This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book aims to understand: the complexity of environmental ethics and basic environmental problems in different media; the scientific developments and the basic philosophical background behind environmental approaches to comprehend how the relationship between human beings and nature is affected and changed in time. It also aims to understand how the field of environmental ethics is structured, the central areas of environmental ethics, and the essential levels of environmental reasoning. The book seeks rational arguments to assign moral status to nature and its non-human elements; and has two views on these matters, the anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric. It discusses how environmental issues can be regulated by law and politics; how environmental ethics can contribute to this task; the principles of political and legal measures; and the instruments that regulate environmental behaviour.

On completing this lesson, the reader will understand: how the anthropocentric view of environmental ethics is philosophically founded, that the anthropocentric approach to environmental ethics not only encompasses instrumental values, but also aesthetic and contemplative values. Environmental ethics emerged as a new sub-discipline of philosophy in the early 1970s. Until that time philosophy had been questioning human actions towards human beings. Actions towards nature were dealt with in an anthropocentric way. An anthropocentric ethics has to claim that we have obligations to respect the environment for the sake of human well-being and prosperity in the present and in the future. Moreover, it is evident that the actions and policies that we contemporary humans undertake will have a great impact on the well-being of future individuals. In environmental ethics the discussion on the difference between humans and other beings is relevant.