NASARA JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

Current interest in environmental conservation is a child of necessity – to avoid an impending doom occasioned by mankind's wanton exploitation of nature's resources. Following a seeming loss of trust in anthropocentrism, various theories have emerged that to offer a new way of viewing and interacting with nature. Robin Attfield's conservation theory rejects holistic approaches (like deep ecology) and presents biocentric individualism, a hierarchical view of intrinsic value, and a consequentialist ethical framework for ensuring sustainability, and biodiversity, whiles preserving the interests of future generations. This aim of this paper is to expose the practicability of Robin Attfield's notion of environmental conservation. Data were sourced from both primary (i.e. Attfield's written works) and secondary sources; including books, journal articles, seminar papers, encyclopaedias, and the Internet. The analytic, hermeneutic, and pragmatic methods were then employed to examine the collated data. The study found that Attfield's conservation principles are applicable in many ways, including biodiversity preservation, resource sustainability, socioeconomic development, ethical and aesthetic value systems, curbing of environmental crises, and fostering of global collaboration and policy. Despite some shortcomings, the study concludes that Attfield's conservation theory possesses actionable points that can contribute to mitigating current environmental crises, promoting conservation, and protecting existing resources.

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