%0 Journal Article
%A Pacheco Faria, Catia Gisela
%T Vulnerability and the ethics of environmental enhancement
%D 2023
%@ 2155-0085
%U https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/101477
%X In this paper, following the taxonomy developed by Mackenzie, Rogers and Dodds of different sources and states of vulnerability, I claim that wild animals are inherently and situationally vulnerable. This is because they can experience suffering as a response to certain internal and external states and have a high exposure to, and a low capacity to cope with, harmful natural processes. From this it follows that we have a moral obligation to support and assist individuals who are occurrently vulnerable and to reduce the risk of dispositional vulnerabilities becoming occurrent in the future, by endorsing some form of what I call ‘environmental enhancement’. Finally, I pay critical attention to how to prevent interventions aimed at ameliorating vulnerability from paradoxically generating pathogenic vulnerabilities.
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