Teaching the Ethical Aspects of Environmental Science

Abstract:

Environmental and societal issues are often inherently linked, especially in coastal and estuarine environments, and science and social values must often be balanced in ecosystem management and decision-making. A new seminar course has been developed for the Marine Estuarine and Environmental Science (MEES) graduate program, an inter-institutional program within the University System of Maryland, to examine these issues. This 1-credit course, offered for the first time in Spring 2015, takes a complex systems perspective on major environmental and societal challenges to examine these linked issues in a variety of contexts. After a brief introduction to the emerging field of “geoethics,” students develop a list of issues to examine throughout the seminar. Example topics could include fracking, offshore wind technology, dam removal, and iron fertilization, among others. A case-study approach is taken, with each class meeting focusing on one issue. For each case study, students are asked to 1) identify relevant scientific principles and major knowledge gaps, 2) predict potential outcomes, 3) identify stakeholders and likely viewpoints, and 4) construct communication plans to disseminate findings to these stakeholders. At the end of the semester, students give a brief presentation of the ethical aspects of their own research topics.