ABSTRACT
Taking as a starting point the view that there is a growing international consensus in favour of protecting biodiversity, efforts are now aimed at developing a new “Earth Charter” that will provide a legal and political framework for guiding local, regional, national and international efforts to protect biological resources (Norton 1999). Such a Charter needs to balance two diametrically opposed views of “how to deal with” nature. The first is that associated with die “Deep Ecology” movement, although it is often subscribed to by a variety of others who would not think of themselves as deep ecologists. It attributes inherent (intrinsic) value to all forms of life, ranging from bacteria to the largest animal species. In its most radical form, value is attributed even to trees and wild rivers. This is the biocentric or nonanthropogenic view of nature and value. Its main tenant is that “... an irreversible human intervention in nature is wrong” (Solow and Polasky 1999, p.19).
