COHAB – Environmental Landscape Ethics: A Theory of Cohabitability
Table of contents
Project description
Because land use for human purposes covers most of Earth’s habitable (ice-free and fertile) land, there is a pressing need to develop ethical theory to address land use. Yet, the present environmental ethics is ill-equipped for addressing land management because it largely builds on the legacy of wilderness orientation that focuses on mitigating human impacts to secure the ‘intactness’ of nature. Thus, new theories, terminology, and methods are needed.
COHAB will establish environmental landscape ethics and theory of cohabitability by creating interdisciplinarily constructed, ecology-informed theoretical argumentation, methods, and conceptual tools. Cohabitability, land’s suitability for simultaneous co-habiting by many species, is an anchoring concept that connects the key research questions:
- RQ1: What are the theoretical and conceptual requirements for environmental landscape ethics?
- RQ2: What does cohabitability mean and what is it made of?
- RQ3: What are the normative implications of cohabitability?
- RQ4: Who can and should promote cohabitability and how?
Answers to research questions will together yield a theory of cohabitability and contribute to the environmental landscape ethics as a novel field.
