Konrad Ott

Opinion: Why protect nature? Rethinking values and the environment

A cornerstone of environmental policy is the debate over protecting nature for humans’ sake (instrumental values) or for nature’s (intrinsic values) (1). We propose that focusing only on instrumental or intrinsic values may fail to resonate with views on personal and collective well-being, or “what is right,” with regard to nature and the environment. Without complementary attention to other ways that value is expressed and realized by people, such a focus may inadvertently promote worldviews at odds with fair and desirable futures. It is time to engage seriously with a third class of values, one with diverse roots and current expressions: relational values. By doing so, we reframe the discussion about environmental protection, and open the door to new, potentially more productive policy approaches.

The quality of sustainability science : a philosophical perspective

Abstract Sustainability science does not fit easily with established criteria of the quality of science. Making explicit and justifying four features of sustainability science—normativity, inclusion of nonscientists, urgency, and cooperation of natural and social scientists—can promote deep and comprehensive questioning. In particular, because the inclusion of nonscientists into sustainability science has become a dogma, re-examining the epistemic, normative, and political reasons for inclusion is important for the quality of sustainability science. These reasons include providing a range of perspectives and helping to craft and implement policy in real-world social and ethical situations. To be included effectively, nonscientists must be understood within this demanding context rather than employed merely to satisfy a dogma. We situate our discussion in this article against a foundational controversy of sustainability science: the weak versus strong sustainability debate. According to our analysis, comprehensive consideration of the features of normativity, inclusion of nonscientists, urgency, and cooperation of natural and social scientists suggests a convincing case for strong sustainability.

Cohort profile: Greifswald approach to individualized medicine (GANI_MED)

BackgroundIndividualized Medicine aims at providing optimal treatment for an individual patient at a given time based on his specific genetic and molecular characteristics. This requires excellent clinical stratification of patients as well as the availability of genomic data and biomarkers as prerequisites for the development of novel diagnostic tools and therapeutic strategies. The University Medicine Greifswald, Germany, has launched the “Greifswald Approach to Individualized Medicine” (GANI_MED) project to address major challenges of Individualized Medicine. Herein, we describe the implementation of the scientific and clinical infrastructure that allows future translation of findings relevant to Individualized Medicine into clinical practice.Methods/designClinical patient cohorts (N > 5,000) with an emphasis on metabolic and cardiovascular diseases are being established following a standardized protocol for the assessment of medical history, laboratory biomarkers, and the collection of various biosamples for bio-banking purposes. A multi-omics based biomarker assessment including genome-wide genotyping, transcriptome, metabolome, and proteome analyses complements the multi-level approach of GANI_MED. Comparisons with the general background population as characterized by our Study of Health in Pomerania (SHIP) are performed. A central data management structure has been implemented to capture and integrate all relevant clinical data for research purposes. Ethical research projects on informed consent procedures, reporting of incidental findings, and economic evaluations were launched in parallel.

Reflections on discounting: some philosophical remarks

This paper touches on some crucial ethical topics that are embedded in the economic technique of discounting. It is structured as follows. After a brief introduction, the notion of reflection is clarified in order to make room for a certain perspective from which the economic practice of discounting might be judged appropriately. Some distinctions are drawn, and some common patterns of argument are outlined, which might be helpful for further debate. At the end of the paper, some proposals for modifications, weighings and adjustments of discounting are mentioned. Finally, an argument why discounting should be replaced by discourse-oriented assessments is set out.

Strong Sustainability as a Frame for Sustainability Communication

The term sustainability has enjoyed great success, but at the cost of overextending its meaning to the point of trivialization. There is such an overabundance of definitions, concepts, models and political strategies that it is not clear anymore whether the terms ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ still bear any meaning. The theory outlined in this chapter counters these tendencies by identifying more precisely the normative field that constitutes the very core of the sustainability concept, while avoiding a too narrow understanding. It points out the ethical presuppositions as well as the requirements for a theoretical framework of a consistent and discursively justified concept of sustainability. This rectifies the vagueness of the term as currently used and offers new possibilities for sustainability communication.

Development scenarios on Hetao irrigation area (China): a qualitative analysis from social, economic and ecological perspectives

Lakes are threatened ecosystems in drylands of Central Asia. The Wuliangsuhai Lake (“W-Lake”) is a case in point. Located in the Hetao Irrigation Area (“HIA”), W-Lake is a rare multifunctional inland lake in arid North China. It provides a wide range of ecosystem services, including provision of products, regulation of water and climate, water purification, biodiversity conservation and cultural services. The lake’s major water input is the drainage water from HIA’s farmlands. Those farmlands divert water directly from the Yellow River for irrigation. Unsustainable agricultural practice in HIA has gravely impacted on W-Lake in terms of reduced water quantity and degraded water quality. However, the linkage between agricultural practice in HIA and the environmental changes of W-Lake has been rarely investigated. Existing data focus mainly either on W-Lake or on HIA’s farmlands with overwhelmingly technical and end-of-the-pipe solutions. In view of the above, this paper develops four qualitative scenarios on HIA from social, economic and ecological perspectives. The four scenarios are: (a) green growth; (b) strong sustainability; (c) shift to swamp; and (d) worst case. The main aims of this paper are (1) to assist local decision makers of HIA in policy-making and (2) to develop concepts and strategies within the larger framework of integrated water management that shall inspire conservation efforts in other Central Asian regions.

Domains of Climate Ethics

Climate ethics (CE) has become an emerging field in applied ethics. CE is not just a sub-discipline of environmental ethics but has its own moral and ethical profile. Meanwhile, CE is not just about mitigation and future generations but has enlarged onto adaptation, climate engineering, allocating burdens, and distributive justice. This article summarizes recent developments in CE and p

Environmental Values and Comprehensive Environmental Assessment

There are hard conflicts about patterns of land use, the fair access to scarce natural resources and other environmental affairs to be expected in years to come. Environmental concerns and long-term conservation strategies will compete with different kinds of economic interests and objectives. It is by no means clear how such conflicts can be resolved reasonably since the underlying concepts of rationality, utility, acceptability or “weighing goods” will be contested as well. “Wise-useguidelines” will be a first step toward normative orientation but they won’t be able to resolve the more harder problems. This holds true also for international environmental declarations (“soft law”). Even the concept of “sustainable development” is — despite of its merits — typically an “umbrella concept” which may mask conflicts if it will not be given a decisive interpretation.

Strong sustainability in coastal areas: a conceptual interpretation of SDG 14

Humans derive many tangible and intangible benefits from coastal areas, providing essential components for social and economic development especially of less developed coastal states and island states. At the same time, growing human and environmental pressures in coastal areas have significant impacts on coastal systems, requiring urgent attention in many coastal areas globally. Sustainable development goal (SDG) 14 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (henceforth the 2030 Agenda) aims for conservation and sustainable use of the oceans, seas, and marine resources, explicitly considering coastal areas in two of its targets (14.2 and 14.5). These promote, as we argue in this article, a strong sustainability concept by addressing protection, conservation, and management of coastal ecosystems and resources. The 2030 Agenda adopts the so-called “three-pillar-model” but does not specify how to balance the economic, social, and environmental dimensions in cases of trade-offs or conflicts. By analysing SDG 14 for the underlying sustainability concept, we derive decisive arguments for a strong sustainability concept and for the integration of constraint functions to avoid depletion of natural capital of coastal areas beyond safe minimum standards. In potential negotiations, targets 14.2 and 14.5 ought to serve as constraints to such depletion. However, such a rule-based framework has challenges and pitfalls which need to be addressed in the implementation and policy process. We discuss these for coastal areas in the context of SDG 14 and provide recommendations for coastal governance and for the process ahead.

The significance of meaning : Why IPBES needs the social sciences and humanities

The term “biodiversity” is often used to describe phenomena of nature, which can be studied without a reference to the socially constructed, evaluative, or indeed normative contexts. In our paper, we challenge this conception by focusing particularly on methodological aspects of biodiversity research. We thereby engage with the idea of interdisciplinary biodiversity research as a scientific approach directed at the recognition and management of contemporary society in its ecological embedding. By doing this, we explore how research on and assessments of biodiversity can be enhanced if meaning, aspiration, desires, and related aspects of agency are methodically taken into account. In six sections, we substantiate our claim that the discourse on biodiversity (including the IPBES (Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) debate) is incomplete without contributions from the social sciences and humanities. In the introduction, a brief overview of biodiversity’s conceptual history is provided showing that “biodiversity” is a lexical invention intended to create a strong political momentum. However, that does not impede its usability as a research concept. Section 2 examines the origins of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) by way of sociological discourse analysis. Subsequently, it proposes a matrix as a means to structure the ambiguities and tensions inherent in the CBD. The matrix reemphasizes our main thesis regarding the need to bring social and ethical expertise to the biodiversity discourse. In Section 3, we offer a brief sketch of the different methods of the natural and social sciences as well as ethics. This lays the groundwork for our Section 4, which explains and illustrates what social sciences and ethics can contribute to biodiversity research. Section 5 turns from research to politics and argues that biodiversity governance necessitates deliberative discourses in which participation of lay people plays an important role. Section 6 provides our conclusions.