Ethics and Sustainability: Guest or Guide? On Sustainability as a Moral Ideal

Towards a Coherent Sustainability Ethics

Teaching engineering ethics and sustainability

Most professional engineering code’s of ethics require that engineers shall understand and promote the principles of sustainability and/or sustainable development and have due regard for their environmental, social and economic obligations. However the ethical obligations towards sustainability are incorporated into the teaching of engineering ethics in very few programmes. Typically engineerin...

Sustainability and ethics as decision-making paradigms in engineering curricula

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to explore the rationale for teaching sustainability and engineering ethics within a decision-making paradigm, and critically appraise ways of achieving related learning outcomes. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents the experience of the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Sydney in teaching environmental sustainability and engineerin...

Sustainability ethics: tales of two cultures

Two small, isolated Pacific islands colonized by Polynesians experienced quite different fates—Easter Island suffered a major ecological collapse, while Tikopia appears to have attained sustainability. Both events occurred before European contact and provide valuable evidence in the discussion of sustainability ethics.

Sustainability: Virtuous or Vulgar?

Progress in understanding and achieving sustainability requires addressing it as both a scientific and an ethical issue. If sustainability is defined as “meeting human needs in a socially just manner without depriving ecosystems of their health,” most of the words in its definition are normative or value laden. Depending on how critical normative terms such as “human needs” and “ecosystem healt...