Environmental ethics and intrinsic value

The more systematic approach of the issue of relations between man and the environment has been through environmental ethics, which emerged as an academic discipline in the late 1960s. It mainly aims to examine the natural environment and the ethical relationships between non-human individuals and human beings. At the forefront of the questions examined by the environmental ethics is the question of what has the intrinsic value in the context of human and environment. This study will firstly address the emergence, purpose and issues of environmental ethics briefly. It will then focus on the issue of intrinsic value in environmental ethics and will attempt to examine and evaluate the underlying theories in this regard.