What “environmental harm” Signifies on Legal, Economic and Ethical Contexts?
Presentation, pp.385, 2023
- Publication Type: Other Publication / Presentation
- Publication Date: 2023
- Page Numbers: pp.385
- Istanbul University Affiliated: Yes
Abstract
Causes and effects of the climate change is tried to be analysed and evaluated in many different measures of sciences and also on philosophical conceptualizations as value and harm, what the harm means, determining the agents that can be held specifically responsible for the harm. Since our existence and operation in the world is includes transformation of surroundings, thus the focus on measuring the harm should be on the legislative, regulative and moral basis of these human interventions. On this account, human interference on environment should be questioned as: on what basis these disruptive interventions are treated as legal, feasible, adequate, morally permissible and legitimate? The legal system and legislative regulations aim to establish a framework for limiting the damage inflicted on the environment. In line with this objective, environmental law has emerged as a field of law that addresses environmental issues and concerns. Legal texts and decisions are actually a process of a moral and ethical discussion. Considering the fact that laws and legal texts have such a basis and the decisiveness of the ethical dispute, it should be the subject of a much more comprehensive discussion on which moral basis the restrictions and provisions introduced in the lawmaking processes are shaped. In this direction, in the text, I discuss Joseph Raz and Joel Feinberg's conceptions of harm and their relationship with the legal regulations and making of law in the USA. American legal realism regards the law exists to create a positive effects on society, which is a consequentalist view. Legal realism deals with many sciences other than law (economics, criminology, psychology, statistics and general sociology) and turned their way to analytical and normativist positivism. Law utilizes scientific knowledge to define the value of something and its possessions. It defines the value of a natural element by employing indexes and criteria established through scientific data. Another important factor is forms of economic and technical scaling and measurements when to consider laws as reference point for an effort to prevent acts that harm the environment. Because in order to reach a conclusion about nature and degree of the harm, the indexes, measures and graphics used to evaluate the extent of the “harm” by prioritizing the efficiency or feasibility. Many projects, production facilities and services are evaluated in the light of these criteria and their construction and operation is considered feasible, efficient and legal. In this context, what I am trying to highlight is that the value human beings attribute to non-human elements in nature, particularly their utility value and their value as a commodity, often takes precedence over other forms of value. Keywords: Harm Principle, Environmental Law, Measure, Climate Change, Commodity Value, Anthropocentrism.