A land ethic is a philosophy or theoretical framework about how, ethically, humans should regard the land. The term was coined by Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) in his A Sand County Almanac (1949), a classic text of the environmental movement. There he argues that there is a critical need for a "new ethic", an "ethic dealing with human's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it". Leopold offers an ecologically based land ethic that rejects strictly human-centered views of the environment and focuses on the preservation of healthy, self-renewing ecosystems. A Sand County Almanac was the first systematic presentation of a holistic or ecocentric approach to the environment. Although Leopold is credited with coining the term "land ethic", there are many philosophical theories that speak to how humans should treat the land. Some of the most prominent land ethics include those rooted in economics, utilitarianism, libertarianism, egalitarianism, and ecology.
Economics-based land ethic This is a land ethic based wholly upon economic self-interest. Leopold sees two flaws in this type of ethic. First, he argues that most members of an ecosystem have no economic worth. For this reason, such an ethic can ignore or even eliminate these members when they are actually necessary for the health of the biotic community of the land. And second, it tends to relegate conservation necessary for healthy ecosystems to the government and these tasks are too large and dispersed to be adequately addressed by such an institution. This ties directly into the context within which Leopold wrote A Sand County Almanac. For example, when the US Forest Service was founded by Gifford Pinchot, the prevailing ethos was economic and utilitarian. Leopold argued for an ecological approach, becoming one of the first to popularize this term coined by Henry Chandler Cowles of the University of Chicago during his early 1900s research at the Indiana Dunes. Conservation became the preferred term for the more anthropocentric model of resource management, while the writing of Leopold and his inspiration, John Muir, led to the development of environmentalism.
Utilitarian-based land ethic Utilitarianism was most prominently defended by British philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Though there are many varieties of utilitarianism, generally it is the view that a morally right action is an action that produces the maximum good for people. Utilitarianism has often been used when deciding how to use land and it is closely connected with an economic-based ethic. For example, it forms the foundation for industrial farming; an increase in yield, which would increase the number of people able to receive goods from farmed land, is judged from this view to be a good action or approach. In fact, a common argument in favor of industrial agriculture is that it is a good practice because it increases the benefits for humans; benefits such as food abundance and a drop in food prices. However, a utilitarian-based land ethic is different from a purely economic one as it could be used to justify the limiting of a person's rights to make a profit. For example, in the case of the farmer planting crops on a slope, if the runoff of soil into the community creek led to the damage of several neighbor's properties, then the good of the individual farmer would be overridden by the damage caused to his neighbors. Thus, while a utilitarian-based land ethic can be used to support economic activity, it can also be used to challenge this activity.
Libertarian-based land ethic Another philosophical approach often used to guide actions when making (or not making) changes to the land is libertarianism. Roughly, libertarianism is the ethical view that agents own themselves and have particular moral rights, including the right to acquire the property. In a looser sense, libertarianism is commonly identified with the belief that each individual person has a right to a maximum amount of freedom or liberty when this freedom does not interfere with other people's freedom. A well-known libertarian theorist is John Hospers. For right-libertarians, property rights are natural rights. Thus, it would be acceptable for the above farmer to plant on a slope as long as this action does not limit the freedom of his or her neighbors. This view is closely connected to utilitarianism. Libertarians often use utilitarian arguments to support their own arguments. For example, in 1968, Garrett Hardin applied this philosophy to land issues when he argued that the only solution to the "Tragedy of the Commons" was to place soil and water resources into the hands of private citizens. Hardin supplied utilitarian justifications to support his argument. However, it can be argued that this leaves libertarian-based land ethics open to the above critique lodged against economic-based approaches. Even excepting this, the libertarian view has been challenged by the critique that numerous people making self-interested decisions often cause large ecological disasters, such as the Dust Bowl disaster. Even so, libertarianism is a philosophical view commonly held within the United States and, especially, held by U.S. ranchers and farmers.
Egalitarian-based land ethic Egalitarian-based land ethics are often developed as a response to libertarianism. This is because, while libertarianism ensures the maximum amount of human liberty, it does not require that people help others. It also leads to the uneven distribution of wealth. A well-known egalitarian philosopher is John Rawls. When focusing on land use, egalitarianism evaluates its uneven distribution and the uneven distribution of the fruits of that land. While both a utilitarian- and libertarian-based land ethic could conceivably rationalize this mal-distribution, an egalitarian approach typically favors equality, whether that be an equal entitlement to land or access to food. However, there is also the question of negative rights when holding to an egalitarian-based ethic. In other words, if it is recognized that a person has a right to something, then someone has the responsibility to supply this opportunity or item; whether that be an individual person or the government. Thus, an egalitarian-based land ethic could provide a strong argument for the preservation of soil fertility and water because it links land and water with the right to food, the growth of human populations, and the decline of soil and water resources.
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