This environmental, human right that is based on humans is a source of philosophical tensions between deep and shallow ecologists. This has led to the total rejection of human rights proposals by some commentators while others think otherwise. Some of the concerns of the commentators who condemned the human rights approach are as follow. The first concern is seeing the perpetuation of values and attitudes that are fundamental to environmental degradation in the anthropocentric approaches to environmental protection. The second concern sees the deprivation of the direct and comprehensive protection of the environment in the anthropocentric approaches. An example is having the aim of environmental protection as to...
This environmental, human right that is based on humans is a source of philosophical tensions between deep and shallow ecologists. This has led to the total rejection of human rights proposals by some commentators while others think otherwise. Some of the concerns of the commentators who condemned the human rights approach are as follow. The first concern is seeing the perpetuation of values and attitudes that are fundamental to environmental degradation in the anthropocentric approaches to environmental protection. The second concern sees the deprivation of the direct and comprehensive protection of the environment in the anthropocentric approaches.
An example is having the aim of environmental protection as to ensure the safety of human life, health and standards of living. Hence, the protection of the environment is influenced by the levels of measures required to protect humans. The third concern considers who receives the relief for infringement of the right. “There is no guarantee of its utilization for the benefit of the environment. Nor is there any recognition of nature as the victim of degradation”. The fourth concern is that environmental protection depends on human protest
Contrariwise, there have been certain views which can help in the mitigation of the concerns above. The first argument suggests that a level of anthropocentrism is a necessity to protect the environment. It is not about having humanity as the center of the biosphere, but because humans are the only living thing with a sense of recognition and respect the morality of rights and because human beings are themselves an integral part of nature. That is, it is impossible to separate the interests and duties of humanity from environmental protection. As described by Shelton, “humans are not separable members of the universe. Rather, humans are interlinked and interdependent participants with duties to protect and conserve all elements of nature, whether or not they have known benefits or current economic utility”. Thus, there is a great need to distinguish the anthropocentric objective from utilitarianism.
