Intergenerational Justice and Issues in Ecosystem Management
Pervasive and in some cases irreversible environmental change is putting great pressure on normative thinking in the fields of ecosystem management, including conservation and restoration ecology. In this talk I will present an argument based on obligations to future generations to justify decisions about allocating limited resources in the practice of ecological restoration, or under conditions of what we might call “restoration triage.” Thompson will discuss a growing field of ecological thought that concerns the increasing emergence of non-analog or “novel” ecosystems and the subsequent need to develop an “intervention” ecology to supplement historic management principles of non-intervention, arguing that an intervention ecology will be required to achieve our preservation and conservation goals in a new world of rapidly changing ecologies.
Allen Thompson is an Associate Professor of Philosophy in the School of History, Philosophy & Religion at Oregon State University. His research includes Environmental Philosophy, Philosophical Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy, Practical Reason
Tuesday February 18, 2014 | 4:00-6:00pm | Science & Justice Common Room, Oakes 231