Environmental ethics: the power of ethics for sustainable development

The authors of the collective monograph encourage theoretical reflections, promote discoveries and are confident that this book will broaden the horizons of readers, both in viewing environmental problems and, most importantly, in understanding innovative ways to a sustainable development, opened up by power and tools of applied ethics. International group of authors (the scientists of philosophy, management and other disciplines) not only analyses the theoretical and practical problems of ecological issues, but also calls for personal commitment and encourages taking the concrete actions to conserve nature, to reconcile economic and environmental goals, and develop socially responsible behaviour. The book reflects the multidisciplinary approach to environmental ethics, to the practical solution of environmental problems, as well as towards the vision of opportunities for applied ethics to make its contribution. The authors of the monograph, on the one hand, pay attention to the contradictory application of ethics to complicated situations and, on the other hand, analyse how the ethical knowledge is transformed from theory into practice. Contrariwise, they examine how the practice compels changes in theoretical approaches and what practically worked out processes and procedures make theorists recognize the need for a paradigm shift. The main focus of the monograph is the question of the advancement of knowledge of environmental ethics, as well as what changes in consciousness and behaviour may be implemented in the relationship between human and nature in order to harmonize them, i.e. how ethics can help to achieve the goals of sustainable development.