ABSTRACT
My aim is to delineate the field of forest ethics, its scope, the justification for studying it, and the kind of arguments that are salient within it, thus contributing to its development. While forest ethics is in some respects a branch of plant ethics, it includes topics that lie beyond that field such as the ethics of forestry. Biocentrism is presented as preferable to other value-systems, and is concerned with provision for future living creatures (including future trees) as well as current ones. For biocentrism, human needs have to be weighed up alongside the interests of trees and of other forest creatures. Forest ethics incorporates some of the themes of sustainable development and of ecological restoration. Examples are given of practices of reforestation and of how some of the causes of deforestation can and should be combated.
