Nature conscious approach

behaviour. The good of all living beings creates responsibilities on

the part of human beings, summarized in the four basic duties of biocentric ethics: non-maleficence, noninterference, fidelity, and restitutive justice. The duty of non-maleficence requires that no harm be done to living beings, although it does not commit human beings to the positive duties of preventing harm from happening or of aiding in attaining the good. The duty of noninterference requires not interfering with an organism’s pursuit of its own goals. The duty of fidelity requires not manipulating, deceiving, or otherwise using living beings as mere means to human ends. The duty of restitutive justice requires that humans make restitution to living beings when they have been harmed by human activity.
Joseph R. DesJardins

philosophers attempt to develop a more systematic and scholarly version

of biocentric ethics. Paul Taylor’s book Respect for Nature (1986) was perhaps the most comprehensive and philosophically sophisticated defense of biocentric ethics. Taylor provided a philosophical account of why life should be accepted as the criterion of moral standing, and he offered a reasoned and principled account of the practical implications of biocentrism. He claimed that life itself is a nonarbitrary criterion for moral standing because all living things can be meaningfully said to have a good of their own. Living beings aim toward ends; they have directions, purposes, and goals. Pursuing those characteristic and natural goals—essentially what is the very activity that is life itself—constitutes the good for each living being.
Paul Taylor

from biocentrism, holds that ecological collections such as ecosystems, habitats,

species, and populations are the central objects for environmental concern. That more holistic approach typically concludes that preserving the integrity of ecosystems and the survival of species and populations is environmentally more crucial than protecting the lives of individual elements of an ecosystem or members of a species. In fact, ecocentric environmental ethics often would condone destroying the lives of individuals as a legitimate means of preserving the ecological whole. Thus, culling members of an overpopulated herd or killing an invasive nonnative plant or animal species can be justified.
Joseph R. DesJardins