"Also, if many voices and currents of thought emerged over the years to give significant weight to non-human beings, a stark contrast remains. Not all views within environmental ethics argue for respecting non-human beings and nature on the same ground. There are two broad stances we need to distinguish here: anthropocentrism and ecocentricism. In anthropocentrism, although moral value is attached to non-human beings, humans remain the most important living entity. Ecocentrism, on the other hand, is a nature-centred approach that does not rely on a system of values that primarily applies to humans. In short, ecocentric views value nature for its own sake while anthropocentric views retain a value in nature for its instrumental use. It is crucial to understand that there is here an important ontological divide between both: ecocentrism rejects that there would be an existential split between the human world and the non-human world, while anthropocentrism on the contrary sees humans as separate from nature and superior to it. This is a rough sketch of the positions in debates around environmental ethics; it is important to bear in mind, however, that the distinctions between anthropocentric and non-anthropocentric views are complex, and that disagreements persist."