City Ambassadors Football Club Support to Reach for Dreams I 2. What is Environmental Ethics? How it is relevant for the business organizations? Environmental ethics is the part of environmental philosophy which considers extending the traditional boundaries of ethics from solely including humans to including the non-human world. Environmental ethics is also a sub-division of professional and applied ethics that concerns itself with the responsibilities that we as humans have in our interactions with the environment.
The environment not only offers to living nature such as animals and plants, insects and microbes, but also the non-organic basis for life in general, as well as the ecosystem interactions between all of the above. Many interpret the environment is even wider, to include the built surroundings within which humans live, so that ethical concern for the environment is seen also to include consideration of the aesthetic, cultural, historical and spiritual values that humans may attach to certain aspects of non-human nature.
Environmental ethics thus is the careful duty that we have for the environment in an all-encompassing sense: the earth as a whole, or the whole of the community of life, including the ecosystem and other processes (for instance the water cycle, the carbon cycle, and the nitrogen cycle) that sustain this community of life. The business organizations have its own roles and responsibilities towards the Environmental Ethics. It is an alphabetic system.
It uses the raw materials (components) to generate a product (an organized structure) which are something other than themselves. The business organizations affect the natural environment at different levels. * Individual biological creatures are affected by business via hunting, fishing, agriculture, animal testing, etc. * Natural ecosystems are affected by business via mining, regulating rivers, building, polluting the air, water and land, etc. The Earth as a whole is affected by business via exterminating species, contributing to climate change, etc. Organizations have a natural, non-reciprocal responsibility towards the natural beings affected by its functioning. At the level of individual biological creatures, awareness-based ethics is adequate for organizations. It implies that organizations should assure natural life conditions and painless existence for animals and other sentient beings.
A business activity system can be considered level of natural ecosystems, ecosystem ethics is relevant for business. It implies that business should use natural ecosystems in a proper way, I. E. , not damaging the health of the ecosystem during use. From this point of view a business activity system can be considered acceptable only if its aggregate impact on ecosystem health is non-negative. An organization should have an Environment Policy that guides key activities designed to minimize the ecological footprint and mitigate the impact of the operations.
The pillars of the Policy should be: * Leadership, going beyond mere compliance * Climate change mitigation through commitment to reduce various emissions and corresponding carbon footprint * Green Procurement * Reduce, Reuse, Recycle * Resource Efficiency * Green Infrastructure – Green Buildings * Green IT A business organization must be compliant to all relevant environmental laws, acts, rules and guidelines and should be certified for Environment Management System under Iso: 14001.
