The word "ethics" is commonly used in connection with natural resource management but often with little understanding of its meaning and what its implications are in that context. Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines ethics as the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligations; a set of moral principles and values; a theory or system of moral values; and, the principles of conduct governing an individual or group.
Ethics as a philosophical discipline appears to have little or no influence on how natural resource managers and technical experts carry out their day-to-day activities. The other three definitions, however, encompass the principles of conduct and values that describe ethical resource management, which we believe can be divided into three non-mutually-exclusive categories--individual (or personal) ethics, professional ethics, and land ethics.
Whether personal, group, or societal, ethics is based on some concept of what conduct is right and what is wrong. But who makes the rules? Although perceptions of ethical behavior differ from one society to another, perceptions within a society tend to be remarkably similar. In the Western world, the general underlying code of ethical behavior governing person-to-person interactions is contained in five of the Ten Commandments: "Thou shalt not... kill, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness, nor covet...anything that is thy neighbors."
These commandments--common sense rules that allow a human society to exist in a relatively stable, sustainable state--are clear, unequivocal statements of right and wrong. From this underlying bedrock arose a multitude of customs, rules, and laws applicable to a myriad of circumstances; adherence to these increasingly complex laws thus equals ethical behavior. In nearly all Western societies, all or most of these five commandments have been codified into civil law.
Reliance on an ever more complex, evolving set of rules to govern every conceivable situation produces rigidity of individual and societal response to ethical questions in widely varied and continuously varying circumstances. Applying rigid standards of ethics in all circumstances inevitably leads to a less rigid concept of what is right and wrong, with the recognition that ethical behavior depends on the particular circumstances of the situation and the moment--what is called "situational ethics." In person-to-person behavior, the concept is commonly simplified to the "golden rule" common to many religions--behave toward others as you would have them behave toward you.
People who adhere to these commandments and the golden rule in their daily lives are usually considered ethical, but a person can also behave unethically by acquiescing to a wrong activity, by looking the other way, by remaining silent, or by carrying out orders that are unethical. Everyone must make decisions with ethical components every day, and sometimes action, sometimes no-action represents the ethical choice. The cumulative result of all these decisions defines the ethical person and the point at which his or her values conflict sufficiently with those of a group or employer to warrant separating from them. Questions about ethical behavior, then, do not ordinarily come in the form of a highly visible, clear-cut challenge to honor and courage. More commonly, such tests come in small packages and quiet ways--and they come often. For most professionals, these small personal tests determine how a person's reputation for integrity and ethical behavior is made or lost.
A frequently heard complaint among young people in natural resource management is that they are pressured by superiors to falsify reports or to concur in courses of action they consider unethical. But coercion--like the tango--requires two: one to coerce and one to accede. Individuals must base their actions first on their personal values and only then on the values of their society and profession. (Judging others' conduct is another matter and should be approached differently and more leniently because complete knowledge of circumstances is almost certainly absent.)
Webster's last definition "...the principles of conduct governing an individual or group," relates ethics to professional behavior. Here, the underlying principles of ethical behavior are modified, expanded, or both to deal with individual performance according to standards set by a professional group. People who consider themselves "professionals" and, for whatever reason, in a different guild from other professionals, commonly form organizations that further the aims and welfare of their group.
The Wildlife Society, the American Fisheries Society, the Society for Range Management, and the Society of American Foresters are well-established examples of professional organizations. Most such groups formulate codes of ethics to guide members in their professional activities and to demonstrate to themselves and to society at large that the group's members--individually and collectively--are worthy of recognition and respect. The Wildlife Society (1978), for example, has produced a code of ethics to guide the activities of Certified Wildlife Biologists. Another example is the code of ethics for the Society of American Foresters (1992). When the fancy words are stripped away and the statements reduced to their essence, they say (Thomas 1986:35):
One simple but essential admonition seems to be missing from these codes: Tell the truth! Telling the truth is so basic to ethical behavior by professionals that it could be assumed to be the foundation supporting all other statements governing professional conduct. But the need to tell the truth should be clearly stated and stand above all other admonitions to professionals. As stated elsewhere:
More and more lately, I seem to find myself advising troubled colleagues to tell the truth. It seems so simple. Yet, it can be so liberating. We live in an age of euphemisms, half-truths, obfuscations, double-talk and double-think. This atmosphere has closed in on us so gradually, so cloaked in the camouflage of the committee or team report, so justified by the need to get the job done, that we have come to consider such things the norm. Tell the truth, all the truth, all the time. It is the right thing, the healthy thing, the professional thing to do (Thomas 1986: 35).
Another component of professional ethics is acceptance and respect for diversity in viewpoint and philosophy among professional colleagues. For example, there are
... very different philosophies among natural resource management professionals concerning how they relate to the natural world. Remember, there are no inherent rights or wrongs in these philosophical positions--they merely are. Some groups tend to be anthropocentric in philosophical position and take a utilitarian view of land--i.e., land exists for and is to be managed to satisfy people's needs (DeVall and Sessions 1984, Leopold 1949). Others...are mainly biocentric in philosophy (Kennedy and Mincolla 1985) and view humans as part of nature (Leopold 1949), and subscribe to the admonition voiced by Sessions (1977:450) to be concerned with...organic wholeness, [and to] love that and not man apart from that....(Thomas 1986: 28-29).
When professionals of the biocentric and anthropocentric persuasions serve together on various teams in land management agencies--particularly those agencies that are essentially anthropocentric in defined mission and tradition--discord is likely. Before participants judge the ethics of their coworkers, they need to consider the differences between biocentric and anthropocentric philosophies and how they might influence individual behavior (Thomas 1986).
More and more commonly, teams of professionals from different disciplines work together to derive approaches to reach natural resource management objectives. In the USDA Forest Service, these teams provide information to the decisionmakers on how projects deemed necessary to implement Forest Plans can
be achieved within constraints of the laws and approved standards and guidelines. The teams are often pressed to reach a collective position on which all members can agree. Those who are difficult to bring into the fold quickly attain the reputation for not being "teamplayers" (Thomas 1985). As Lichatowich (1992) points out,
The word "team" in teamplayer is misleading. A team is a group of individuals with different points of view, different skills, or different experience brought together to achieve a common goal--a goal whose achievement needs the individual contributions of the team members. The different contributions of the team members are important. Contrast that with teamplayers--the individuals who wait until decisions are made and then conform their thinking to fit.
A reputation as a non-team-player is not ordinarily conducive to career advancement. So the question of ethical compromise arises, and also the question of when compromise, which after all is the art of political achievement, grades into unethical behavior. We need to recognize that teams will often not be able to derive a course of action without negative effects on one or more natural resource attributes. These negative effects must be fully revealed. Bella (1987) describes what happens when well-meaning, conscientious employees filter out such negative information in organizational systems:
Among the normal properties of such systems is the tendency to selectively produce and sustain information favorable to these systems. Favorable assessments, which do not disrupt organizational systems, have survival value; contrary assessments tend to be systematically filtered out....Those in the highest positions are most dependent on such a diet and thus their perceptions are most vulnerable to this risk.
An ethical responsibility for administrators and other decisionmakers thus seems to be to guard against such distortion by consciously working toward a professional working environment where diversity of viewpoint is accepted, where bad news can be safely delivered, and where honesty is consistently rewarded. Decisionmakers are paid to make the hard decisions: the reliability of the information on which the decisions depend is partly a product of the willingness of administrators to seek out and listen to the truth, however disappointing it may be.
Some purists may question the ethics of even entertaining the possibility that biopolitics could be handled ethically. To do so ignores the reality that without skilled and ethical practitioners of biopolitics, natural resources cannot be managed. Biological information is not derived through immaculate conception, and politics can as readily be enobling as corrupting, After all, experiments are designed, data collected, analyses performed, and management conclusions drawn by human beings conditioned by culture, education, and experience (Livingston 1981). Further, all management decisions are made within the context of laws, court opinions, social and political acceptability, policies, customs, and the availability of resources (Thomas 1986).
The ethical practice of biopolitics can be complicated by the recognition that, for most endeavors in natural resource management in a democracy, goals are set through some political process or combination of processes. The democratic process thrives on compromise and, as a result, the guidance
provided in law and regulations are frequently confusing, unclear, and intentionally vague or ambiguous. These objectives and means of achievement are not guaranteed to be well-stated, appropriate, well-founded, or even achievable. Yet natural resource management professionals must attempt to achieve the goals, change the direction, or--if the conflict with conscience is too great--to refuse to participate or resign (Thomas 1992). For those natural resource management professionals who are concerned with ethical behavior, these conditions produce a constantly shifting melee of combatants and petitioners that create crises that must be continually faced.
Even then, assuming professional competence and hard work, following personal and professional ethical standards can be relatively easy. After all, in most applications of these ethical admonitions, one must only refrain from some action--don't bear false witness, don't take or offer bribes, and so on. Evaluating the ethical consequences of omission--such as less than full disclosure of the consequences of proposed management actions, acquiescence in euphemisms, and silence on issues when a clearly expressed and informed statement might have influenced the outcome--is far more difficult.
Although professional societies are frequently conceived of and advertised as watchdogs of professional standards, in reality that role usually stops with formulating a set of ethical standards. Professional associations very rarely deal with charges that a member has violated the profession's ethical
standards. Punishment normally lies in the lowered status and respect accorded by fellow professionals, a formidable deterrent to unethical behavior. Conversely, rewards for maintaining and practicing good ethical standards accorded by the good opinion of colleagues has been recognized as a primary motivating force governing professional behavior.
The reputation and degree of trust that the public and elected officials accord to professional groups likewise derives from experience gained over years of listening to what professionals say and comparing what they say to what they do (Nases 1991). In natural resource management, the "signature" (Leopold 1949:68) of the actions of professionals is clearly written, year by year and activity by activity, on the land itself. Loss of public confidence in the ethical behavior of a profession or organization that is perceived to be composed of professionals can be quickly discerned when laws are passed that constrain professional prerogatives in management action. Shifts in confidence can also be seen by observing who is consulted by elected or appointed officials in time of crisis.
Recent crises in dealing with issues related to threatened and endangered species, allocation of remaining old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, and issues of declining forest health in the intermountain West have been marked by elected officials turning for help more and more to professionals, especially scientists, both within and outside government agencies (Thomas et al. 1990, Johnson et al. 1991). The role of natural resource professionals is not in making resource decisions but in defining options and the likely outcomes of implementing them. The professional's foremost obligation is to ensure an open, honest discussion of the risks and tradeoffs of alternative management actions in the best traditions of good science and in the best interest of society, present
and future. Now, even such management questions as the appropriate allocation of the remaining old-growth forests are recognized, at least by some, as matters of ethics as well as of economics (Booth 1992).
The test of a person's ethical standards is said to be how they act when no one else will ever know what they do. The only person to judge performance in such circumstances is the individual. Superficially, then, consideration of ethics might seem to amount to nothing when no one will ever know; not so, for as Thoreau (1845) observed,
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
Thoreau's observation is particularly instructive to those whose profession is also their vocation and not merely a job. Most natural resource management professionals do, indeed, have a vocation (Thomas 1992). Vocation has been defined as work one is called to by the gods (Morris 1976). Two criteria have been put forward (Buechner 1973) by which vocation can be determined---it is work the individual most needs to do, and work the world needs to have done.
A sense of professionalism lies solely with the individual. Professionalism does not depend on professional societies or organizations, nor on employers. Professionalism is a reflection, through behavior, of vocation with its commitment and sharply focused will. Those...[with these] attributes will find or make a way to express their sense of professionalism. Once the individual has defined "professional" in his or her own mind and reared these standards into the soul, a standard for the conduct of a career has been established...(Thomas 1986:28).
We have discussed the evolution of ethics from relations between individuals to its application in guiding professional conduct. Now we will consider the revolutionary concept put forth in 1949 by Aldo Leopold (p. 204) that ethics should be enlarged so that
...the boundaries of the community...include soils, waters, plants and animals, collectively, the land....In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.
He said earlier (1933:634) that
Economic criteria did not suffice to adjust men to society; they do not suffice to adjust society to its environment. If our present evolutionary impetus is an upward one, it is ecologically probable that ethics will eventually be extended to the land. The present conservation movement may constitute the beginning of such an extension. If and when it takes place, it may radically modify what now appears as insuperable economic obstacles to better land use.
In 1947, Leopold, with only a vision of the possibilities of land-use ethics, stated (p. 209) that such ethics were determined entirely by economic self-interest. He cited as proof of that statement the observation that
philosophy and religion had not yet heard of it. Writing 45 years later, Starker Leopold (1978:119) commented, "Unfortunately, I see little indication that this pious hope expressed by my father is being realized." But the situation has changed dramatically since Starker Leopold's observation: both philosophy and religion have become increasingly concerned with the evolution of a land-use ethic. This evolving concern can be seen in the emergence of such journals as Environmental Ethics in 1979; the serious discourse about the ethical relation of humans to other animals and to the land (for example, Callicott 1989); and in such meetings as the "Joint Appeal by Religion and Science for the Environment," in which the linkage of social justice and environmental preservation was emphasized (Moehlmann 1992).
The Leopoldian land-use ethic (Leopold 1949:224-225) can be summarized as:
The 'key-log' which must be moved to release the evolutionary process for our ethic is simply this: quit thinking about decent land-use as solely an economic problem. Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and esthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends topreserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community . It is wrong when ittends otherwise [emphasis added]....The mechanism of operation is the same for any ethic: social approbation for right actions: social disapproval for wrong actions.
In brief, a land ethic is nothing more than the acceptance of constraints on human treatment of land in the short term to ensure long-term preservation of the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. Building on that conceptual foundation, professional societies have moved toward adoption of a land-ethic canon. The Society of American Foresters is currently developing such a canon (Linnartz et al. 1991, Craig et al. 1992) and has already adopted a position statement on the retaining biodiversity in ecosystems (Society of American Foresters 1992). Recent issues of the Journal of Forestry have included articles on a broadened view of professional responsibilities (Thomas 1992), social responsibilities of land ownership (Weber 1991), and the development of a land ethic (Gregg 1991, Chapman 1992).
Such interest in a land ethic on the part of land management professionals has, for whatever reason, trailed behind the demands of a highly vocal segment of the public around the world (Maser 1991, Barton 1992). "New Forestry," "Ecosystem Management," and "Sustainable Forestry" are the result of a growing swell of public, professional, and political concern that are producing a land ethic.
One clear sign is that the phrase "...such and such a course should be followed because it's right (or not followed because it's wrong)" is being heard more and more frequently in debates over the appropriateness of land management activities. The recent decision of the Chief of the Forest Service and the Director of the Bureau of Land Management to dramatically reduce clearcutting in the forests of the United States and to adopt "ecosystem management" seems unlikely to be a response to newly derived technical information: the decision is far more likely to be because the public--as well as many agency personnel--have come to believe that clearcutting is not in keeping with the land-use ethic of preserving "the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community."
The test of leadership for the natural resource management professions in the next several decades will be to continue developing and instituting a land-use ethic. In this leadership lie the seeds of public respect. In reluctant acquiescence lies a continued erosion of public trust.
Traditionally, ethics exists at two levels of conduct--person to person and individual to society. Another level of the application of ethics is now emerging rapidly, nearly 60 years after it was first proposed--the extension of ethics to the treatment of land. This rapidly developing extension of ethics is particularly significant to those engaged in managing natural resources.
Rockwell (1991:3) made an observation about the profession of forestry that serves well as the end point for this discussion of ethics as applied to natural resource management.
Finally, we have missed the fact that leadership involves moral choice. It is not just the ethical balancing of established precepts, but the courage and humility to divine, weigh, and balance "first principles" in the face of tremendous uncertainty. It is this responsibility that reveals leadership as not a right or a privilege but an awesome duty, and one not necessarily to be sought. Are foresters [natural resource management professionals] really up to the task?
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Title:Ethics for Natural Resource Managers
Author:Jack Ward Thomas, Chief
Organization:USDA Forest Service
Contact-Phone:202-205-1760
Contact-addr:fswa/s=pao/ou1=w01b@mhs.attmail.com
Document-Date:9/22/94
EXPIRY:1/1/96
Abstract:White paper on Ethics For Natural Resource Managers, written by Jack Ward Thomas before becoming chief of the USDA Forest Service.