Inaugural lecture: Christian Gamborg
To celebrate his appointment as Professor of Environmental Ethics with a focus on conservation and management at the Department of Food and Resource Economics (IFRO), University of Copenhagen, Christian Gamborg will give his inaugural lecture on 11 April, followed by a reception.
Title of lecture: Environmental Ethics in the Human Age: From Conflict to Conviviality and from Protection to Connection
Christian Gamborg’s lecture will probe how we as societies, as stakeholders and professionals have related to nature and how differences in ideas about the right human-nature relationship have created conflicts and sustained rifts between individuals and groups arguing for either utilisation or protection of the natural environment.
The lecture will examine the opportunities and challenges of a more convivial relation to nature (i.e. “living with nature”) where connection seems to be a key aspect of human-nature relations.
About the lecture
The lecture begins with a short history of interest in the natural environment, environmentalism, and describes how environmental ethics – which is concerned with the ethical relationships between humanity and non-human world, and a rather young academic discipline emerging for real in the early 1970s – has developed in the past fifty years. Although the discipline is broad in scope, the focus will here be on conservation and management of the natural environment, reflecting on key research in environmental ethics carried out in the last twenty-five years at IFRO.
The second part takes stock of human-nature relations and challenges, many of which are gargantuan and truly wicked (such as achieving sustainable development, combatting climate change and reducing biodiversity loss). The agenda in human-nature relations is expanding, as we want more things at the same time from nature. Moreover, societies are becoming more pluralistic, with more parties (including non-human animals) having, or wanting, a say. This has led to a situation where aims, uses and relations are conflicting, leading to dilemmas: Whatever solution we choose, we will do something that appears to be bad (for someone or something) and prevent something that appears to be good or useful.
In the final part of the lecture, the desirability and feasibility of a more convivial relation to nature, and how it might manifest itself in management and conservation will be discussed; examining what the prospects and challenges are. At a more concrete level, four possible future research directions in normative, reflective and empirical environmental ethics will be outlined:
- understanding challenges and dilemmas related to wild animals, asking what is the extent and content of obligations to non-human animals (wildlife ethics),
- balancing concerns and prioritization related to biodiversity conservation, asking how to value biodiversity, taking into account environmental and ecological justice issues,
- assessing and addressing change in nature and society, asking how ethical worldviews do and should develop, and
- handling value-based conflicts relation to nature conservation and management, asking whether the normative underpinnings of current conservation models are adequate in light of societal and environmental developments.
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The event is open to all, and we hope to see many of you there!
The reception takes place outside the auditorium.
On behalf of IFRO,
Per Svejstrup, Head of Department