Obligation and ownership

By Annette Mendola

I teach a class in business ethics at UT, and one section concerns ethical obligations toward the environment. It has been interesting to watch the recent transformation of students’ attitudes about this topic. Just a few years ago the idea that the environment is not a special interest, but a common concern was not well received by students. Now there is nearly universal agreement that we have obligations to the environment, even if there is still debate about what those obligations are and how much action they demand.
Philosopher Lisa Newton suggests we have become accustomed to several kinds of freedom that contribute to environmental damage. In class readings, we learn these include the freedom to buy whatever consumer goods we want (or can afford), to use as much gas as we want (or can afford) and to have as many children as we want (or can afford). She tries to get us to see that we do not always have a moral right to something simply because we have money to pay for it, that the financial price of goods do not reflect their ecological price.
She also discusses the freedom to own property. To buy land and use it as we see fit is a fundamental American value, noble and romantic. It appeals to our sense that one gets what one deserves, that we should work hard and make our labor and our land into something and be rewarded with prosperity. Those who do not will suffer for their idleness. It appeals to our reverence of individuality: do what you want with your house, in my house I will do whatever I want.
But such attitudes are not without problems. For one thing, the borders we draw to separate your land from mine are ecologically meaningless. Seeds, pesticides, kudzu and the like drift from your land to mine without respecting property lines. More importantly, the land persists long after individuals and their goals have died.
Some of my students have heard the equally romantic but conceptually fuzzy idea that we do not truly own land. We do not inherit land from our parents, but borrow it from our children, they declare, then wait expectantly for me to agree. Alas, they can not explain what they really mean. Should I leave my land undeveloped in case my kids want to do something with it? Fine, but by the same logic my kids can not develop it either.
A more promising understanding of land ownership holds that land is “ours” like children are ours. We have rights to develop and responsibilities to steward and care for both, but neither kids nor land are mere things. Both persist long after we and our rights and responsibilities are gone. Our prerogative as parents, for example, is to decide what kind of education our child should have. Whether the school she goes to is Christian, public, Montessori or our home is for us to decide. Good parents make such decisions based partly on what they value (reverence for God, multiculturalism, civic responsibility, creativity, academic rigor) and partly on what the child needs (individual attention, kinetic learning, lots of structure, lots of freedom). Similarly, decisions about land should reflect our own values and the needs of the land itself.
Both children and land are ends to themselves; they have their own interests, their own health and integrity. We can speak meaningfully about what is good for them apart from what is good for us. Yet to think of either kids or land as separate from us is wrong. My child and I are connected; if she is harmed, I am harmed, and to help her is to help me. So too is it with our land.
The metaphor is not perfect. Children need parents, for example, but land without a human owner does just fine. But today leaving land alone requires owning it first, which is the strategy of the Nature Conservancy and similar groups. Once land is owned, it is vulnerable, as children are vulnerable. Like children, it requires respect, protection, and care.