Contemporary Environmental Management Concept Construction

Author: Wu Jixia
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-12-01
Features: Environmental issues are gradually becoming a key factor affecting human survival and development. Different disciplines approach this research with diverse perspectives, but the special significance and value of grasping and interpreting this issue from a philosophical standpoint are becoming clearer and more firmly established amidst the cacophony of voices. Environmental management is the lifeline of contemporary Chinese environmental protection. The globalization of contemporary environmental issues forces people to make various efforts in environmental governance. The situation in China is not optimistic; one could almost say we are trapped in a quagmire of "environmental issues." Interpreting and solving environmental and environmental management issues at the level of worldview is not only an academic issue but also a way for humanity to save itself and nature. How can environmental and environmental management issues be resolved? It requires us to undergo a transformation in management thinking. The key to this transformation lies in a shift in worldview, and it necessitates establishing a new worldview. Marxism holds that worldview is people's overall perception of the world, including their understanding of their own position and role within the larger whole. Worldview is also known as cosmic view; it is a sum of natural philosophy, sociological and historical philosophy, ethical philosophy, aesthetic philosophy, and scientific philosophy. Philosophy is its theoretical expression. In today's academic discourse, the concept of worldview can be used to refer to a specific field and is a concept that has been generalized. It needs to be emphasized that the new worldview concept proposed in this book is understood in a broad sense. The severe environmental issues, in essence, are a problem of cosmology, i.e., a problem of worldview. When the conflict between humans and nature becomes the most critical crisis for human survival, anxiety about the environment spreads across the entire globe. With this anxiety, philosophical workers cannot but think about environmental issues at the level of worldview and attempt to alleviate the conflict between humans and nature through the emerging and unfolding new worldview, thereby presenting a new vision of human life within nature. This book argues that differences in the understanding of worldview will lead to different academic approaches and value orientations in studying environmental issues. We respect these differences and believe that if the understanding of worldview is standardized and fixed, it will eliminate differences and lose the possibility of interpreting the world from new categories. There is not a single path to interpreting the world. The conceptual construction of contemporary environmental management is, in fact, the establishment and unfolding of a new worldview. The main concepts of contemporary environmental management can be summarized as ecological, economic, philosophical and ethical (primarily the ideas of modern environmental ethics), sustainable development, as well as legal and managerial aspects. Constructing environmental management concepts from these perspectives is the basic approach of this book. On the other hand, ecological worldview is an important component of the new worldview. Regarding the conceptual construction of contemporary environmental management, it is not a specific environmental protection issue but a shift in worldview paradigm: from the "subject-object" paradigm to the "subject-object-subject" paradigm. This transformation is a new expression of materialist worldview and a response to postmodern environmental practice issues. The new worldview is unfinished. The content of the new worldview will be established and unfolded in the chapters of this book. This book focuses on the following main contents: Philosophical interpretation of the category of environmental management: environment, management, and environmental management. This is the first issue the book's chapter needs to address. The second chapter, "Retrospection and Critique of Environmental Management Thought," discusses traditional ethical perspectives, the significance and limitations of humanism, and the development of environmental management thought. The core part of the book concerns the fundamental concepts of environmental management, which are scattered throughout the third, fourth, and fifth chapters. It is not a single-discipline advancement but an interdisciplinary issue, involving the ecological view of the environment, the broad value of the environment, and the ethical view of sustainable development. The sixth chapter, "Behavioral Philosophy of Environmental Management," is the conclusion and destination of the book, explaining the main content of constructing "rational ecological humans": the new subject of environmental management, government behavior in environmental management, corporate behavior in environmental management, and public behavior in environmental management.