What ideas were included in the Deep Ecology Platform developed by Arne Naess and George Sessions?

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environmentalism A crowd gathering to celebrate Earth Day at the U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C.

In 1984, Arne Naess and George Sessions developed an eight-point platform for the deep ecology movement. These principles were intended as a flexible guide to help individuals articulate their own positions rather than as a rigid manifesto.1

The platform posits the following ideas:

Inherent Value: Human and nonhuman life have intrinsic value, independent of their usefulness to humans.1
Diversity: The richness and diversity of life forms are values in themselves.1
Vital Needs: Humans have no right to reduce this diversity except to satisfy vital needs.1
Excessive Interference: Current human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive and worsening.1
Population: The flourishing of human and nonhuman life is compatible with, and in the latter case requires, a substantial decrease in the human population.1
Structural Change: Policies must be changed to affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures.1
Quality of Life: Ideological change should prioritize appreciating the quality of life over achieving an increasingly higher standard of living.1
Obligation: Subscribers have an obligation to participate in implementing these necessary changes.1