or burn plant species which are endangered. At this point the boundaries between the various rings of obligation become fuzzy and the tree-ring analogy breaks down.

James Heffernan has offered yet another interpretation of Leopold's eco-centrism, and one which addresses the limitations of Callicott's tree-ring analogy. For Heffernan, preserving the integrity, stability an beauty of the biota is only one of several intrinsic goods. Others would be non-environmental human goods such as various human rights. Biotic well-being, then, should be seen as a supplement to humanistic highest goods, and not a replacement. To reconcile these intrinsic goods, Heffernan offers the following principle:
 

...the survival interests of human beings ought to outweigh those of the rest of the biotic community and the survival interests of the rest of the biotic community ought to outweigh the nonsurvival interests of human beings.⁽¹⁹⁾

In this way, Leopold's principle is best interpreted as "an additional prima facie rule of conduct rather than a single new standard of right and wrong."⁽²⁰⁾

Unfortunately, Heffernan's ambiguous use of the term "biotic community" in the above makes his principle either too strong or too weak. If "biotic community" means the whole global ecology, then his principle is too weak since much of the environment could be damaged before the survival of the global ecology is at risk. On the other hand, if by "biotic community" he means smaller regional ecosystems, then his claim is too strong since the survival of some ecosystems (for example, my front lawn) may not be a moral issue at all.

The problem is that all ecosystems are not equal. Some are larger, more rare, more diverse, more complex, or more important than others. Although Heffernan is right that our environmental obligations change according to the survival interests of human beings, he fails to note that our environmental obligations also change according to the ranked importance of a given ecosystem.

The idea of a moral "ranking" is foreign to traditional ethics. Every effort is taken to insure impartiality in our moral judgments so that no person arbitrarily receives preferential consideration. Ecosystems, however, are not persons. Whereas humans are fundamentally the same, ecosystems differ according to the variety of plant and animal species of which they are comprised. All else equal, an ecosystem with rare and endangered species members has greater moral consideration than an ecosystem with only abundant species members. The same would apply to the diversity, complexity and relative sizes of ecosystems. An additional factor would involve the importance of an ecosystem globally. For example, rain forests have high moral consideration not only because of their diversity, complexity and size, but they gain additional moral consideration given their key role in global ecology.

There may be other factors which weigh directly on the moral ranking of an ecosystem, but the above show that such a ranking is necessary. Accordingly, eco-centrism is best understood as follows:
 

Obligation to the environment is one of several prima facie foundational moral principles, the priority of which depends upon (a) the nature of the ecosystem in question (i.e. its rarity, complexity, diversity, size and global importance) and (b) the survival interests of human beings.

When formulated in this way, eco-centrism could be reasonably rectified with standard moral principles so that our various environmental and human obligations would be ranked in importance. What remains, though, is to determine precisely how rare, complex, diverse or large an ecosystem must be before it has priority over particular human interests. In practice, this would be the responsibility of informed legislators who would resolve conflicts on a case by case basis, either in favor of the environment or in favor of human interests. But even in cases where human interests would have priority, the eco-centric intuition would still be preserved since contending environmental interests would still require direct consideration.

1. Thanks to J. Baird Callicott for his comments.

2. Proponents of holism include J. Baird Callicott, Richard Routley, Holmes Rolston III, and John Rodman.

3. Aldo Leopold, "The Land Ethic," in A Sand County Almanac, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 218.

4. Ibid., 219.

5. Ibid., 241.

6. The following from 19th century writer E.D. Cope shows how absurd some evolutionary projections can get: "...were woman of the same sex as man, that is, were she simply another kind of man, she would soon be eliminated from the earth under the operation of the ordinary law of the survival of the fittest.... It is self-evident then that any system which looks to a career for women independent of man, such as man pursues, is abnormal, and injurious to her interests" ("On the Material Relations of Sex," Monist, 1, 1890, 39-40).

7. For a metaethical discussion of this subject, see J. Baird Callicott, "Hume's Is/Ought Dichotomy and the Relation of Ecology to Leopold's Land Ethic," Environmental Ethics, 4, 1982, 163-174.

8. Antony Flew notes three benefits of evolutionary ethics: (1) the evolutionary findings of scientists have implications on metaethical questions about the nature of ethics, (2) we might anticipate future moral conflicts, such as the moral problems of overpopulation, and (3) we might better find the place of humans in the greater scheme of things; Evolutionary Ethics, (New York: MacMillan, 1967).

9. Aldo Leopold, "The Land Ethic," 240.

10. This interpretation has most often been associated with J. Baird Callicott. See, for example, William Aiken, James Heffernan, and Jon Moline cited below. This association is usually based on Callicott's reference to Leopold's principle as the "categorical imperative or principal precept of the land ethic" in his "Animal Liberation: A Triangular Affair," (Environmental Ethics, 2, 1980, 320). However, recent publications of his make it clear that this association is unfair.

11. J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism, ed. Samuel Gorovitz, (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971), 18.

12. William Aiken, "Ethical Issues in Agriculture," Earthbound, ed. Tom Regan, (New York: Random House, 1984), 269.

13. Ironically, a rule consequentialist interpretation of Leopold's principle resembles a quite primitive or Hobbesian stage of moral evolution, and not a final stage of moral evolution as Leopold suggests.

14. Jon Moline, "Aldo Leopold and the Moral Community," Environmental Ethics, 8, 1986, 99-120.

15. Susan Flader, "Leopold's `Some Fundamentals of Conservation': A Commentary," Environmental Ethics, 1, 1979, 147.

16. Flader notes that Leopold was receptive to suggestions by colleagues who read drafts of his papers. Ibid., 145-147.

17. Ibid., 411.

18. J. Baird Callicott, "The Conceptual Foundations of the Land Ethic," Companion to "A Sand County Almanac", (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), 208.

19. James D. Heffernan, "The Land Ethic: A Critical Appraisal," Environmental Ethics, 4, 1982, 246.

20. Ibid., 247.