By Sara Al-Muttalibi

The Human Lens: How We Perceive the Environment

When we talk about “saving the planet”, what we often mean is “saving the planet for us.” From reforestation to renewable energy initiatives, most sustainability efforts are driven by the desire to preserve a world that supports human life - our food systems, our urban development, and our comfort. This is an understandable instinct, yet it reveals a deeper truth about how we perceive the natural world - not as a living community to which we belong, but as a resource we control to our advantage.

Occasionally, even our most well-intentioned actions reinforce the same hierarchies that created ecological harm in the first place. Governments and corporations speak of sustainable development and ‘green schemes,’ yet rarely question the systems that lead to environmental exploitation. For example, corporations promote electric vehicles as a climate solution, while the lithium and cobalt required for their batteries are extracted under exploitative labour in developing countries. In doing so, the use of the word sustainability often masks the continuation of this system, where exploitation is rebranded as progress. These contradictions expose the fundamental issues with modern environmentalism, where we strive to protect the planet while viewing it through a human-centred perspective. 

The philosophy of deep ecology challenges this lens by asking the question: What if the Earth’s value lies not in its service to humanity, but in its existence itself? (Naess, 1973)

 

Shallow vs Deep Ecology- Two Ways of Seeing Nature

The fundamental question that environmentalists strive to answer is Why do we have any moral obligations concerning the natural environment? (Cochrane, 2006).

The straightforward response would be that if we do not constrain our actions towards nature, then humans will cease to exist. Yet this reasoning implies that nature matters only because it benefits us - a perspective that deep ecology rejects.

Deep ecologist Arne Naess argues that moral consideration as humans must extend beyond humanity to include the broader natural community. As Naess (1973) writes, “the well-being and flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth have value in themselves. These values are independent of the usefulness of the non-human world for human purposes.” In other words, the natural world possesses intrinsic value, not merely instrumental value.

By contrast, shallow ecology - the form of environmentalism most dominant in policy and media - remains anthropocentric. It seeks to protect the environment primarily to safeguard human welfare; to preserve clean air, fertile soil, and a stable climate for civilisation (Naess, 1973; Devall and Sessions, 1985). Deep ecology, meanwhile, calls for a more radical shift in perspective; one that recognises humanity as a single species within a vast ecological network. This “biospheric egalitarianism,” as Naess described it, suggests that all forms of life have an equal right to exist and flourish, regardless of their usefulness to us. In other words, inherent worth is not dictated by human needs, and we have moral obligations to preserve the natural environment because it possesses its own intrinsic value that humans have no right to violate. 

 

 

Anthropocentrism in modern environmentalism

Even as global awareness of environmental issues grows, most modern sustainability efforts remain rooted in human-centred thinking. Policies often justify conservation through the concept of ecosystem services - the benefits nature provides to people, such as carbon storage, food, and recreation (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). In the past, this approach was arguably necessary. People were more likely to care about the environment if they could see how it directly benefited them. Appealing to self-interest made environmentalism easier to understand in a world driven by growth and consumption. But as awareness and education have improved, our motivations should begin to change.

Large-scale tree planting schemes, for example, are promoted as carbon offsets that serve climate targets (Holl and Brancalion, 2020). Yet, such projects usually measure success in terms of emissions absorbed, rather than biodiversity restored. We replant forests because they absorb carbon, not because they breathe. This framework merely provides political convenience. Governments can claim environmental progress through quantified targets, without having to deal with the deeper moral changes that true progress requires. In contrast, rewilding initiatives aim to revive natural processes for their own sake, recognising that ecosystems possess value beyond human utility (Perino et al. 2019).

These cases reveal how anthropocentrism still shapes even our “green” ambitions - protecting nature primarily to sustain ourselves, rather than because it deserves to exist. 

 

 

Ethical Reflection

At the heart of this debate lies a deeper moral question: who, or what, deserves moral consideration? Most environmental policies assume an anthropocentric worldview -that humans alone possess moral importance, and nature’s value lies in how it serves us. Deep ecology proposes an ecocentric ethic, in which all living beings and ecosystems have equal moral standing (Naess, 1973).

This calls for a shift from management to coexistence: to see a forest not as a resource, but as a community of life with its own right to exist. Critics argue that such thinking is idealistic in a world facing poverty, development, and climate urgency. Yet perhaps the ultimate act of sustainability isn’t saving the planet for us - it’s learning to live as if we were never at the centre of it.

 

References

Cochrane, A. (2006) Environmental ethics, LSE Research Online. Available at: https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/21190/1/Environmental_ethics_(LSERO).pdf  

Devall and Sessions (2002) Deep Ecology; Living as if Nature Mattered: Devall and Sessions on Defending the Earth, JStor. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26161821?seq=1

Holl, K. and Brancalion, P. (2020) Tree planting is not a simple solution, PubMed. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32381704/

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis. Washington DC: Island Press. Available at: https://www.millenniumassessment.org/documents/document.356.aspx.pdf

Naess, A. (2008). The shallow and the deep, long‐range ecology movement, Taylor & Francis. Pp.95-100. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00201747308601682  

Perino, A., Pereira, H. and Wheeler, H. (2019) Rewilding complex ecosystems | science, Science. Available at: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aav5570?et_rid=293396612&et_cid=2786212