Welcome to a keynote on environmental ethics in a humanized world with Teea Kortetmäki, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä.
Human land use covers more than half of Earth's habitable land, raising new questions for environmental ethics. While the field has its most significant intellectual roots in discussions of non-human nature and human–nature relations with wilderness as a focal reference point, it has only recently begun to pay greater attention to questions of cohabitation and land use.
In this keynote, Kortetmäki introduces cohabitability as a new perspective for environmental ethics after wilderness. Drawing on the notion of habitats, she explores what we can learn from ways of cohabitation and land use in a humanized world, discusses the key constituents of cohabitability, and reflects on its implications for environmental ethics and the role of humans in shared landscapes.
This keynote is part of the NEEN & ISEE 2026 Conference on Environmental Ethics, hosted at Umeå University 14-16 October. While the conference is primarily intended for registered participants, the keynote lectures are open to all.
The conference is organised by the Nordic Environmental Ethics Network and the European section of the International Society for Environmental Ethics.
Teea Kortetmäki
Associate Professor of Philosophy
University of Jyväskylä.