Environmental Value Systems

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Environmental value systems influence the way you view environmental issues, what you feel we should do about them, and what motivation you have for taking or wanting to take action.

Environmental value systems or EVSs can be grouped into three categories:

Ecocentric - the view that puts nature and ecology at the centre, and focuses on bio-rights (the right of organisms to live)

Anthropocentric - the view that puts humans at the centre. Anthropocentrists might feel that we as a species are able to and have the right to manage the earth system as we see fit, and the motivation to preserve the environment is because of its benefit to us.

Technocentric - the view that technology can be used to solve any environmental issues.

These should not necessarily be viewed as a scale from 1 to 10, with ecocentric at one end and technocentric at the other. Instead, people may have value systems that demonstrate a mix of these values.