Browsing by Author "Hailu, Andebet"

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    Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic and its Implications for Environmental Conservation
    (Addis Ababa University, 2014-07) Hailu, Andebet; Kelbessa, Workineh(PhD)
    In this thesis I employed a conceptual exploration and analysis of Aldo Leopold's land ethic (LE) to reveal my major assumption that the LE has practical and all inclusive implications to conserve the natural environment across the world by reducing destructive human-made interventions. The main objective is to reduce destructions of endangered species by promoting land conservation. I also investigated that the LE has positive contributions to create naturefriendly attitude among humans. Accordingly, this thesis is designed to critically explore and analyze the LE’s implications for the peaceful human-nature relationships by ecologically considering human species as plain members of nature without giving any privilege to humans. I argue that the LE is a key to raise awareness about the operation of nature by employing holistic ethical investigations that presuppose ecologically and ethically grounded land conservation. The land ethical conservation is significantly rooted in humans “enlightened self-interest” to the land that is essentially realized by the “ecological conscience”, the conscience to incorporate nature in ethical discussion. I also found that the LE has constructive and practical contributions for land conservation. Specially, based on the African idea of communal view of nature, I identified some common points between LE’s community concept and that of African communal view of nature. Accordingly, in Africa, nature is identified from “eco-bio-communitarian” point of view, which entails a peaceful interaction between all members of nature. Thus, I recognized that the fusion of LE and the African view of nature could imply constructive elements for a peaceful human-nature relationship. The thesis also specified basic lessons that environmental policy makers can learn from Leopold’s LE. Accordingly, to address my objectives, I basically employed ecological and philosophical concepts such as the community concept, land health, the land pyramid, evolutionary development of ethics and society, holistic valuation of nature and proper conservation education. These conceptual elements are critically reviewed and analyzed from relevant literatures in line with the formulated problem of the study. Thus, in this thesis I used critical analysis, conceptual descriptions and synthesis. Key words: ecological conscience, land community, land conservation, land ethic, land health, land pyramid, Leopold, nature