ABSTRACT

This chapter offers from a philosophical perspective some thoughts on the various ethical rationales underlying laws, decisions, and views of the different actors involved in the management of natural areas, including forests, with the intention of providing landmarks for forest-related decision-making in the twenty-first century. In order to understand the importance of ethics in decision-making, and how actors are identifying a particular forest management as being “good,” there is a need for clearly distinguishing between ethical, scientific, economic, technical, aesthetic, and symbolic discourses. Both ethical and scientific reasoning are socially and culturally rooted, and evolve with time. In Quebec, professional foresters are framed by a code of deontology whose last reformulation dates back to 1994. The purpose of this code was first to identify measures to protect the public. The ethical reasoning is sometimes linked to values and/or to awareness of the positive and negative consequences of a choice.