Toward an ethics of naturecultures

The concept of ‘planetary stewardship’ demands an ethics that extends across human and non-human worlds and is inclusive of cultural and natural heritage. The shadow of climate and ecological crises – evidenced in rising sea levels, ocean acidification, deforestation, severe weather events, and species loss – is increasingly challenging heritage concepts of care, custodianship, and inheritance of places and landscapes. In this chapter we review previous ethical frameworks concerned with working across nature and culture and consider such frameworks with respect to two case study landscapes: the Hani rice terraces, China, and the rock art of the Altai Mountains, Mongolia. We find that the ways in which heritage conservation typically separates human from environmental ethics are problematic in achieving a moral philosophy of planetary stewardship. We make a number of practical suggestions on how this situation might be better addressed in the field of heritage conservation.