ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS, FARMING SYSTEM AND CULTURAL LANDSCAPE IN THE ATLANTIC FOREST IN THE BRAZILIAN SOUTHEAST

Abstract

Abstract The relationship between environment, farming system and cultural landscape is examined using the concept of environmental ethics from Radical Ecology and the model of sustainable development from Political Ecology, with the objective of evaluating how the combination of these two theoretical perspectives offers a more complex explanation of technical change, natural resource appropriation and social transformation than those present in Economic Structuralism, Marxism and Darwinism or in Spiritual Ecology approaches. Different environmental ethics and models of worldview disenchantment present in the literature are reviewed and then evaluated in the case study on environment perception in the Fluminense Mountains. First, the environmental impact of new farming systems in the study area is presented, followed by changing value judgments of urban and rural areas as expressed in spatial perception. Then, the influence of different farming systems and religious worldviews on landscape domestication and on the perception of biodiversity is evaluated. Finally, environmental ethics are related to farming practices and shown to represent the basis of participatory rural extension and research. Throughout the article deterministic views of a linear relationship between technical change, deforestation and worldview are eschewed in favor of a synthesis of Radical and Political Ecology, which better captures the environmental and cultural complexity present in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. KeyWords: environmental ethics, farming systems, cultural landscape, Brazilian Atlantic Forest.