Subproject: Ethics and Environmental Politics: Institutions, Techniques and Norms in the Challenge of Changing the Natural Environment

Project cycle of Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development

Integral and Interdisciplinary Research – Priority Area 3: „Environmental Protection and Climate Changes“

Project Number: 43007

Project duration: 2011–2017.

Project Leader: Prof. dr Ratko Kadović, Full Professor

Subproject Leader: Prof. dr Petar Bojanić, Principal Research Fellow

If you generally do not question that the environment is threatened, there are still controversies about the modalities of the scientific approach directed to solving the present situation. It can be said that the recent approach to this problem in the social sciences is two folded.

The last decades of the twentieth century, politicians and lawyers, supported with expertise of scientists from the fields of natural science, tried to set the standardized rules for human behavior towards natural environment. Legal regulation, however, was the sole guide, and there is evident lack of the ethical view of the relationship of man and nature. The second approach was more comprehensive. It started with the elaboration of the idea of sustainable development, which respects the principles of precaution and breaks with one technocratic forms of governance. Environment in such optics proved to be unavoidable or even a foundational level with a special kind of responsibility required, due to our own prosperity.

Bearing in mind the problem of establishing basic concepts related to environmental ethics, one of the primary tasks in this subproject will be a detailed review of the aforementioned conceptual framework from the perspective of ethics, political philosophy, sociology and anthropology. From the perspective of moral philosophy, it will be explored the intergeneration justice concept implies only taking into account the preferences of future and present people, or the status of universality also. From the perspective of political philosophy the concept of justice as fairness or utilitarian conception will be examined in relation to determining the basic principles of inter-and intra-generational justice.

In this context, possibilities of global justice in particular will be explored, since it is relevant with taking into account the global nature of climate change. From the perspective of social theory, the attention will be directed to the way in which values and norms influence the concept of responsibility towards future generations.

Finally, the anthropological perspective will be examined to what extent variations in cultural values and norms influence the conception of justice that applies within certain communities.

 

Research will be carried out in the theoretical framework presented will cover a variety of topics:

  • Contemplating the climate change, as the first great challenge of XXI century, in the context of global justice which have the additional role in poverty eradication, including in that way the economic segment, which in turn directly affects the environment;
  • Deontological testing of all key elements of the environmental ethics;
  • Research methodological framework of the modeling philosophical, sociological and anthropological approaches to adequately and actively response to the discourse monitoring directed to climate change in the region, Europe and world;
  • Anticipation of permanent form of development policies, as well as alternative forms of institutional organization, to announce new forms of more systematic government.
  • Following unarticulated innovative technologies and techniques for environmental protection;
  • Understanding and studying the reactions of people to natural disasters, climatic and cultural reasons, and migratory movements.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS IN THE PROJECT FRAMEWORK

Priroda, etika, politika: ekološke (pre)okupacije i (pre)orijentacije [Nature, Ethics, Politics: environmental (pre)occupation and (re)orientation], edited by Ana Birešev, Gazela Pudar and Dušan Bošković, Beograd: Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju, 2012, p. 288

Ekofeminizam: nova politička odgovornost [Ecofeminism: New political responsibility], edited by Rada Drezgić, Daša Duhaček and Jelena Vasiljević, Beograd: Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju, 2012, p. 272

Životna sredina: moralni i politički izazovi [Environment: a moral and political challenges], edited by Jelena Đurić, Srđan Prodanović, Predrag Krstić, Beograd: Službeni glasnik, Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju, 2012, p. 604