On Ethical Foundations Of Environmental Rights

Global environmental crisis force people to work out a solution for the problems. Having reflected on the relationship between human-beings and nature, people regard the environmental rights to be the weapon to solve the environmental problems. Though having evolved hot discussion, the environmental rights have met all kinds of obstacles in the practice of legislation and law enforcement. By analyzing their difficult situations, the author holds that the key to the problem is to provide a sound ethical foundation. From the view of Ethics, the environmental rights embody rich ethical intentions, and they are the outcome of the legistimatization of environmental morality and moralization of environmental law. Whether nature can be the holder of environmental rights is still a point at issue. The author analyzes the problem of the intrinsic value of the nature thoroughly, and discusses whether the nature can have the environmental rights, then points out that admitting the intrinsic value of nature is the foundation of the environmental rights of nature. Based on this, she reviews the development and evolution of different biological ideology schools. On the basis of former analysis, she puts forward a leveled and open ethical foundation system of environmental rights, which is: human-centered state, animal-welfare state, bio-equality state and eco-entirety state. Meanwhile, she adds development ethics to the ethical foundation system of the environmental rights, and points out the values and aims of the legislation of environmental rights are to protect the entirety of eco-benefits and the generation-balanced benefits and to realize the sustainable development.