In this podcast episode, our host Mirian Vilela speaks with Kathryn Gwiazdon, Executive Director of the Center for Environmental Ethics and Law and Chair of the Ethics Specialist Group of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law.
Katy starts the conversation by emphasizing “Ethics is action. Ethical principles underlie every decision that is made, which is also why we cannot separate decisions related to climate change or climate change harms.”
Katy offers an overview of the book The Routledge Handbook of Applied Climate Ethics, which she co-edited with Donald A. Brown and Laura Westra. She also shares insights from her two chapters in the book:
- “The Climate Change Disinformation Campaign: Attacking the Common Good, Advancing the Self, and Destroying Democracy”
- “Saving Democracy: Denying the Alternate Reality of Climate Denialism”
In light of the COP30 presidency’s call for a “Global Ethical Stocktake” to help address the climate crisis, Katy, who has worked for years in the field of environmental ethics, welcomes this new opportunity to highlight the importance of clarifying ethical values in crafting appropriate responses to the crisis. While celebrating and welcoming this development, she also emphasized the importance of examining who the actors involved in any the process are, reminding us that ethics can sometimes be used as a tool of manipulation, advancing interests that do not align with just and sustainable futures.
The conversation also explores the Earth Charter and shares how she uses it in her teaching, its linkages with the work of the Global Ecological Integrity Group (GEIG) and her thoughts on the value of the IUCN resolution on it.
When commenting on the historic decisions by the International Court of Justice and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights regarding states’ obligations in addressing climate change, she underlined that “what matters here are the institutions that did it. The statements of responsibility of obligation of States had to come from these bodies, these international bodies, because it added, a robustness to the entire legal movement for climate action and climate protection.”
