ABSTRACT
This chapter will outline the currently prevailing framework of ‘sustainable development’ for thinking about and regulating human interactions with the natural world. My first claim is that this purports to be either non-normative, or merely prudentially so, but that it is more normatively committed and contentious than might immediately appear. My second is that the dominance of this frame has displaced from public discourse a range of other cognitive, normative and aesthetic considerations whose restoration is crucial to the emergence of a new relation to nature conducive to survival and well-being of both humans and other species. Of these I first consider both the strengths and limitations of the discourses and practice of rights in relation to this task. I conclude by briefly indicating some other modes of valuation, forms of experience and moral sentiments that might complement ideas of rights and justice in challenging currently prevailing patterns of socio-ecological destructiveness in favour of a more convivial and sustainable settlement of human/natural relations.
