Environmental Ethics

This article discusses the critical remarks and comments that Omer Bartov, Eric Katz and Jessica Rapson offered in response to our articles published in the theme issue of the Journal of Genocide Research on "The Environmental History of the Holocaust." In our response, we clarify our understanding of how an environmental perspective can contribute to Holocaust studies. We focus on three issues; firstly: we position our research in the context of critical Holocaust studies, an emerging field in Poland, in order to draw attention to the geographically conditioned global distribution of knowledge and thus undermine convictions that non-Western humanities are necessarily peripheral. Secondly, we emphasize that the comparative perspective we adopt to address different genocides and ecocides neither seeks to undermine the uniqueness of the Holocaust nor deprive victims and survivors of their individual identity. What we do resembles the “experiments in thinking about the Holocaust” proposed by Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg, demonstrating that new approaches to Holocaust studies do not want to compete with dominant modes of research, but rather supplement and complement them. Thirdly, we argue that transcending the anthropocentric perspective in Holocaust studies can expand the spectrum of testimonies and evidence to also include non-human objects, such as trees. What we propose, then, is an analysis of new kinds of sources in an effort towards developing new approaches and methods for exploring this subject. We show how current ecological debates mean that it is crucial to take into account environmental factors when planning sites of Holocaust commemoration. In light of this, we not only ask how an environmental history of the Holocaust can expand knowledge on the relationship between genocides and ecocides, but also how future-oriented thinking about the legacies of the Holocaust can influence strategies and practices of preserving it. We see potential in posing questions relating to how the Holocaust can provide a point of reference for studying other genocides as well as how an environmental (and also indigenous and postcolonial) perspective can further develop and enrich research on the Shoah.

Indigenous ethics and feminist care ethics offer a range of related ideas and tools for environmental ethics. These ethics delve into deep connections and moral commitments between nonhumans and humans to guide ethical forms of environmental decision making and environmental science. Indigenous and feminist movements such as the Mother Earth Water Walk and the Green Belt Movement are ongoing examples of the effectiveness of on-the-ground environmental care ethics. Indigenous ethics highlight attentive caring for the intertwined needs of humans and nonhumans within interdependent communities. Feminist environmental care ethics emphasize the importance of empowering communities to care for themselves and the social and ecological communities in which their lives and interests are interwoven. The gendered, feminist, historical, and anticolonial dimensions of care ethics, indigenous ethics, and other related approaches provide rich ground for rethinking and reclaiming the nature and depth of diverse relationships as the fabric of social and ecological being.