Environmental Ethics

Global environmental change gives rise to ethical challenges that need to be grasped within a framework of critical and forward-looking thinking. Environmental challenges often tend to be framed as costs to be borne and technologies to be discovered, leaving behind the opportunities and co-benefits associated with serious engagement with their ethical dimensions. Thus, through the joint efforts of its Programme Sectors, its expert advisory body in this area – COMEST  – and relevant international bodies, UNESCO has developed a range of activities on environmental ethics that generates intellectual knowledge, plays an advisory role for the benefit of the Member States and offers a basis for reflecting on the relevance of standard-setting initiatives.

Since 2009, UNESCO – in particular through the work of COMEST – has been actively engaged in reflection on ethical principles in relation to climate change.

Substantive books or reports have also been published on:

Furthermore, preliminary intellectual work on emerging themes in environmental ethics has been done through a series of exploratory meetings:

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