Sarah Espinosa

Exploiting someone is unarguably wrong, but can the same be said of exploiting something like oil fields or a forest? Exploitation of a person typically involves taking advantage of them or benefiting at their expense, whereas the exploitation of something like a forest merely involves its utilization. This paper explores this difference and addresses the question of whether the exploitation of so-called natural resources can be understood in the former sense, thus making it relevant to moral philosophy, and also to ecosystem governance.

Understood as sets of rules governing the use of objects considered valuable, concepts of property commonly respond to pressing social questions about why and how to obtain such control over these objects. However, objects that are considered valuable or that people want or have wanted to possess feature properties that make them very different from one another. Still, this is not always reflected in the way property is conceptualised in relation to them. This point becomes especially significant when we consider that these objects may be natural resources whose capacity to sustain over time while satisfying human needs is increasingly threatened by the way in which their use is governed. In this chapter, I propose a model of property conceptualisation based on what I consider to be the salient properties of natural resources. I argue that, in most cases, salient properties of a given resource consist of relational properties between the resource and the would-be resource holder, i.e., they consist of what I take to be physical and normative properties of the resource. Thus, the aim of this chapter is to suggest a ‘greentopian’ way of conceptualising property that contemplates the relational nature of the resources that humans have reason to possess and to approach issues related to their conservation from a philosophical and historical perspective.

One could argue that the use, extraction, and development of natural resources for human purposes, i.e. resource exploitation, constitutes a form of instrumentalization of the ecosystems from which these resources are derived. Moreover, that such instrumentalization may be carried out in a way that has adverse social and environmental impacts. Given that a number of ecosystems are indispensable for the satisfaction of human interests and needs, their instrumentalization may nevertheless be justified. In this context, if the amount and rate of instrumentalization of ecosystems leads to their depletion, people whose well-being depends on the ecosystems’ existence may be profoundly harmed. Those instrumentalization practices and actions that lead to states of depletion are generally considered as harmful, but only to those whose interests and needs are frustrated as a result of such practices and actions. In this paper, I argue that the way in which ecosystems are instrumentalized, and not just the quantity and rate, may also cause a philosophically relevant form of harm, and not necessarily to humans: A given ecosystem may be meaningfully harmed not only when it is depleted, but also when its functioning is altered in such a way that it cannot retain core capacities it had before it was instrumentalized.

Emissions trading, also known as cap-and-trade systems, has not yet fulfilled its function of mitigating overall global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The reasons for this failure are manifold and have been broadly discussed at political and empirical levels in the last decades. However, much can still be said from a philosophical perspective. Such an analysis is not limited to the evaluation of cap-and-trade systems’ lack of efficiency and the consequences arising from it but goes deeper into the moral questions underlying cap-and-trade systems. This is how this paper attempts to contribute to and expand the debate on emissions trading at different levels. By examining a popular analogy between traditional and climate commons, I challenge some of the economic and normative assumptions at the core of cap-and-trade systems. I argue that these assumptions lead to misguided conclusions in responding to the causes of climate change. This will partly explain why, although emissions trading is intended to fulfil a duty to mitigate greenhouse gases, we should not pin all our hopes on it just yet.

The things that matter most to us are usually those that have some deep meaning and special connection to us. Either because we find them beautiful, because they bring back good memories, or simply because they are things, whose existence we cherish (even if cannot fully explain why). There are also those things that are needed to live and therefore, we value more than any other. Water, food and air are good examples of these things. They are natural resources intrinsically necessary to sustain life and to which all humans want to have access. However, this may not be the only reason why these resources are valuable or worthy of respect. In this paper, I shall defend the view that certain natural resources can be considered valuable not only because they are life-sustaining resources or because they bring direct and countable benefits to people. The ‘integrity’ of these resources, from which many goods and services are derived, can be considered valuable regardless of how necessary it is to sustain human life. Based on this idea, it is expected to question those forms of access and use of natural resources that are beneficial to humans, but that cause serious damage to the environment or that fail to respect the life of other non-human living beings.