- Title
- Philosophical reflections on the importance of a values-based program of environmental education, with special reference to the Three Gorges Dam Project
- Creator
- Laura, Ronald S.; Zhou, Dan
- Relation
- International Journal of Business, Management & Social Sciences Vol. 1, Issue 7, p. 57-60
- Publisher
- Choice College of Arts & Commerce
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2012
- Description
- Our aim in this paper is to show that there exists a fundamental 'moral tension' between the ostensible goals of environmental education on the one hand and the traditional goals of engineering science and pedagogy on the other. This moral tension is particularly evident in the case of the Chinese Three Gorges Dam Project (TGDP), where the collision of conflicting value presumptions has led to massive ecological devastation and the alleged violation of human rights concerns associated with the forced dislocation of local populations in the area. Although considerable engineering planning has gone into the construction of this largest dam project in the world, the horrific decimation of its surrounding environment and the concomitant dislocation of so huge a population of local people (now called 'resevoir refugees' in excess of 1.3 million) (Tan & Yao 2006) makes clear that the consequences of the Project were hopelessly unanticipated, or epistemologically and in turn politically misguided. Our aim is to elaborate one neglected epistemological reason why this is so, and we believe that doing so adds a new dimension to the decades of debate on the topic.
- Subject
- Three Gorges Dam Project; ecology; soial justice; engineering
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1317032
- Identifier
- uon:23313
- Identifier
- ISSN:2249-7463
- Language
- eng
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