Leena Vilkka likes to roam with her dog Jani in her childhood landscape Kruunupuisto in Hyvinkää

Environmental philosopher Leena Vilkka, an Academy of Finland scholar, seeks to practice the ethical values which she discusses in her research. She is a vegetarian and an environmental activist. She chairs the Finnish organisation Green Union for the Protection of Life, which strives to promote the ethics of honouring life in practice. ‘I think a researcher cannot be a politician, but influencing through civic activity goes well with research work.’.

Animal and nature rights activists had adopted an ethical responsibility for nature and animals well before researchers joined in, and considerably earlier than legislators began to ponder how man should treat nature, its lakes, mountains or animals. Among Finnish environmental activists, Vilkka values Pentti Linkola and Eero Paloheimo, who both in their own radical way have shaken Finnish society with their opinions. According to Vilkka, the burning problem in Finnish society is our super-efficient wood production, fur animal farming, and meat production based on big units. She thinks all these reflect man’s idea of nature as a resource reserve which has only instrumental value.

For Contact: Ph. D. Leena Vilkka, Environmental philosophy project, P.O. Box 12 (Vuorikatu 20), 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland, Phone: +358 0 019123674, Fax: 019123685 See also Finland's.first doctoral dissertation on enviromental philosophy

and - Finland - from the IVU Global Directory