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Chapter 2: Conservation Values and Ethics The value of biodiversity

Instrumental/utilitarian value – value as a means to another’s end Intrinsic/inherent value – value as an end in itself Anthropocentric (human-centred) – biodiversity valued only as a means to human ends Biocentric – valuable because is exists independent of human use Instrumental value 3 basic categories which are goods, services and information 4th sometimes referred to is psycho-spiritual Goods Eat, heat, build and consume living beings Only small fraction actually used/investigated for food, fuel, fibre and other commodities More food plants to be discovered – add variety and save from starvation if crops fail Fast-growing trees undiscovered in tropics – useful for fuel-wood, charcoal, pulp and timber New organic pesticide “Some ecologists are so tired of this line of reasoning that they refer wearily to the ‘Madagascar periwinkle argument.’…[Those] ecologists hate the argument because it is both arrogant and trivial. It assumes that the Earth’s millions of species are here to serve the economic purposes of just one species. And even if you buy that idea, it misses the larger and more valuable ways that nature serves us.” (Meadows, 1990) Services Removal of carbon dioxide and replenishment of oxygen by green plants Pollination of flowering plants, such as agricultural species by insects, birds and bats Decomposition of dead matter in soil by fungal and microbial life-forms – and recycling plant nutrients Gaia hypothesis – Earth’s temperature and ocean salinity organically regulated Information Desirable characteristics encoded in isolatable genes Could be transferred for medicinal uses Genetic information is potential economic good (Meadows, 1990) Number of know species could represent less than 5% (Erwin, 1988) Psycho-spiritual “A refined taste in natural objects” Prefer rich and diverse biota to monotony Finds a special wonder, awe and mystery in nature – biophilia (Wilson, 1984) Nature’s inexhaustible marvels Also seen as intrinsic “We enjoy an object because it is valuable; we do not value it merely because we enjoy it….Aesthetic experience is a perception, as it were, of a certain kind of worth” (Sagoff, 1980) Intrinsic value Attributed to: Robustly conscious animals (Regan, 1983) Sentient animals (Warnock, 1971)

All living things (Taylor, 1986) Species (Callicott, 1986. Rolston, 1988. Johnson, 1991) Biotic communities (Callicott, 1989) Ecosystems (Rolston, 1988. Johnson, 1991) Evolutionary processes (Rolston, 1988) Environmental philosophers “Intrinsic value exists objectively in human beings and other organisms” Autopoietic – self-organising and self-directed (Fox, 1990) Machines do not have own goals, e.g. a car’s purpose is imposed on it from an outside source, i.e. us! What are an organisms self-set goals? Anything! Basic predetermined goals Unconsciously strive towards in evolutionary sense Growth, reaching maturity and reproducing (Taylor, 1986) Oak tree needs ample sunlight, water and rich soil In interest of oak tree but may not be actively interested in these goals More harm than good? Divides conservationists into anthropocentrics and biocentrics Biocentrics describe anthropocentrics as “Shallow resourcists” Anthropocentrics think biocentric have “gone off the deep end” (Norton, 1991) If biodiversity valuable because it ensure continuation of ecological services, represents pool of genetic resources, satisfies aesthetically or inspires religiously Upshot same as if attributed intrinsic values We should conserve it! Instrumentally and intrinsically valuing biodiversity “converge” on identical conservation policies (Norton) However, a practical difference in a fundamental way when attributing intrinsic value Intrinsic value can be easily ignored, therefore could be put at risk

Monetising the value of biodiversity

Technical task for economists Market price Some endangered species have a market price Elephants for tusks Rhinoceroses for horns Baleen Whales for meat, bone and oil Bengal tiger for pelts Some species only threatened with extinction because of their market price, such as blue and sperm whales Bengal tiger and mountain gorilla due to habitat destruction Take advantage of species’ monetary value is key to conserving them (Myers, 1981) Modern economic theory Transform species’ market price from conservation liability to conservation asset Take out of “commons” and “enclose” it

Not literally relating to fencing it but assigning rights to cull Wild species can be overharvested when property rights not legitimately asserted and enforced Leads to “Tragedy of the Commons” Resource owned and property rights enforced than owner not tempted to “kill the goose that lays the golden eggs” so species will be conserved But other factors to consider Reproduction and growth rates in relation to interest and discount rates “The interest rate level, the nature of the net benefit function and its movement over time, and the dynamics of the resource’s natural growth process combine to determine the optimal intertemporal path of exploitation… Other things being equal, the higher the interest rate at which future consequences are discounted, the more it is optimal to deplete the resource now.” Blue Whale example International Whaling Commission Enclosed whale populations Occasional poaching due to allotment of species harvest quotas to whaling nations (Forcan, 1979) More profitable if blue whales were hunted to extinction and profits invested in other industries (Clark, 1973). Clark does not recommend this Shows that market forces do not always further conservation goals Works with species which have high growth and reproduction rates, but not ones with relatively slow growth and reproduction rates Potential goods New foods, fuels, medicines etc. No market price as they remain unknown or undeveloped If species driven to extinction then resource potential will never be realised Potentially desirable commodities lost Option price Potential goods can be assigned an “option price” “The amount people would be willing to pay in advance to guarantee an option for future use” (Raven et al., 1992) Existence value Modicum of satisfaction knowing biodiversity being conserved/protected May not have intention of consuming exotic meats or wilderness experience Can ascertain a value for this Calculate amount sedentary people contribute to organisations such as The Nature Conservancy and Rainforest Action Network Bequest value Willingness to pay to assure that future generations of Homo sapiens inherit biologically diverse world (Raven et al., 1992) Other monetary values Fees paid to visit National Parks User fees often low True value of psycho-spiritual “resource” under expressed Subsidies from local, state and federal tax revenues factored in too Money people spend on gasoline, food, lodging and camping equipment Credited using the “travel cost method” “Contingent valuation”

People asked willingness to pay for opportunity to enjoy certain experience

Valuing natural services

Value of natural services to human economy rarely monetised “How would you like the job of pollinating trillions of apple blossoms some sunny afternoon in May? It’s conceivable maybe that you could invent a machine to do it, but inconceivable that the machine could work as elegantly and cheaply as the honey bee, much less make honey on the side” (Meadows, 1990) Could be monetised Calculate the cost of replacing natural services with artificial ones Cost of employing labour and machines “The species whose members are the fewest in number, the rarest, the most narrowly distributed – in short, the ones most likely to become extinct – are obviously the ones least likely to be missed by the biosphere. Many of these species were never common or ecologically influential; by no stretch of the imagination can we make them out to be vital cogs in the ecological machine” (Ehrenfeld, 1988) Some conservation biologists against reducing all value to monetary terms (Sagoff, 1988. Ehrenfold, 1988) “Some things have a price, others a dignity” Some things been taken off the market because we believe them to have dignity Human-being – outlawed slavery Sex – outlawed prostitution Why not take biodiversity off the market by outlawing environmentally destructive human activities United States – Endangered Species Act 1975 Hard choices Economists counter that we have to make hard choices For example, bringing arable land into production and protecting the habitats of endangered species (Randall, 1986) Just because we intrinsically value biodiversity and recognise this, it does not imply that it cannot be priced Make informed decisions, need to ‘express the entire spectrum of natural values, from “goods” and “services” to “existence” in comparable terms: dollars’ Amendment to Endangered Species Act 1975 1978 – “God-squad” Given power to allow projects which put protected species at risk from extinction to go forward if economic benefits great enough Shows that there are 2 incommensurable systems to determining value Economic and political SMS – Safe Minimum Standard (Bishop, 1978) Assumes biodiversity has incalculable value Should be conserved unless cost is prohibitively high “Whereas the…BCA approach starts each case with a clean slate and painstakingly builds from the ground up a body of evidence about the benefits and costs of preservation, the SMS approach starts with a presumption that the maintenance of the SMS for any species is a positive good. The empirical economic questions is, “Can we afford it?” Or, more technically, “How high are the opportunity costs of

satisfying the SMS?” The SMS decision rule is to maintain the SMS unless the opportunity costs of doing so are intolerably high. In other words, the SMS approach asks, how much will we lose in other domains of human concern by achieving the safe minimum standard of biodiversity? The burden of proof is assigned to the case against maintaining the SMS.” (Randall, 1988) Recognising intrinsic value of something does not mean it is inviolable but shifts the burden of proof SMS shifts the burden of proof from conservationists to developers Incorporates economic appraisal

Conservation ethics

“A limitation on freedom of action” (Leopold, 1949) “Constrains self-serving behaviour in deference to some other good” Anthropocentrism Western religious and philosophical tradition that human-being only worthy of ethical consideration Everything else means to human ends Bible – man created in the image of God Dominion over Earth and all creatures Subdue whole creation Christian and Jewish belief to dominate all forms of life led to western civilisation developing aggressive environmentally destructive technology Subduing nature have “untoward ecological consequences” Anthropocentric conservation Needs individuals, corporations and other interest groups to consider how their actions directly affect environment and indirectly affect human-beings Example: Logging tropical forests Fine hardwoods for wealthy consumers Profits to timber companies Employ workers Earn foreign exchange for debt-ridden countries On the other hand Deprive indigenous people of home and tradition means of subsistence Deprive people everywhere of: Undiscovered resources Aesthetic experiences Scientific knowledge Valuable ecosystem services Intergenerational inequality The Judeo-Christian Stewardship Conservation Ethic Appears that God conferred intrinsic value on all creatures not just humanity “And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth” (Genesis, 1:20-22)

Dominion Ambiguous notion Despotic reign over nature (White, 1967) God put Adam (representing all human-beings) in the Garden of Eden (representing all nature) “to dress it and to keep it” (Genesis, 2:15) Responsible caretaker Steward not tyrant Man created in the image of God Unique responsibilities no privileges Stewardship Conservation Ethic Matches ethical requirements of conservation biology Intrinsic value on nature in clearest and most unambiguous way by divine decree Can freely use other living things as long as we do not compromise the diversity of creation “Diversity is God’s property, and we, who bear the relationship to it of strangers and sojourners, have no right to destroy it” (Ehrenfeld, 1988)

Traditional Non-western Environment Ethics

Normal people can be greatly motivated to do things which can be justified in religious terms Distilling environmental ethics in the World’s religions is key to global conservation How can effective conservation ethics be formulated in terms of other sacred texts? Islam 7th Century A.D. Allah (God) communicated to humanity through Arabian prophet Mohammed (PBUH) Part of same prophetic tradition as Moses and Jesus Islam teaches human-beings have privileged place in nature Other natural beings created to serve humanity Purely instrumental approach to human-nature relationship Arabian Oryx nearly hunted to extinction by oil-rich sheikhs with military assault riffles No distinction between religious and secular laws New conservation regulations surrounding the Koran The Islamic Principles for the Conservation of the Natural Environment “A relationship of utilisation, development, and subjugation for man’s benefits and the fulfilment of his interests” “He [man] is only a manager of the earth and not appropriation, a beneficiary not a dispenser or claimer” (Kadr et al., 1983) North American Conservation Philosophy Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau heavily influence by Hinduism Arne Naess’s “Deep Ecology” conservation philosophy (1989) Only one being or reality All beings manifestations of Brahman – differences illusory Actual existence of biological diversity denied Ecological relationships unite organisms into a systematic whole “The suffering of one life-form is the suffering of all others; to harm other beings is to harm oneself.” Chipko movement – helped in saving many of India’s Himalayan forests from commercial exploitation

Jainism Avoid harming other life-forms Resist pleasure of material consumption Refuse to eat anything but leftover food prepared for others Strain water to avoid ingesting water borne organisms Bidding for global leadership in environmental ethics Low-on-the-food-chain, low-level-of-consumption lifestyle Ecological right livelihood (Chappel, 1990) Jain Declaration on Nature Ahinsa ‘is nothing but environmentalism’ (Singhui, Sin Datum) Buddhism Path of meditation and path of extreme asceticism Believe all living things in same predicament “We are driven by desire to a life continuous frustration, and all can be liberated by all attaining enlightenment” Other living beings seen as components on path into Buddhahood and nirvana Assuming leadership roles in global conservation movement Dalai Lama of Tibet Buddhist Perception of Nature Project 1985 Bodhi succinct summary of Buddhist environmental ethics “With its philosophic insight into the interconnectedness and thoroughgoing interdependence of all conditioned things, with its thesis that happiness is to be found through the restraint of desire, with its goal of enlightenment through renunciation and contemplation and its ethic of noninjury and boundless loving-kindness for all beings, Buddhism provides all the essential elements for a relationship to the natural world characterised by respect, care and compassion.” Taoists A Tao – A Way of nature Natural processes occur in an orderly and harmonious fashion well-orchestrated flow of this Capital –intensive western technology is ‘un-Taoist’ in esprit and motif Confucianism Connotes conservatism Adhere to custom and social forms, filial piety and resignation to feudal inequality “There is a common ground shared by the teachings of classical Confucianism and Taoism…Both express a ‘this-worldly’ concern for the concrete details of immediate experience rather than…grand abstractions and ideals. Both acknowledge the uniqueness, importance, and primary of particular persons and their contributions to the world, while at the same time expressing the ecological interrelatedness and interdependence of this person with his context.” (Ames, 1992) Person is unique centre of a network of relationships Destruction of social and environmental context is equivalent to self-destruction – biocide Tantamount to suicide

Ecocentrism

Aldo Leopold Land Ethic Not based on religious beliefs Not extension of ethical paradigm of classic western moral philosophy

Grounded in evolutionary and ecological biology The Decent of Man Problems of evolutionary origins and development of ethics “Limitations on freedom of action” Possibly arisen through natural selection “No tribe could hold together if murder, robbery, treachery…were common; consequently such crimes within the limits of the same tribe, ‘are branded with everlasting infamy’.” “As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.” (Darwin, 1904) Human ethics has strong holistic aspect “All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts” (Leopold, 1949) Environmental facism Subordination of rights of individuals for good of whole (Regan, 1983. Aiken, 1984) We must fully acknowledge all our ancient and modern human duties and obligations as well as our more recently discovered environmental ones How can we justify sacrificing human interests to conserve non-human species and ecosystems? Nature tending toward static equilibrium portrayed disturbance and perturbation as abnormal and destructive (Odum, 1953) Shift in contemporary ecology to more dynamic paradigm (Botkin, 1990)

Biocentrism

Only people can reason and speak so only people are worthy of ethical treatment ‘Human beings are intrinsically valuable ends because we are rational, while animals (and other forms of life) are only instrumentally valuable means because they are not’ (Immanuel Kant, 1959) Contemporary environmental philosophers Attempted to construct a nonanthropocentric environmental ethic without appealing to mystical religious concepts “Criterion for moral considerability” pitched to exclude non-human beings also exclude human beings who also fail to measure up – human infants, severely retarded and profusely senile Must therefore lower criterion for moral considerability Singer (1975) and Jeremy Bentham thought that sentience (being able to experience pleasure and pain) ought to be criterion for ethical standing All living things have good of their own and therefore have interests Goodpaster (1978) thought criterion should entitle all living beings to ethical standing Taylor (1986) all living things of equal “inherent worth” Rolston – should also be rational and self-conscious to be entitled to ethical standing Sentient animals have more intrinsic value than insentient plants Human beings have more intrinsic value than animals Moral duty to preserve them Conservation aiming at a moving target Words conserve and preserve linked to integrity and stability which connotes stasis

Temporal and spatial scale “Evolutionary changes…are usually slow and local. Man’s invention of tools has enabled him to make changes of unprecedented violence, rapidity, and scope.” (Leopold, 1949) Ecological change added to evolutionary change Normal climatic oscillations and patch dynamics added to normal rates of extinction, hybridisation and sp...