Green Public Ethics: A Pragmatic Approach

This chapter develops green public ethics as the normative approach of this book. This approach acknowledges the importance of ethical pragmatism and pluralism for making sense of practical policy problems and to manage public value conflicts. In developing this approach, three fields of literature are utilized: public administration ethics, public policy ethics, and pragmatic environmental ethics. It is argued that “good values” can be combined from these fields of literature to manage value conflicts through informed ethical reasoning, seeking to reach broad agreements, and being complemented by green ethical activism, which can counteract unethical behaviors in public policy processes.