Environmental responsibility

We're in the process of developing a new course on Environmental Responsibility for next year, drawing out aspects of ethics, policy and action. Interesting how many different meanings are found in this term which I suppose is hardly surprising as there' s a large literature around different meanings of the constituent concepts of environment and responsibility. Interesting for example that we can be perceived to be responsible and irresponsible at the same time and that one person's expression of environment will be nearly all about biophysical factors whereas in another's biophysical barely features. For me there's often some big starting assumptions in evidence about what we can be responsible for and about the relationship between individual and collective responsibility...and whether legal or moral responsibility is in mind. Interesting paper from Alexander Dahlsrud who analysed 37 definitions of corporate social responsibility and drew out five dimensions: environmental, social, economic, stakeholder and voluntariness.