Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic and its Implications for Environmental Conservation
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Date
2014-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
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
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Keywords
Ecological Conscience, Land Community, Land Conservation, Land Pyramid