Description: This article discusses the reciprocal links between evolutionary-ecological sciences and environmental ethics. Confronted with the current environmental crisis, the academic community faces a conceptual and practical problem of dissociation: Ecologists approach nature with the aim of understanding it, whereas environmental ethicists approach nature asking how we should relate to it, or inhabit it. Ecology looks for the "is" of nature, and environmental ethics seeks an "ought" with respect to nature. How can these still largely disconnected and yet parallel courses be bridged? How can the is of ecologists and the ought of eco-philosophers be interrelat-ed? More basically, how can the links between the cognitive-scientific and the practical-ethical spheres be recovered? In this article, the author illustrates the reciprocal relationships between sciences and environmental ethics by examining the Darwinian theory of evolution and discussing its implications for ecologists and ethicists.

Description: This article discusses biocultural ethics. Abstract: Biocultural homogenization involves three major drivers: (a) the physical barrier to everyday contact with biodiversity derived from the rapid growth of urban population, (b) the conceptual barrier derived from the omission in formal and non-formal education of native languages that contain a broad spectrum of traditional ecological knowledge and values, and (c) political barriers associated with the elimination or reduction of the teaching of ethics under the prevailing neoliberal economy governance since the 1960s. Biocultural ethics aims at overcoming these barriers by recovering the vital links between biological and cultural diversity, between the habits and the habitats of the inhabitants. These links are acknowledged by early Western philosophy. Amerindian traditional ecological knowledge, and contemporary ecological and evolutionary sciences, but have been lost in prevailing modern ethics. There is an overlooked diversity of forms of knowing and inhabiting regional ecosystems, each of them having diverse environmental and social consequences. A better understanding of the regionally diverse mosaics of ecosystems, languages, and cultures facilitates the distinction of specific causes and responsible agents of environmental problems, and the disclosure of sustainable practices, forms of ecological knowledge and values that offer already existing options to solve socio-ecological problems.

Description: This article discusses future environmental philosophies and their biocultural conservation interfaces.

Description: This article discusses ecological sciences and environmental ethics. The ecological and evolutionary sciences provide a "mental image" that offers a spectrum of relationships between society and the natural world broader than that used by classical economics and ethics. Evolutionary sciences claim humans share a common origin with the other biological species. Ecological sciences recognize that human beings establish interactions with a multitude of biological species and ecosystem processes, and more recently emphasized that the welfare of human communities and biotic communities are complementary (Rozzi 2001, Millenium Ecosystem Assessment 2005).

Description: This article discusses local versus global knowledge. A case study of socio-ecological research conducted in Puerto Williams, Chile reveals that persons belonging to different sociocultural groups in Cape Horn have a diversity of perspectives and relationships with nature. For example, a strong sense of home and belonging was expressed by the indigenous Yahgan community and by old residents, mostly descendents of early twentieth-century colonizers. However, people identified with resource use did not include positive answers for a sense of home. The concept of common land presented marked contrasts among respondents. Those identified with a cultivating type of relationship favored private property over public land. For respondents identified with an embedded type of relationship, freedom of movement was one of their most essential values. Some respondents identified with resource use and those identified with intellectual and aesthetic relationships with nature also valued common land. The approach used in this study transforms polarized and dichotomous notions into gradients of perspectives related to different degrees of local and global ecological and cultural environments. The resulting hybrid vision of perspectives on nature may be helpful in times of global change, where both local and global scales contribute to identify specific problematic asymmetries as well ...