With the participation of Professor J. Baird Callicott (USA)
UNESCO House, Paris, 4 June 2012
Room XIV, from 10.30 am to 5 pm
Info & Registration: Donato Bergandi (bergandi@mnhn.fr)
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the international community in the aftermath of the Second World War, proclaimed the human dignity, rights and fundamental reedoms for all and inspired all the great battles of the second half of the 20th century : the movement for civil and political rights, for the liberation from colonialism, racism, xenophobia and related intolerance, for the prohibition of genocide and crimes against humanity, for the promotion and spreading of the principles of democracy and social justice, for the equal rights of women’s rights and gender equality, for the protection of the rights of all kinds all minorities and vulnerable groups, including national, ethnic, linguistic minorities, migrants, children, people with disabilities, etc. The enumeration of the biggest social movements of the last and present centuries will not be complete without the ecological movement which togehter with the human rights principles form the basis of the concept of sustabinable human development. This concept places the human personality in the centre of development and sees the realisation of human personality as the final end and raison d’être of progress. Sustainability in its turns means that human beings should try to achieve their development and progress in such a way that the precious ecological environment of the planet Earth be preserved and protected to ensure life in dignity not only for the present generations but also for future inhabitants of the planet. The intellectual foundation of such vision of the world is the environmental philosophy and ethics, born in the late 1960ies – early 1970ies of the 20th century together with the ecological movement. The ecological concerns and their defensers have acquired an increasing importance in the 21st century when the humanity is menaced by the global environmental and climate change caused by human activities.
Over the last forty years, the environmental philosophy and ethics succeded in developing intellectual foundations of a non-anthropocentric outlook on human life which acknowledges the rights of non-human Nature and declares that the instrinsic value of Nature. “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community” proclaimed Aldo Leopold, one of the most influential ecological thinkers. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. Thus moral, ethical relations of human beings with Nature should be based not on uncontrolable use of natural resources with profound environmental consequences but on respect of the rights of all non-human Nature species, protection of biodiversity and life in harmony and love with Nature. For this, the anthoropocentric concept of development, including models of economic production and distribution of materials resources and good should be rethought and a new social contract with Nature should be elaborated.
One of the founders of the environmentalist ethics and philosophy is the American philosopher J. Baird Callicott. He is University Distinguished Research Professor and a member of the Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies and the Institute of Applied Sciences at the University of North Texas. In his early years of university work, he participated in the American movement for civil rights, against racism and participated in the activities of the organization of Martin Luther King. Baird Callicott held the position of Professor of Philosophy and Natural Resources at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point from 1969 to 1995, where he taught the world’s first course in environmental ethics in 1971. From 1994 to 2000, he served as Vice President then President of the ternational Society for Environmental Ethics. Other distinguished positions include visiting professor of philosophy at Yale University; the University of California, Sana Barbara; the Uiversity of Hawai’i, and the University of Florida.
Baird Callicott will take part in the conference o “Narratives and Building Environmental Responsibility” that will be held at UNESCO HQs in Paris on 4 June 2012. The conference will start with the presentation by Professor Callicott of the foundations of human moral responsibilities towards environment, especially in view of climate change. He will seek to reply to the questions, why moral responsibility for Nature? For what parts of Nature human beings are responsible? What is the content of this responsibility and its limits? What are the aims of human responsibility for Nature? Who will benefit from it? How such responsibility should be built and promoted through discourse and other narratives in order to attain its aims.
The conference is held by the Team of Global Environmental Change within the project “Narratives and Building Envrionmental Responsibility” elaborated and implemented by the Museum of Natural Sciences in Paris, University of Versailles in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines with support of the French Ministry of Envrironment and Sustainable Development.
Participants in the meeting will be specialists in the philosophy and ethics of environment, environmental protection, journalists, staff members of UNESCO working on issues of global environmental change, interested public.
All financial expenses linked with the visit of Professor Baird Callicott are born by the French partners. UNESCO is requested to provide conference room (Room XIV has been reserved) for one day meeting. The debates of the conference will be recorded.