Ethics in Biodiversity Conservation (Routledge Studies in Conservation and the Environment) [1 ed.] 0367627647, 9780367627645

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Routledge Studies in Conservation and the Environment

ETHICS IN BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION Patrik Baard

Ethics in Biodiversity Conservation

This book examines the role of ethics and philosophy in biodiversity conservation. The objective of this book is twofold: on the one hand it offers a detailed and systematic account of central normative concepts often used, but rarely explicated nor justified, within conservation biology. Such concepts include ‘values’ (both intrinsic, instrumental, and, more recently, relational), ‘rights’, and ‘duties’. The second objective is to emphasize to environmental philosophers and applied ethicists the many interesting decision-making challenges of biodiversity conservation. The book argues that a nuanced account of instrumental values provides a powerful tool for reasoning about the values of biodiversity. It also scrutinizes relational values, the concept of rights of nature, and risk and shows how moral philosophy proves indispensable for these concepts. Consequently, it engages with recent suggestions on normative aspects of biodiversity conservation and shows the need for moral philosophy in biodiversity conservation. The overriding aim of this book is to provide conservation biologists and policy-makers with a systematic overview of concepts and assessments of the reasons for reaching prescriptive conclusions about biodiversity conservation. This will prove instrumental in clarifying the role of applied ethics and a refined understanding of the tools it can provide. This title will be of interest to students and scholars of conservation biology, conservation policy, environmental ethics, and environmental philosophy. Patrik Baard is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Global Political Studies, Malmö University, Sweden. He has previously been a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Swedish Biodiversity Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Science. He holds a PhD in philosophy from the Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. His research in applied ethics has covered climate change adaptation, sustainable development, biodiversity, and energy justice.

Routledge Studies in Conservation and the Environment

This series includes a wide range of inter-disciplinary approaches to conservation and the environment, integrating perspectives from both social and natural sciences. Topics include, but are not limited to, development, environmental policy and politics, ecosystem change, natural resources (including land, water, oceans and forests), security, wildlife, protected areas, tourism, human–wildlife conflict, agriculture, economics, law and climate change. Power in Conservation Environmental Anthropology Beyond Political Ecology Carol Carpenter Rethinking Wilderness and the Wild Conflict, Conservation and Co-existence Edited by Robyn Bartel, Marty Branagan, Fiona Utley and Stephen Harris Humans and Hyenas Monster or Misunderstood Keith Somerville Is CITES Protecting Wildlife? Assessing Implementation and Compliance Tanya Wyatt A Political Ecology of Forest Conservation in India Communities, Wildlife and the State Amrita Sen Ethics in Biodiversity Conservation Patrik Baard For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Studies-in-Conservation-and-the-Environment/book-series/R SICE

Ethics in Biodiversity Conservation

Patrik Baard

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Patrik Baard The right of Patrik Baard to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-62764-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-62768-3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-11071-2 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003110712 Typeset in Bembo by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Contents

List of illustrations Acknowledgements

vii viii

PART I

Introduction and background 1 Introduction 2 Background: The normative postulates of conservation biology

1 3 19

PART II

Ethics and biodiversity

43

3 Ethics and the environment: Biodiversity and conservation through the lens of environmental ethics

45

4 Intrinsic and instrumental values, and their relations

62

5 Ethical theories and practical reasoning

79

PART III

Recent developments: Relations, rights, and science

99

6 Recent developments in conservation biology: Ethics through the lens of conservation biology

101

7 Relational values and IPBES nature’s contribution to people

113

8 Environmental human rights and rights of nature

133

vi

Contents

9 Conservation biology, assessments, and the argument from inductive risk 10 Concluding thoughts Index

151 174 181

Illustrations

Tables 2.1 Functional and normative postulates for conservation biology, together with corollaries (Soulé 1985) 3.1 Typology of reflective equilibrium discussed in this chapter 4.1 Typology of value categories discussed in this chapter 6.1 Kareiva and Marvier’s (2012) proposed updated postulates for conservation biology 9.1 Specifications of sources and types of uncertainty (Regan, Colyvan, & Burgman 2002)

20 58 63 106 162

Boxes 2.1 Indicative list of ‘Annex I. Identification and monitoring’, CBD 2.2 The distinction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, the naturalistic fallacy, and controversies in environmental ethics 4.1 Natural value and the nature conservation paradox 5.1 The problem of future generations 7.1 Relational and natural value: The lesser white-fronted goose 9.1 Inductive risk and the rivet analogy

27 38 67 93 122 167

Acknowledgements

This volume is primarily based on research conducted during my first postdoc. Between 2017 and 2019 I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Swedish Biodiversity Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. I would like to thank all my colleagues there during that time for providing me with the opportunity to focus so relentlessly on research and investigating the exciting challenges that the conjunction of biodiversity and ethics provides. During my first postdoc I collaborated with Marko Ahteensuu (then of Tampere University). Our jointly authored article ‘Ethics in conservation’ provides a foundation for this volume, and I am very grateful for having the opportunity to collaborate with Ahteensuu. Parts of the research underlying this book have been presented in workshops at ‘Preventing the Age of Loneliness: Conservation, Ecological Restoration, Adaptation, and the Non-human’ at the Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT) and at seminars at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Turku University. I want to provide an extended thanks to all participants at those venues. Markku Oksanen deserves special notice for his generosity in reading and commenting on the whole manuscript. I believe that the manuscript was greatly improved by his comments. It was a privilege to draw from his experience in this field, and it raised my confidence in the volume – a confidence that for a long time was all too easily shattered. Several others have commented on specific chapters, and in that regard, I would like to especially thank Sven Ove Hansson, Charles Hayes, Anders Melin, and Visa Kurki. Some have also read drafts of the articles that this volume is based on in various forms, and William Bülow O’Nils is worth a special recognition for this. Finally, I would like to thank two persons who have made sure that bringing this volume to reality did not overtake all my time. Mira Kjellsdotter and Bernard have both put up with me discussing it and, in different ways, provided feedback. To the latter, I hope that his interest in and ever-expanding knowledge of species, his joyful curiosity of the surrounding world, and persistent questioning never ceases.

Part I

Introduction and background

1

Introduction

Though I wish it were otherwise it is highly unlikely that a book on moral philosophy will propel social and political change. You will not find here proposed solutions, political slogans, nor recommendations for how to engage in collective action and drive political change. What you will find here are analyses of arguments and attempts to situate moral philosophy in biodiversity conservation. That may not sound as exciting. Indeed, it may even seem redundant or provocative to have such a discussion during the sixth mass extinction. Nevertheless, it is a task of moral philosophy to critically analyse and assess the validity of arguments, scrutinize the foundations on which they stand, and investigate their implications. One of the motivations for writing this book are my experiences of talking to, and working alongside, ecologists and biologists having an interest in ethics and familiarity with concepts such as ‘intrinsic values’, but also a frustration on my part to explain the complexity, and practical relevance, of such concepts. This book is partly an attempt to provide such explanations. Concepts from environmental ethics float around in conservation biology, even from the start (Soulé 1985), and in central conventions such as the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity (UN 1992), both recognizing the intrinsic value of biodiversity. Yet, to accept such a statement requires more than merely making it, it requires arguments and conceptual analyses. This is important, as making such a statement will matter to how conservation is included in decisions, and what priorities one is justified in making in conservation policies. In this book I will analyse arguments in favour of biodiversity preservation. Biodiversity is often heralded as a prerequisite of human wellbeing. Biodiversity is also something that is considered to have intrinsic value. That is, value that is not derivative of the interests of well-being of humans and other morally relevant beings. The concept has been central to nature conservation at least since the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), 1992. Biodiversity refers to a characteristic in and between ecosystems and species, and biodiversity preservation could be an expression of our care for lives around us, including our own well-being. Moreover, the levels of biodiversity are diminishing, giving way to what is often called ‘the sixth mass extinction’ (Barnosky et al. 2011; Ceballos DOI: 10.4324/9781003110712-1

4

Introduction and background

et al. 2015). Around one million species are currently at risk of extinction, many within decades (IPBES 2019: 12). Some of those extinction levels are ‘natural’, as new species come and old species go extinct for reasons not related to human activity. However, much of the extinction rate is humaninduced, or ‘anthropogenic’. Biologist Edward O. Wilson has suggested the acronym HIPPO for the most ruinous of our activities, in order of importance: Habitat destruction, Invasive species, Pollution, Population growth, and Overhunting (Wilson 2016: 57ff). The anthropogenic extinction rate resulting from HIPPO is assessed to be 100–1,000 times higher than ‘natural’ rates (Wilson 2016: 54). The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) lists five direct drivers of biodiversity loss, ranked in order of impact: changes in land and sea use, direct exploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution, and invasive species (IPBES 2019: 12). Interestingly, the IPBES also lists values as an indirect driver of biodiversity loss. Extinction and biodiversity loss, as global problems, may offend moral sentiments. Extinction may be a tragedy in its own right. Moreover, the loss of biodiversity may be directly detrimental to human and animal well-being. If biodiversity loss and species extinction is morally deplorable, then the accelerating pace of it is a problem. In this book I will survey different tools that moral philosophy can bring to bear on this problem. Efforts have been directed to strengthen biodiversity protection. 2020 was destined to be a year when biodiversity protection finally received due attention and recognition from the global community. The 15th Conference of the Parties of the United Nation’s Convention on Biological Diversity was planned to coordinate international efforts to preserve biodiversity, an effort similar to the Paris agreement regarding climate change, which was set in 2015 to express the global concern of climate change and commit to practical policies such as greenhouse gas mitigation, adaptation to climate change, and climate finance. The 15th Conference of the Parties would adopt a ‘post-2020 global biodiversity framework as a stepping stone towards the 2050 Vision of “Living in harmony with nature”’.1 The year 2020, being what it was, however, led to a postponement of the conference of the parties due to the Covid-19 pandemic. But before 2020 there was no shortage of existing goals to reduce biodiversity loss. The United Nation’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) had already spelled out five strategic goals for reducing biodiversity loss. These goals, known as the Aichi targets, were formalized at a CBD meeting in the Aichi prefecture of Japan:2 • • •

Strategic Goal A: Address the underlying causes of biodiversity loss by mainstreaming biodiversity across government and society Strategic Goal B: Reduce the direct pressures on biodiversity and promote sustainable use Strategic Goal C: To improve the status of biodiversity by safeguarding ecosystems, species and genetic diversity

Introduction

• •

5

Strategic Goal D: Enhance the benefits to all from biodiversity and ecosystem services Strategic Goal E: Enhance implementation through participatory planning, knowledge management and capacity building

Up to 2020, the Aichi goals served as one of the most practical and ambitious international commitments to reducing biodiversity loss. These strategic goals were then separated into 20 separate targets. The Aichi goals were set in 2010 with a deadline of 2020. By September 2020, however, a UN report announced that none of the targets had been reached on a global level, although six of the total 20 targets had been partially achieved (UNEP 2020: 10ff). What explains the limited success – and downright failures – of achieving such targets? Are there specifically ethical reasons for this failure? Making such a point valid would require much more space and different arguments than can be provided here, as it would touch on adjacent topics such as moral motivation, moral psychology, and insights from behavioural and social sciences. There may be other factors that explain the limited successes of biodiversity protection, other than lacking conviction that biodiversity loss is morally wrong. People may want to preserve biodiversity but cannot or won’t for various reasons. There is explanatory value in factors such as psychological behaviour, or institutional mechanisms, and ways of neglecting the value of biodiversity. A review commissioned by the UK Treasury released 2021 suggested that at the heart of the issue of biodiversity loss lay an institutional failure, specifically that ‘nature’s worth to society – the true value of the goods and services it provides – is not reflected in market prices’, continuing that ‘much of it is open to all at no monetary change’ (Dasgupta 2021: 2). But it is not only that the ‘true’ value of nature and biodiversity is not reflected in monetary terms, it is also an institutional failure since institutions are unfit to manage the costs that arise due to exploitation of areas, and that exploiting nature always pays more than protecting it in existing institutions (Dasgupta 2021). Admittedly, such explanations depend on values, but they also point toward a wider set of explanations, such as institutional and economic factors. Nevertheless, it can hardly hurt conservation efforts to provide consistent, coherent, and robust arguments in favour of why biodiversity conservation ought to be strengthened. In other words, it would be good to ensure that poor ethical arguments are not part of the explanation for biodiversity loss. Ideally, ethical arguments can give reasons for strengthening biodiversity conservation. Ethics forms a central part of promoting and protecting biodiversity. An integral part of values is expressed in the Strategic Goal A above, which includes the following targets: ‘By 2020, at the latest, people are aware of the values of biodiversity and the steps they can take to conserve and use it sustainably’, and ‘By 2020, at the latest, biodiversity values have been integrated into national and local development and poverty reduction strategies and planning processes and are being incorporated into national accounting,

6

Introduction and background

as appropriate, and reporting systems’.3 These targets are not solely communication issues, as they require clarifying and reasoning about the specific value of biodiversity. To perform such analyses and critical scrutiny of reasons is a central task of moral philosophy. At its very best, ethics can provide stronger reasons for why biodiversity ought to be valued, and consequently promoted. Making people aware of the values of biodiversity requires more than stating that it is good. It requires reasoned arguments that have been tested against objections and still stand. This provides arguments that are convincing in a way that is not limited to how rhetorical manoeuvres can be convincing. Arguments that have been critically scrutinized and persist as reasonable are such arguments that we can be committed to in practice. But this requires taking a critical look at our values, at our existing ethical viewpoints, and the practical commitments that they entail. Indeed, when we take a closer look, many of our moral sentiments may be ill-suited to justifying the wrongness of species extinction and biodiversity loss. If that is the case, then we have an additional problem. In addition to biodiversity loss as such, being intuitively morally deplorable, our moral sentiments fail to explain why it is wrong. It is important to rigorously investigate why the view that biodiversity ought to be preserved is reasonable and should be adopted and committed to. If one cannot provide such a defence, one is left short when objections come, as when biodiversity conservation is trumped by other concerns and priorities have to be made, such as economic goals or urban development. Even if there are many suggestions for why biodiversity loss is morally troublesome, I will suggest that many of them should be given a more robust foundation. Judging from the state of things, not everyone agrees that a wrong is committed when an action contributes to species going extinct or biodiversity loss. Alternatively, it may be claimed that principles of moral responsibility do not apply when increased consumption leads to habitat loss leads to species extinction. Responsibility becomes fragmented in such long causal chains. Habitat loss can for example be a consequence of meat production, as animals require land to graze on. During recent years, the issue of biofuels has gained more attention, as has negative emission technologies and carbon sinks (having the function of absorbing carbon). While considered as a strategy to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, and thus to reduce the risks of dangerous climate change, biofuels and negative emission technologies require large land areas to meet energy demands and absorb enough carbon to reduce dangerous climate change (see Newbold et al. 2015). This may in effect lead to a conflict between preserving biodiversity on the one hand and reducing the risks of dangerous climate change by increasing the use of bio-fuels and negative emission technologies, on the other (Baard 2020). Many will consider it too great a cost to preserve biodiversity, especially when pit against other goals, such as economic development. Balancing different utilities and goods against biodiversity requires a lot of well-considered reasoning. Both those that reject and those that concede that

Introduction

7

biodiversity ought to be conserved owe reasons for why their viewpoint is justified or should be adopted, and why it should influence our actions and decisions. The practice of reason-giving, and the analysis and investigation of the robustness of reasons is a key issue in moral philosophy. When there are strong reasons for a proposition, usually in the form of argument, we are often committed to act as if that proposition is true. When we, after scrutiny, do not see any good reason for rejecting an argument, it holds. While the situation is dire, it may not be the case that all species could, or should, be preserved, given potential social costs and impacts on human well-being. But neither does the opposing viewpoint seem reasonable, to regard biodiversity as a good from which we can extract at our will to the detriment of others. To propel any form of change that biodiversity ought to be conserved and species extinction reduced requires well thought out positions to enable a discussion with reasoned arguments. Given the severity of consequences, a morally defensible position ought to be searched for and, hopefully, found.

The aim of this book This is a book on moral philosophy, being ‘the philosophical study of morals or morality’ (Wiggins 2006: 9). Such studies concern topics such as the content of morality, the reasons to live ethically and determine the logical and metaphysical character of morality. This includes topics such as the prospects, possibilities, and conditions for truth and objectivity of judgments (Wiggins 2006: 9). One of the purposes of ethics is to assess the reasonableness of the norms and values which guide our actions. At its most basic this book will investigate the following judgments, and the arguments supporting them,4 biodiversity ought to be preserved, or conversely, (anthropogenic) biodiversity loss ought to be reduced or, ideally, brought to a halt. The judgments may seem self-evident to you but judging from the unprecedented and growing levels of biodiversity deterioration and species extermination – motivating the term ‘the sixth mass extinction (Barnosky et al. 2011; Ceballos et al. 2015) – it is not self-evident, or at the very least it is not sufficient and fails to motivate action. Thus, the norm seems to be to give biodiversity and its components (i.e. ecosystems or species, depending on how it is defined) a very modest place in practical decision-making. While I do not want to exaggerate this speculation, there are arguably many explanations that can be provided for biodiversity loss and the sixth mass extinction, such as institutional and economic failures; one problem may be that the reasons counting in favour of the judgments are only reasons that are self-evident for those already convinced. This means that those who are uncertain, or do not regard the judgments as self-evident, have few reasons to take biodiversity into account in decision-making. Even more problematically, many of the most common arguments in favour of biodiversity conservation that are found in conservation biology do not sit on very robust grounds and are vulnerable to objections. An example is the classical notion that biodiversity has intrinsic value,

8

Introduction and background

and therefore conservation ought to promote biodiversity, a view proposed by classical works in conservation biology. Yet, merely stating that biodiversity has intrinsic value does not suffice. Such a statement does not equal proof. But even if it were the case, what does it mean for something to have intrinsic value? And how to rank it relative to other entities that have intrinsic value? This kind of dismissal of conservation could quite easily be avoided by giving conservation arguments firmer foundations. Thus, I will attempt to present and critically scrutinize arguments in support of the proposition that biodiversity ought to be preserved, hopefully providing stronger arguments in favour of the proposition that biodiversity ought to be conserved. One virtue of moral philosophy is how it not only makes statements. Moral philosophy does not simply categorize public opinion on moral issues. Nor does it seek to influence public opinion by rhetorical flourish, the way that political speeches may fire up sentiments for a cause. Nor does it command with brute force or threat of punishment, the way law does. Moral philosophy rather sets out to make prescriptive conclusions about what one ought to do, and weighs reasons that count in favour of specific judgments, in order to make sense of what one ought to do and what one has the best reasons to do. But moral philosophy also requires taking into account reasons that count against a specific prescriptive conclusion, often conclusions we hold dear. You may intuitively think that biodiversity ought to be conserved, but moral philosophy will pose the question ‘Why?’, and then set out to assess what forms of reasons you provide that count in favour of your position. If your reply is ‘Well, it just seems intuitively right’, then a moral philosopher will ask, ‘Well, what is the moral status of your intuition, or anyone else’s? Is it reasonable and consistent to base prescriptive conclusions solely with reference to intuitions?’ Thus, not only will the ‘why’-question arise, the answers provided will also be assessed to determine to what extent they provide reasons that count in favour of a prescriptive conclusion, and how strong those reasons are relative to other reasons, such as the reasons to hold the contradictory position. This book is written with two different audiences in mind, bearing the risk of satisfying neither. On the one hand, the book is to be of interest to students and researchers in disciplines such as ecology and biology. The work offers an overview of how the values of biodiversity have been discussed in conservation biology, supplemented with how it has been discussed in environmental ethics. Consequently, it is for those who are interested in the ethical aspects of their work and want to be provided a more substantial account of what moral philosophy can provide biodiversity conservation. This book is also valuable to applied ethicists and environmental philosophers who are interested in the topic of biodiversity per se. Although biodiversity is a central concept in policies related to the environment, it has generated only modest philosophical analysis, although there are some exceptions (Norton 1987; Oksanen & Pietarinen 2004; Sarkar 2005; Maclaurin & Sterelny 2008; Maier 2012; Garson, Plutynski, & Sarkar 2017). This book will contribute to filling this gap by actively engaging with conservation biology and policy. But there are additional challenges to

Introduction

9

the concept of biodiversity. From empirical perspectives it is not as clear what it refers to as one would expect from a scientific concept, without offering further clarifications of what is meant. From normative perspectives it is often not biodiversity per se that has moral weight (Oksanen 1997), but rather its components, such as species, or individual beings which are not necessarily valuable solely by their contribution to species richness. From both perspectives it seems as if biodiversity serves as a redundant and unnecessary proxy (Santana 2017). Still, the concept is practically used, which merits further analyses. Thus, a significant aim of this book is to trace the normative aspects of the concept of biodiversity and how it can be assessed from ethical perspectives or given moral significance. This task involves two sides. I will trace how biodiversity and ethics have been discussed in conservation biology. But this will be matched by a similar movement of tracing how biodiversity has been discussed in environmental ethics. Thus, I will investigate both how conservationists have discussed ethics, and how ethicists have discussed conservation. The benefit from this is twofold. First, it will provide conservation biologists with a sense of the central concepts and discussions of moral philosophy in relation to biodiversity conservation. But it will also benefit applied ethicists, as it provides an account of the workings that the concept of biodiversity and its values has in practice. While ethicists strive to provide robust arguments that hold up to critical scrutiny and objections, conservation biologists are those whose practice is permeated by those arguments.

Central arguments In this volume I will both try to relate ideas in environmental ethics and conservation biology to the topic of biodiversity conservation, and also engage with recent proposals from instances such as IPBES, rights of nature, and views on conservation biology as a value-neutral science. A central tenet in this book is to establish what work ethics does in conservation, and what it can potentially bring to the table and its bearing on conservation decisions. Lately, the relevance of moral philosophy to conservation ethics has come under attack, which risks rendering it redundant or indifferent to conservation (Baard & Ahteensuu 2019). Such a position entails that the same task, conservation and establishing the normative reasons thereof, can be fulfilled or motivated by other theories or viewpoints than ethical. The position that ethics is redundant or indifferent to conservation may be too exaggerated, and the calls for excluding ethics from conservation biology fringe positions. Yet, it is worthwhile to investigate what function that moral philosophy performs in conservation. That is, how to think ethically about conservation biology generally, and biodiversity specifically. Some suggest that ethics has fallen into vitriolic battles which is stifling productive discourse (Tallis & Lubchenco 2014: 27). Consequently, ethical discussions stifle much-needed productive work. Since ethics cannot fill the intended function of providing reasons for why biodiversity ought to be preserved (or

10 Introduction and background

rather, spend too much time arguing about the reasons that underlie preservation), then it is indifferent to conservation practices. A seemingly more moderate version of this viewpoint is that the value of biodiversity is self-evident and thus provides little reason for applied ethics, being a common conception in the early days of conservation biology (Soulé 1985). Should the intrinsic value of biodiversity be self-evident, the need for environmental ethics would be drastically reduced. After all, it is things such as intrinsic values that much research in environmental ethics attempts to establish. Chapters 6–9 all concern positions that, in one way or another, explain why biodiversity ought to be conserved that would obviate or reduce the need for environmental ethics. These viewpoints are not geared towards environmental ethics and its relevance to productive work as such, but the outcome would be that environmental ethics is redundant or indifferent. The following will be discussed in those chapters: •

•

•

Basing conservation solely on relational values, that is, deriving normative prescriptions from relations people have to nature. This position is found in environmental ethics (Coeckelbergh 2012), but is also becoming ever more explicit in conservation policies. One example of the latter is the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) concept ‘nature’s contribution to people’, and basing such policies on people’s different relations to nature (Diaz et al. 2015; Chan et al. 2016). This omits the need for ethical reasoning as policies require only people’s expressed relations to nature. This risks conflating the social scientific empirical accounts of different relations with prescriptive conclusions. The thought that nature can have legal rights would base conservation efforts in a legal framework, rather than an ethical one. Several legal scholars have suggested that it is meaningful and reasonable to talk about (legal) rights of nature (Stone 1972, 2010; Chapron, Epstein, & López-Bao 2019). If it could be established that an entity such as a river or ecosystem has legal personhood, or that it is similar enough to other non-human entities that have legal rights, such as corporations, this could provide a strong case for why that entity should have rights and be protected. While the relation between law and ethics is complex, it will be argued that legislation requires references to moral philosophy to make a convincing case that nature has rights – but that it is not certain that such support can be offered. Yet, other options remain to strengthen legal protection of biodiversity. Conservation biology is a science, and as a science it is solely concerned with making descriptive statements of how, for example, ecosystems function and can be changed. But taking decisions is a matter for policy, not science. This viewpoint is based on a conventional distinction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, where the former is the domain of science, whereas the latter concerns ethics. The view is in contrast to that of classical conservation

Introduction

11

biologists (Soulé 1985) who considered normative content to be central to conservation biology, and more updated versions of conservation biology (Kareiva & Marvier 2012). An outcome of this is that while ethics may be relevant to conservation policies, it is separate from conservation biology. This view is perhaps most aptly popular in strands of biology and ecology that have a specific characteristic view of science, being limited to descriptive notions. I will argue throughout that ethics is a central part of nature conservation and conservation biology and will situate ethical discussions and attempt to explicate normative positions with regard to the above. It will be suggested that conservation biology and policy cannot, unto their own, provide the robust normative foundations that are required to such an area as conservation of biological diversity, but rather that normative challenges emerge from all the above mentioned positions, which call for ethical reasoning. Rather, omitting ethics has the implications of weakening normative foundations that do little to convince sceptics about the moral relevance of biodiversity conservation. Moreover, conservation biologists themselves often utilize moral concepts, but without the desired foundations. Consequently, the view that ethics is indifferent or redundant to conservation looms in the background of many accounts of why biodiversity ought to be preserved. This makes such reasons vulnerable to objections. One solution is to provide stronger arguments that have undergone critical scrutiny. Aside from situating moral philosophy as a discipline relevant to conservation biology, I will investigate some moral claims most important in the defence of biodiversity. One long-standing reason that has been taken to count in favour of biodiversity conservation since the start of conservation biology as a separate research field (Soulé 1985) is that biodiversity has intrinsic value. The view continues to resonate today (Taylor et al. 2020). Objecting to that assumption is controversial. One reason is that the category of intrinsic values identifies those entities that provide the primary motivation for our actions. Stated differently, intrinsic value bears a very important and specific role in ethical reasoning. All other values are derivative of that which has intrinsic value, which is valuable without appeal to anything else. Refuting that something has intrinsic value may be taken to say that it is not valuable at all. This is controversial, as many conservation biologists consider the intrinsic value of biodiversity to be a fundamental part of their ambitions (see Odenbaugh 2021 for an overview). If the thesis that biodiversity has intrinsic value can be defended, it is a strong reason that counts in favour of conservation. The reason is that it is commonly held that intrinsic value is something that ought to be preserved and protected, a source from which other values are derivative. But it is highly questionable whether biodiversity, and the property of variation or richness, as such has intrinsic value. To be clear, I do not suggest that entities such as ecosystems or species lack intrinsic value. Rather, my focus

12

Introduction and background

is on biodiversity. The foundations of viewing a property such as ‘variation’ as having intrinsic value is both foundationally contentious and has troubling implications. If it was the case that biodiversity is merely given a technical definition, such as being limited to ‘species richness’ (see MacLaurin & Sterelny 2008, and Odenbaugh 2021 for discussions on definitions of biodiversity), then this ethical discussion may seem misplaced. However, biodiversity, while referring to a property such as the number of species in an area, is often heralded as a reason for why that area ought to be conserved. That is, biodiversity is considered as something that is good. The explanations and reasons that defend why it is good often refer to its intrinsic value. I challenge this defence. Rather, I will suggest a biocentric defence for biodiversity. This means that individual entities are worthy of respect due to their inherent worth. It may be counterintuitive to utilize a concept that ascribes moral standing to individual entities when discussing a concept such as biodiversity, but it invites fewer challenges than other theories that ascribe moral relevance to holistic entities, such as species or ecosystems. For reasons of ethical parsimony, biocentrist perspectives can provide a possible alternative to the view that biodiversity per se has intrinsic value. However, rejecting that biodiversity has intrinsic value leaves other options. If it is not the case that biodiversity has intrinsic value, then the reason why biodiversity ought to be protected and preserved may be due to its instrumental value. That is, that biodiversity is beneficial to entities that have moral standing, such as humans or, on an expanded biocentrist account, to other entities as well. I will discuss what I call the ‘merely’ instrumental thesis in Part II, suggesting that there are good reasons for providing a more nuanced case for instrumental values. This differs from earlier discussions of the instrumental value of biodiversity, and avoids some of the pitfalls. One such pitfall is that it is difficult to identify the specific relation between biodiversity per se and instrumental value, such as ecosystem services (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017; Norton 1987). When conjunct with an expanded view of what is to count morally, not restricted solely to human interests, and a nuanced account of instrumental value, the ‘mere’ instrumental value thesis will be scrutinized. Usually, instrumental values are taken to be more pedestrian and ‘lower’ than intrinsic values (explaining the ‘merely’ of the position discussed), for good reasons. Imagine that beauty has intrinsic value, and one goes to an art gallery to experience that beauty. The art gallery does not have intrinsic value. Rather, the value of the art gallery is derivative of the works of art that are in there, and their expression of beauty. The art gallery is merely a ‘vehicle’ to or expression of that beauty, but the value of the art gallery is fully due to beauty. But there are conditions which, when fulfilled, will make instrumental value extremely important. Imagine that there is only one art gallery in the world where one can experience beautiful art works. This would make that specific art gallery very valuable as it would be the only vehicle for such experiences. Under some conditions, one may even reasonably say that an entity having instrumental value will reflect the intrinsic value and be granted almost equal

Introduction

13

status, such as in cases when there are very few or only one entity that has instrumental value (Baard 2019). Thus, what I will reject in the ‘mere instrumental value’-argument, is not instrumental value per se, but rather the ‘mere’ of it; its ‘lesser’ status relative to intrinsic value remains, but is not as small as usually taken for granted, and all values that are derivative of leading, causally, to something of intrinsic value do not have the same value. The rejection of the ‘mere instrumental value’-argument will rely on such a nuanced analysis. In addition to the above, I will also investigate the potential value-adding characteristic of biodiversity. That is, that components of biodiversity, such as rarity, evenness, and species richness, provide prima facie reasons for making priorities, but that those reasons may be overruled by stronger reasons. The above discussion all serves the overarching aims of motivating the need for ethical thought and reasoning in conservation biology and showing how it is relevant in providing stronger and more robust reasons for why biodiversity ought to be preserved. The discussions aim to show how one must depart from the urge of merely stating that something has a specific form of moral standing, such as intrinsic value, or rights, and make a reasoned investigation as to whether it is sensible to make such statements, and what practices such a statement entails. Or to unreflectively state that something has ‘mere’ instrumental value. When explicated, one can see nuances of such a category. Those nuances can offer support for why biodiversity ought to be preserved. Again, the main aim is to demonstrate what ethics can bring to biodiversity conservation, by both analysing how the value of biodiversity has been discussed, and also closely scrutinizing recent suggestions. How can one think ethically about biodiversity, and what role does ethics have to play in conservation?

Disposition Writing a book that combines moral philosophy and biodiversity provides the author with some specific challenges. One such is that Western (which I will be limited to) moral philosophy has a long, rich, and varied tradition. Moreover, the discussion on moral philosophy is bound by the topic of biodiversity. This topic is quite young. When contrasted with moral philosophy, dating back to ancient Greece, the explicit study of biodiversity per se is in its infancy (though some trace the issue of diversity to Plato, see Pietarinen 2004). Yet, nature and the environment have figured extensively in moral philosophy. Regardless, choices have had to be made on my part. As has already been discussed, the scope of the book is limited to the issue of biodiversity. It thus does not deal with nature in a general sense, nor with a full view of environmental ethics. Choices have been made regarding what I take to be relevant in the discussion on the ethical dimensions of biodiversity. Since I also intend to survey how biodiversity is discussed in conservation biology, I have limited the scope there as well to the issue of the value of biodiversity, as it is expressed by some conservation biologists, and in policy

14 Introduction and background

documents. This will include recent proposals such as relational values, and rights of nature. A full view cannot be offered, and I have therefore striven to discuss exemplary positions. One must start somewhere, and given that my aim is to provide you with tools to reason in a systematic, structured, and critical manner about judgments on whether to conserve biodiversity, I will start with the concept of intrinsic value, which makes up Chapter 2 of Part I. I will focus on how intrinsic value has been discussed by conservation biologists and in conservation policy. Intrinsic value has been a central part of conservation ecology and biodiversity conservation for quite some time. Early on, conservation ecologist Michael Soulé, with his 1985 article ‘What is conservation biology?’, helped establish the field in its own right. The United Nation’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), established in the Rio de Janeiro Earth summit 1992, and having lasting influence on goals such as the Aichi targets, both included and recognized the intrinsic value of biodiversity. Soulé considered the intrinsic value of ‘biotic diversity’ to be a normative postulate of conservation biology. This, I take it, is to be understood as a motivational reason for why biodiversity ought to be preserved, and prescriptive conclusions are conducive of the reliability of such a premise. One problem is that neither Soulé nor CBD provides a very robust case for intrinsic value having biological diversity, nor considers what this would entail. Regardless, their discussion provides a valuable account of why intrinsic value and biodiversity are often combined in policy, but also helps explain departures from that position. In Part II I shift the focus away from conservation and focus on moral philosophy, specifically how philosophers sought to make sense of biodiversity, and how that concept can be included in conventional theories, such as consequentialist, duty-based, and virtue ethical theories, in applied ethics, as well as related to established value-related or axiological concepts such as intrinsic and instrumental values. It is in Part II that you will find the most central arguments and theories that will be utilized in the subsequent analyses. I will discuss the central role of intrinsic value, its relation to instrumental value, but also emphasize why such concepts are important. I will argue that they are important due to their reason-implying function. That is, concepts such as intrinsic values and other provide us with reasons to perform, or refrain from, specific actions, or justify actions when considered retrospectively. Some concepts, however, are quite specific to environmental issues. A concept such as ‘natural value’ is one such concept, that will also be discussed. I will try to situate biodiversity in theories in environmental ethics, notably anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism. I will suggest that in the latter, biocentrism offers a way to think reasonably about biodiversity, in a manner that is less complicated and vulnerable to objections than ecocentric perspectives. In other words, this means that I will base my discussion on the moral standing of biodiversity by focusing on the relevance of biodiversity to individual entities, including non-humans, having moral standing, rather than focus on the moral standing of collective entities such as species or ecosystems.

Introduction

15

Yet, it will be conceded that biodiversity is not a concept that can be neatly fitted into ethical theories. This may partly explain why there seems to be a reduced interest in ethical reasoning in conservation biology, or replacing it with other concepts. Part III returns to conservation to discuss some recent proposals such as the IPBES ‘nature’s contribution to people’, rights of nature, and conservation biology as an applied science involving risk management. Recently, new postulates for conservation biology have been suggested, being discussed in Chapter 6, in addition to calls for inclusive conservation. While I am largely sympathetic to the latter, I am somewhat more critical of the postulates void of normative content. I will also scrutinize any assumptions that different normative principles will converge on similar prescriptive conclusions, and the premise that ethical debate has fallen into ‘vitriolic, personal battles in universities’, resulting in ‘stifling productive discourse, inhibiting funding, and halting progress’ (Tallis & Lubchenco 2014: 27), which underlie some proposals for inclusive conservation. Chapter 7 and 8 will discuss specific proposals that will enhance biodiversity conservation without the need for explicit ethical reasons, or at the very least without the need for moral philosophy. That is, that the objectives of conservation can be attained without appeal to moral philosophy. In Chapter 7 I will discuss ‘relational values’ which provide the foundation for ‘nature’s contribution to people’ (NCP), a central policy concept in the IPBES framework. NCP is explicitly motivated by what is taken to be shortcomings of existing axiological categories (i.e. categories pertaining to what has value) and discussions of environmental ethics that are taken to be too narrow. A relational account will be less detached from life and provide a secure foundation for policy concepts such as NCP. Or so the story goes. I will provide you with an overview of the concept of relational values, and how they differ from what is sometimes called ‘property-based’ accounts of moral status (Coeckelbergh 2012). Chapter 8 will discuss the supposed sufficiency of legislative action to conservation, more specifically the recognition of rights of nature. During recent years, legislations such as New Zealand’s have granted legal personhood, and also legal rights, to entities such as rivers and forests. Constitutions, such as Bolivia’s, include ‘rights of mother earth’. In countries such as Sweden, there are non-governmental organizations and politicians working for rights of nature to be recognized in Sweden’s constitution. Chapter 8 will not provide a historical survey of such efforts but will however assess some central arguments in favour of them (see also Baard 2021). It is common to draw a sharp distinction between facts, on the one hand, and values, on the other, a topic central to Chapter 9 but being a theme that is relevant throughout. The distinction is evident in our everyday language, as there is a difference between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ statements. It is also common in philosophy to distinguish between descriptive and normative or prescriptive arguments. This dates back to Scottish philosopher David Hume, and is sometimes referred to as ‘Hume’s law’, or ‘Hume’s guillotine’. If the distinction can be made as sharply as our everyday language entails, then it provides a

16 Introduction and background

specific form of redundancy to moral philosophy relative to conservation biology. Conservation biology is a descriptive science, void of normative content, whereas perhaps conservation policy is more adjacent to normative issues. It will be questioned whether the distinction can be made as sharply as intended, especially when it comes to research areas that have such practical salience as conservation biology. I hope that you will both see how value-related issues are central to conservation biology, but also how ethical reasoning can provide structured and critical scrutiny necessary for defending and analysing such issues. Facts are of course of utmost importance but cannot alone establish what one ought to do. Omitting the transparent and structured reasoning of moral philosophy leaves normative assumptions unchecked. At the very worst, this will add to the problem of species extinction, in at least two ways: it will be difficult to convince people or policy-setters who are indifferent to biodiversity loss that there are good reasons to consider such loss a moral wrong; it may be the case that our intuitions, when scrutinized, are consistent with accepting biodiversity loss, or sit on weaker grounds than we thought. These, to me, are good reasons to take a closer look at ethics in conservation.

Notes 1 2 3 4

www.cbd.int/conferences/post2020 (20 May 2021). www.cbd.int/sp/targets/ www.cbd.int/sp/targets/ (20 May 2021). This is stylistically quite close to Newman, Linquist & Varner, who begin their very informative Defending Biodiversity: Environmental Science and Ethics, with ‘All three of us consider ourselves to be environmentalists, and we all think that biodiversity ought to be conserved’ (2017: ix), being an anchoring statement for the rest of their work, centred on environmentalists’ and related different positions to a stipulated environmentalist agenda. Though I will discuss arguments similar to Newman, Linquist & Varner, I will intend to expand on notions of instrumental value, and make different use of the precautionary principle than they do (see Chapter 9). I also engage with some more recent proposals in Part III of this volume. Overall, I share their sentiment that the ambition is not to ‘defeat’ different arguments, but to test their strength through objections.

References Baard, P., 2019. ‘The goodness of means: Instrumental and relational values, causation, and environmental policies’, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 32, pp. 183–199. doi: 10.1007/s10806-019-09762-7 Baard, P., 2020. ‘Conflicting advice: Resolving conflicting moral recommendations in climate and environmental ethics’ in Walsh, Z. & Henning, B. (eds.) Ethics Beyond Anthropos: Climate Change Ethics and the Non-human World. New York: Routledge. ISBN: 978-03-6740-610-3. Baard, P., 2021. ‘Biocentric individualism and biodiversity conservation: An argument from parsimony’, Environmental Values, 30(1), 93–110. doi: 10.3197/096327120X157528103 24048

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Baard, P. & Ahteensuu, M., 2019. ‘Ethics in conservation’. Journal for Nature Conservation, 52, 1–6. doi: 10.1016/j.jnc.2019.125737 Barnosky, A.D., et al., 2011. ‘Has the Earth’s sixth mass extinction already arrived?’, Nature, 471, pp. 51–57. Ceballos, G., et al., 2015. ‘Accelerated modern human-induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction’, Science Advances, 1, 1–5. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1400253 Chan, K.M.A., et al., 2016. ‘Why protect nature? Rethinking values and the environment’, PNAS, 113, pp. 1462–1465. Chapron, G., Epstein, Y., & López-Bao, J.V., 2019. ‘A rights revolution for nature’, Science, 363, pp. 1392–1393. Coeckelbergh, M., 2012. Growing Moral Relations: Critique of Moral Status Ascription. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, p. 221 Dasgupta, P., 2021. The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review: Headline Messages. London: HM Treasury. Diaz, S., et al., 2015. ‘The IPBES conceptual framework: Connecting nature and people’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 14, pp. 1–16. Garson, J., Plutynski, A., & Sarkar, S. (eds.), 2017. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Biodiversity. London: Routledge. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), 2019. ‘Summary for Policymakers of the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services’, Available online: https://ipbes.net/sites/default/files/inline/files/ ipbes_global_assessment_report_summary_for_policymakers.pdf Kareiva, P. & Marvier, M., 2012. ‘What is conservation science?’, BioScience, 62, pp. 962– 969. doi:10.1525/bio.2012.62.11.5 MacLaurin, J. & Sterelny, K., 2008. What is Biodiversity? Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Maier, D.S., 2012. What’s So Good about Biodiversity? Dordrecht: Springer. Newbold, T., Hudson, L.N., Hill, S.L., Contu, S., Lysenko, I., Senior, R.A., Börger, L., Bennett, D.J., Choimes, A., Collen, B., & Day, J. 2015. ‘Global effects of land use on local terrestrial biodiversity’, Nature, 520(7545), pp. 45–69. Newman, J., Varner, G., & Linquist, S., 2017. Defending Biodiversity: Environmental Science and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Norton, B., 1987. Why Preserve Natural Variety? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Odenbaugh, J., 2021. ‘Conservation biology’ in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Spring 2021 edition. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2 021/entries/conservation-biology/ Oksanen, M., 1997. ‘The moral value of biodiversity’, AMBIO, 26, pp. 541–545. Oksanen, M. & Pietarinen, J. (eds.), 2004. Philosophy and Biodiversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pietarinen, J., 2004. ‘Plato on diversity and stability in nature’ in Oksanen, M. & Pietarinen, J. (eds.) Philosophy and Biodiversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 85–100. Santana, C., 2017. ‘Biodiversity eliminativism’ in Garson, J., Plutynski, A., & Sarkar, S. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Biodiversity. New York: Routledge. Sarkar, S., 2005. Biodiversity and Environmental Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Soulé, M., 1985. ‘What is conservation biology’, BioScience, 35, pp. 727–734. Stone, C., 1972. ‘Should trees have standing?-toward legal rights for natural objects’, Southern California Law Review, 45, pp. 450–501.

18 Introduction and background Stone, C., 2010. Should Trees Have Standing: Law, Morality and the Environment. 3rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tallis, H. & Lubchenco, J., 2014. ‘A call for inclusive conservation’, Nature, 515, pp. 27–28. Taylor, B., Chapron, G., Kopnina, H., Orlikowska, E., Gray, J., & Piccolo, J.J., 2020. ‘The need for ecocentrism in biodiversity conservation’, Conservation Biology, 34, pp. 1089–1096. United Nations (UN), 1992. Convention on Biological Diversity. Available online: https:// www.cbd.int/doc/legal/cbd-en.pdf United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), 2020. Global Biodiversity Outlook 5. Secretariat of the Convention of Biological Diversity. Available online: https://www .cbd.int/gbo5 Wiggins, D., 2006. Ethics: Twelve Lectures on the Philosophy of Morality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wilson, E.O., 2016. Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life. New York: Liveright Publishing Company.

2

Background The normative postulates of conservation biology

The concept of biodiversity has now become so commonplace that we may not even perceive it as requiring philosophical attention. Since 1992 we have the United Nations’ Convention on Biological Diversity (UN 1992), providing a foundation for global and local objectives to halt biodiversity loss. Compared to the great societal issue of climate change, biodiversity may receive less attention, but through the establishment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which presented its first report in 2019, biodiversity is reiterated as a meaningful concept in the policy sphere. In governmental plans and more local plans from protecting singular species to land use planning, the concept of biodiversity is rarely absent. Yet, despite the presence of the concept of biodiversity on many different levels of mandate, we seem to be heading towards, or already living in, the ‘sixth mass extinction’ (Barnosky et al. 2011; Ceballos et al. 2015). One issue that further marks this asymmetry between the oft-discussed concept of biodiversity and the unquestionable decrease in its levels due to species extinction involves the many normative concepts that are related to biodiversity. From the start, biological diversity has been described as having intrinsic value, as providing central ecosystem services, and so on. As this section demonstrates, many policies and foundational works in conservation biology and conservation policy use ethical terms but not in ways that reflect how they are used in moral philosophy. This may not be a problem; after all, moral philosophy has no special claim on how concepts are used and what arguments are made. Yet moral philosophy, as Part II shows, offers special skills for why a specific judgment ought to be made and assesses how well supported different reasons are and moral reasoning is. The primary purpose of this chapter is to provide insights into how normative issues have been and continue to be discussed and treated within conservation biology as such. An additional purpose is to provide transparency and critical scrutiny of such normative issues. I will not offer a full genealogy of the concept of biodiversity (Haila 2017), focusing instead on its normative content.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003110712-2

20 Introduction and background

Michael Soulé and the beginning of conservation biology In the article ‘What is conservation biology?’, conservation biologist Michael Soulé suggests that ‘species have value in themselves, a value neither conferred nor revocable, but springing from a species’ long evolutionary heritage and potential or even from the mere fact of its existence’ (Soulé 1985: 731). But how are we to make sense of such a call for recognizing the intrinsic value of species? In the paper, Soulé identifies several ‘postulates’ for conservation biology and divides them into two categories, functional and normative, along with corollaries (see Table 2.1). The functional postulates are ‘working propositions based partly on evidence, partly on theory, and partly on intuition’, or a set of fundamental

Table 2.1 Functional and normative postulates for conservation biology, together with corollaries (Soulé 1985) Postulates Functional

Normative

Corollary Species are interdependent Many species are highly interdependent Many species are highly specialized Extinctions of keystone species can have longrange consequences Introductions of generalists may reduce diversity The temporal continuity of The scale of ecological processes: many, habitats and successional if not all, ecological processes have stages depends on the size thresholds below and above which they become discontinuous, chaotic, or Outbursts reduce diversity suspended The scale of population phenomena: genetic and demographic processes have thresholds below which nonadaptive, random forces begin to prevail over adaptive, deterministic forces within populations Nature reserves are inherently disequilibrial for large, rare organisms Diversity of organisms is good Untimely extinction of populations and species is bad Ecological complexity is good Evolution is good Biotic diversity has an intrinsic value

The evolutionary postulate: many of the species that constitute natural communities are the products of coevolutionary processes

Background

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axioms (Soulé 1985: 729). These postulates differ extensively from the normative postulates, which are ‘value statements that make up the basis of an ethic of appropriate attitudes toward other forms of life’ (Soulé 1985: 730). What Soulé achieves here is to create and maintain a sharp distinction between two forms of statements: descriptive and normative or ‘is’- and ‘ought’-statements. You will most likely recognize the distinction. Here, it is enough to say that there is a difference between descriptive statements such as ‘the cup is full’ and normative statements like ‘that cup is valuable’. If provided with the corollary ‘valuable items should be preserved and not destroyed’, the statement becomes a prescriptive statement, becoming a conclusion when supplemented with arguments. This means that it provides action guidance on what ought to be done and the reasons for doing so. In contrast to the functional postulates, the normative postulates allegedly cannot be tested or proven. The functional postulates are, as Soulé suggests, confirmed by evidence, theory, and intuition. Regardless of precisely what Soulé means by the latter (unfortunately, he does not expand on it), we usually get confirmation of whether descriptive statements are correct through sufficiently reliable methods. We can confirm the correctness of such a statement by observation: we may simply confirm whether the cup is full or not, or whether there are thresholds to genetic and demographic processes below which random forces begin to prevail, as suggested by Soulé’s third functional postulate. Usually, however, things are not so easy, especially in science. First, our senses are not always the most reliable sources of stable information about the world. Consider how easy it is to be fooled by optical illusion, to mishear a word, or to make a similar sensory mistake. Or consider hallucinations, false sense data that pose as the real thing. Furthermore, science may refer to things that are not observable. Consider different physical forces or mathematical relationships. We can observe the effects of mechanisms between predator and prey and formulate Lotka-Volterra equations or something similar. Yet the force behind those mechanisms is never visible as such, even though its manifestations are. Despite the above, many empirical disciplines, including ecology and biology, have worked out methods that have proven sufficiently reliable in confirming or rejecting statements and hypotheses. Much more can be said about these issues, but since this is a book on moral philosophy, we turn now to the other category of Soulé’s postulates – the normative ones. According to Soulé, normative postulates do not have the same robust foundation as functional postulates, which he considers to be based on evidence, theories, and intuitions. Regarding a normative postulate, by contrast, he explicitly tells us that ‘such a statement cannot be tested or proven’, continuing that ‘the conceptual mind may accept or reject the idea as somehow valid or appropriate. If accepted, the idea becomes part of an individual’s philosophy’ (Soulé 1985: 730). Whereas Soulé’s statement on normative postulates may be intuitively confirmed – after all, one person may determine that diversity is good and ought to be protected, whereas others may not share that view – that statement addresses both what normative statements refer to and how to confirm whether they are correct. According

22 Introduction and background

to Newman, Varner, and Linquist, Soulé discusses postulates as something that ‘is assumed for the sake of a discussion’ (2017: 34). This seems to belittle Soulé’s use of the concept of postulates, since he also uses it with regard to functional postulates, which are inherently empirical and confirmed by evidence. It seems problematic to assume that the functional postulates are also only assumed for the sake of discussion. Moreover, Newman, Varner, and Linquist write that this entails treating ‘intrinsic value as unargued assumption’ (2017: 34) with which Soulé is not engaging intellectually. However, some environmental philosophers, such as Norwegian Arne Næss, a giant in environmental philosophy, have treated intrinsic value as an axiom or precondition but not something for which proof could be found (Næss 2002: 65; Baard 2015: 32). Admittedly, there is a large difference between functional and normative postulates, a difference that parallels the difference between descriptive and normative propositions. Consider the statement ‘the leaf is green’; we may confirm this by sense data. If the leaf is not green, we may have a theory for why that is so. We may deduce that it must belong to a sick tree or that it is autumn. But suppose someone makes a value statement like ‘biological diversity is good’ or a prescriptive statement like ‘you should not eat meat’. What do we do then? Can such a statement be made reasonable with an appeal to sense data or in other ways be granted empirical confirmation? This is a substantial topic in moral philosophy that is further discussed below. There are controversies regarding whether or to what extent descriptive statements should play a role in normative or prescriptive conclusions. Consider the difficulty of deriving that something ought to be done solely from what is the case, without deploying any normative premises. Soulé’s position is unsatisfactory because it does not provide any serious response to such issues and because it provides little regarding those who do not share the normative postulates. We should consider the serious implications of Soulé’s view on normative postulates, since if plausible, it refutes one of the ambitions of this book, namely, to show the relevance of moral philosophy to conservation biology. Something that follows from Soulé’s characterization of normative postulates is that, in contrast to functional postulates, few reasons may be offered to adopt such statements and consider them to be – if not true – then at the very least reasonable and solid enough to provide guidance. He states that ‘we could speculate about the subconscious roots of the norm “diversity is good”’ but that we could never know with certainty (Soulé 1985: 730). If that is correct, then we may merely have to accept that some people find diversity good, while others do not. Yet he phrases the postulate in a categorical sense, stating that diversity is good, not that it is ‘commonly perceived to be good’ or ‘Michael Soulé thinks that diversity is good’. But even if we took the note on speculation of the norm’s subconscious roots to heart, that does not require us to follow it. Depending on what Soulé means by subconscious, is not the subconscious often portrayed as the place for drives, urges, and inclinations that may work at cross purposes to what is rational? Again, this is pure speculation, and this is not a book on psychology, but we can go even further. Let

Background

23

us concede that the subconscious is filled with benign values that provide the foundation for norms, but it does not follow from this that we ought to follow the norms or that such norms provide us with reasons to act. Such prescriptive conclusions do not follow from descriptive statements. Furthermore, what if it provides the foundation for conflicting norms? Here, we already have two issues of moral philosophy – the distinction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ and how to deal with disagreements regarding ethical issues. A similar but stronger assumption is made by some recent suggestions for the intrinsic values of biodiversity, namely, that human sensibilities towards nature are ecocentric in the sense that it is holistic properties, such as ecosystems or species, that count morally. It is the holistic ecosystem that has moral relevance and that prompts the care or moral weight in our decisions (Taylor et al. 2020). What has been called ‘biophilia’ refers to a kind of innate human tendency to connect with nature as a whole (Wilson 1984). But making such essentialist claims about innate human nature is difficult. More problematically, even if they were shown to be true, they would say something descriptive about human nature, but that alone does not necessitate a prescriptive conclusion. Should it be true that ethical prescriptions follow from human nature, then ethics would be ‘biologicized’ (Kitcher 2006). Yet one should not conclude that ethics is fully separate from what forms of beings we are. Most ethical theories carry assumptions regarding a good life, partly being conducive to what type of beings we are. But this requires fully fleshing out what types of beings we are before being fully accepted, which is questionable in this case. It also requires dealing with counter-intuitive implications of human nature. As Philip Kitcher suggests, ‘There are numerous instances in which members of small communities will be able to feed, clothe, house and educate themselves and their children far more successfully if a practice of degrading the natural environment is permitted’ (2006: 578). After all, it is likely also a part of human nature to prioritize one’s kin, even above protecting nature, and solving such conflicts requires careful ethical reasoning. Similarly, what to do if potential conflicts arise that are both taken to be justified with appeal to human nature? More importantly, the suggestion that we have an innate ‘biophilic’ capacity violates the distinction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, which is further discussed below. Soulé has left us with many questions but few answers. There may be answers to how one should understand the norms that biodiversity is good, and we can test whether such norms provide us with reason, whether they are sound and in accordance with the other beliefs we have. We may continuously think of objections, but not because we doubt or are sceptical about a specific statement. Rather, it may be because we in fact respect the position and want to test whether it is robust to objections. If the reasons shown for a position are robust against multiple strong objections, then we can more safely assume that it is a position that coheres with reasoning and provides us with reasons to act in a certain way or value something in a specific manner. Regardless of what can be said of Soulé’s moral philosophical discussion, he should be credited for introducing the vocabulary of ‘good’ and ‘intrinsic value’ to conservation biology, for that provides us with a clear starting point for discussing

24 Introduction and background

moral philosophy. Moreover, Soulé’s normative postulates ‘provide standards by which our actions can be measured’ (1985: 730). However, we must recall that if we accept his position in its entirety, then there is little work for moral philosophy. Rather, either one accepts or does not accept the norm that ‘biodiversity has intrinsic value’. A final important issue that Soulé brings forward is the practical use of conservation biology to the extent that it is a ‘crisis discipline’ relative to other forms of biology and ecology (1985: 727). By this he means that conservation biology is related to biology in the same way as surgery is to physiology and war to political science (Soulé 1985: 727). In conservation biology, surgery, and war, one must act under uncertainty, including the possibility of not being sure whether what one takes to be facts are actually so. Decisions must be made (although the time scales of conservation, surgery, and war differ, as do the potential impacts of making incorrect decisions), and conservation biologists may be asked by government agencies and private organizations to provide recommendations that underpin their decisions. But ideal preconditions may not be provided for such recommendations, and ‘a conservation biologist may have to make decisions or recommendations about design and management before he or she is completely comfortable with the theoretical and empirical bases of the analysis’ (Soulé 1985: 727). Furthermore, conservation biology has an eclectic and multidisciplinary structure. There is a relationship between the biological sciences and social sciences, as decisions regarding national parks, for instance, ‘should consider the impact of the park on indigenous peoples and their cultures, on the local economy, and on opportunity costs such as forfeiting logging profits’ (Soulé 1985: 728). This means that perspectives are enlarged regarding relevant knowledge and perspectives when recommendations are given.

The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity and intrinsic values Discussing biodiversity is not merely an academic exercise. Soulé considers conservation biology to be a ‘crisis discipline’ (1985) that must tolerate uncertainty but still provide recommendations. The intrinsic value of biological diversity provides reasons for such decisions. More relevant to policy is the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which was signed by 150 government leaders at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit according to the CBD homepage.1 The CBD provides the framework for the Aichi targets mentioned in the introduction. Signing the convention was a statement of commitment to biodiversity and support for striving to reach the following objectives: The conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources, including appropriate access to genetic

Background

25

resources and by appropriate transfer of relevant technologies, taking into account all rights over those resources and to technologies, and by appropriate funding. (CBD, Article 1. Objectives) We may note that the objectives include the conservation of biological diversity, which does not entail refraining from all usage; it requires sustainable use and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from biodiversity. This objective is somewhat but not fully consistent with the CBD’s preamble, which states that the contracting parties are ‘conscious of the intrinsic value of biological diversity, and of the ecological, genetic, social, economic, scientific, educational, cultural, recreational and aesthetic values of biological diversity and its components’. The difference is that intrinsic value seems to be left out. This statement appears to be consistent with Soulé’s suggestion regarding the intrinsic value, but it also provides recognition of biodiversity’s instrumental value. Conflating intrinsic and instrumental values in this manner may be both theoretically contentious and lead to troublesome practical implications. Yet it may not be so far-fetched as one may think. For instance, a person may have both intrinsic value and instrumental value (Norton 1987: 219). I may both have intrinsic value that merits human rights but also be good at painting portraits. Consequently, I may have some instrumental value when it comes to drawing portraits. Some would suggest that a horse may both have animal rights and be good at running. While the distinction between intrinsic and instrumental values plays a central analytical role, entities may have both, and biodiversity may be one such entity.2 Yet there is admittedly a risk of conceptual unclarity if conflating the two, and one should remember to separate them analytically, as intrinsic and instrumental values have different sources, and different practical implications follow from them. Like climate change, biodiversity conservation is a global problem, and the challenges in achieving that goal are accentuated by border-crossing species and climate change causing habitat deterioration that effectively forces species to migrate. The main principle (Article 3) of the CBD affirms the sovereign right of states to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental policies, but it also makes explicit their responsibility not to cause damage to the environment of other states. Article 8 establishes that each contracting party shall establish a system of protected areas or areas where special measures need to be taken to conserve biological diversity. This seems to express a sort of balancing act between respecting national sovereignty and simultaneously reiterating the need for activities to conserve biodiversity. This balancing act may be difficult to manage, and relying too much on state sovereignty may work at cross purposes with conservation efforts (Oksanen & Vuorisalo 2019). Yet the sovereignty of territorial borders, including natural resources within a state’s territory, is an established principle in international law (Oksanen & Vuorisalo 2019). However, as stated in the preamble to the CBD, biodiversity conservation is a concern of all humankind. There may thus be reasons to apply nuance to the issue of national sovereignty relative to

26 Introduction and background

biodiversity. Oksanen and Vuorisalo (2019) have suggested three different types of national sovereignty: (1) traditional conservation sovereignty, or ‘brute nationalism’, the classic approach under which conservation legislation is fully independent of other nations; (2) internationally regulated conservation sovereignty, where nations ‘voluntarily participate in international conservation agreements and pursue the harmonization and unification of conservation efforts at the regional and global level’ (443); and (3) federal conservation sovereignty, where ‘states share a major portion of their conservation legislation and the compliance with supranational law’ (444), as is the case in with the European Union. While it is not obvious which form of sovereignty would be the best from the perspective of conservation, there are reasons to depart from and provide more nuance to the concept of sovereignty and its relationship to the common concern of humankind that biodiversity conservation is. While Soulé’s discussion may have been academically important and still serves as a reference point for conservation biology, the CBD still carries influence – both by requiring commitment due to the lasting influence of the 1992 Rio Convention, thus gaining practical traction, and in practical efforts such as the Aichi targets. Both recognize the intrinsic and instrumental values of biodiversity. The CBD, being a political convention, expresses more realistic or non-ideal circumstances for biodiversity conservation in its reiteration of national sovereignty and balancing that good with the common concern of preserving biodiversity. Soulé, for his part, took stock in the uncertainty that must be tolerated for conservation science. It does not seem unfair to interpret the discussion as follows: while Soulé provides a professional ethic of sorts for conservation biologists, the CBD has a longer reach, immersed as it is in political institutions and sovereign states. This reiterates the relevance of biodiversity on all levels, from the individual to the global.

Ecosystem, species, genes, and variation: What is biodiversity, and why does it matter? While there is no established definition of biodiversity (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017: 5), the concept often refers to the variation of ecosystems, species, or genetic diversity. Over time, ‘species richness’ has evolved into a sort of proxy for biodiversity (MacLaurin & Sterelny 2008; Odenbaugh 2021), but that definition does not enjoy consensus, and the concept of biodiversity is often defined in different ways. Indeed, to some, the very issue of using the same concept to refer to many different things is a reason to give up the concept of biodiversity since it both becomes redundant and risks giving rise to misconceptions that different people are talking about the same thing when in fact they are not (Santana 2014). In this section, I suggest that one important conditional of biodiversity is the quality of variation. This is consistent with many definitions and intuitions about biodiversity per se. I also suggest that it is the consideration, from a moral perspective, of this specific quality of variation that makes biodiversity

Background

27

a highly specific topic in environmental ethics. This enables one to draw from other resources than in other environmental ethics, but it may also mean that the tools, concepts, and theories of environmental ethics may be difficult to apply when it comes to biodiversity per se. If they are ill suited, either one must expand the set of concepts and theories in environmental ethics to also accommodate biodiversity or one must concede that environmental ethics cannot provide apt action guidance to accommodate biodiversity per se in decisions. I think both choices are troublesome, but we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let us start with taking a closer look at definitions of biodiversity per se. Soulé and CBD

When Soulé discusses his fourth normative postulate, that ‘biotic diversity is good’, he does not define diversity as such. From his discussion, we may deduce that he incorporates complexity and variety in diversity. The CBD is clearer on this issue, offering the following influential definition in Article 2: ‘Biological diversity’ means the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems. There are some shortcomings in this definition, which also apply to Soulé’s insistence on complexity and variety as components of diversity. It is not clear what is meant by ‘variability’. Is it the number of species or the genetic distance between species in a specific ecosystem? Do we have reason to give extra weight to endangered species in an ecosystem, or does such a species count equally to other species? Moreover, the definition is not especially helpful as it seems that it can be replaced with the shorthand ‘all living things’ (MacLaurin & Sterelny 2008: 134; Haila 2017). This does not offer a terribly succinct guide for practical users in need of an operational definition that can be put into practice.

BOX 2.1 INDICATIVE LIST OF ‘ANNEX I. IDENTIFICATION AND MONITORING’, CBD: 1. Ecosystems and habitats: containing high diversity, large numbers of endemic or threatened species, or wilderness; required by migratory species; of social, economic, cultural or scientific importance; or, which are representative, unique or associated with key evolutionary or other biological processes; 2. Species and communities which are: threatened; wild relatives of domesticated or cultivated species; of medicinal, agricultural or

28 Introduction and background

other economic value; or social, scientific or cultural importance; or importance for research into the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, such as indicator species; and 3. Described genomes and genes of social, scientific or economic importance. However, this definition is not the only part of the CBD that stipulates what it is that biodiversity conservation refers to. Article 7, ‘Identification and monitoring’ (Haila 2017), states that each contracting party shall ‘identify components of biological diversity important for its conservation and sustainable use having regard to the indicative list of categories set down in Annex I’. The indicative list of Annex I is recounted in Box 2.1. The indicative list, as a supplement to Article 7, provides somewhat more useful information for practitioners in that it specifies the characteristics of ecosystems, species, and genomes that are to be given due importance in conservation. It should however be noticed that there is a slight axiological shift in the indicative list if related to the content of the preamble. Recall that the preamble expressed a consciousness of the intrinsic value of biodiversity. The indicative list reiterates the instrumental or extrinsic values of ecosystems, species, and genomes. That is, the source of value of a specific ecosystem or species lies beyond it. It may be that an ecosystem provides us with ecosystem services, and since we are morally relevant, those services are morally relevant and ought to be preserved. Yet should it be the case that an ecosystem does not provide us with such services or any utility whatsoever to us, then we have no reason to preserve it if moral standing is limited to human interests. On the other hand, should it be the case that it does have intrinsic value, there are reasons to preserve the ecosystem regardless of its utility for humans. The balancing act between intrinsic and instrumental values seems to give the latter the upper hand in practice. This is unfortunate, as it may be contentious in principle and have troublesome consequences in practice. Why does it matter how biodiversity is defined?

In an overview of definitions of biodiversity, DeLong in 1996 managed to find 85 definitions (DeLong 1996). In 1987, Bryan Norton had already identified several different forms of natural diversity, ranging from within-habitat diversity through cross-habitat diversity to total diversity (31ff.). According to the Google NGRAM Viewer, ‘biodiversity’ and ‘biological diversity’ only started appearing as concepts in the early to mid-1980s but saw a multifold increase between 1990 and 1995. In 1992, the biologist Edward O. Wilson wrote Diversity of Life, which is credited, alongside many other subsequent books (Wilson 1992, MacLaurin & Sterelny 2008: 1ff), with popularizing the term.

Background

29

But why does it matter how biodiversity is defined? One reason is ethical. If intrinsic values provide a reason for care and respect and biodiversity, however defined, meets the conditions for having intrinsic value, then there are moral reasons to care for and preserve biodiversity. But if we claim, with Soulé and the CBD, that biodiversity has intrinsic value, what are we referring to that carries such value? While this is also an issue that is further discussed in Chapter 3, think of intrinsic values like this: you may want something, such as a good education, and someone asks, ‘Why do you want a good education?’ You may respond that you want a good and satisfying job working with something that interests you. Someone continues, ‘Why do you want such a job?’ You may respond that such a job would make you happy. If someone asks, ‘Why do you want to be happy’, and you cannot respond, beyond the judgment that happiness is good, then we have reached something of intrinsic value, and their value derivative of such intrinsic value. The rest – education, career choice, and so on – are instrumental to that which has intrinsic value. Something must have intrinsic value at the end of all such ‘why’ chains, lest we fall into an abysmal universe of instrumental values that would relate to one another but lack any foundation. But is species richness in itself valuable, or is the diversity of ecosystems as such valuable, or do we need some additional premises to make such arguments reasonable? Conceptual clarity regarding both intrinsic value and what we take to have intrinsic value is pivotal. It is not solely intrinsic value that plays a role when it comes to biodiversity. The concept often alludes to ‘natural’ or similar entities (Angermeier 1994). Soulé considers ‘natural’ extinction to be value free, or even good. If maintaining a specific number of species is an action-guiding principle, then species going extinct would be bad, but it is permissible when it is ‘natural’ (Soulé 1985: 729), and natural value also plays a central role in biodiversity. The mechanisms by which biodiversity is upheld matter, and Soulé reiterates in his article that there is a ‘preference for nature over artifice, for wilderness over gardens’ (1985: 731). Soulé himself recognizes that a preference for natural diversity as a standard for managing habitats is difficult for ecologists to prove (1985: 731). Nevertheless, there seem to be several descriptive and normative components, both explicit (variation or richness), and implied (naturalness of biodiversity). What form of concept is biodiversity

Different approaches can be taken when defining biodiversity. In an overview, Sarkar (2017, 2019) has suggested four approaches to defining biodiversity: (1) scientism, (2) eliminativism, (3) deflationism, and (4) normativism. In the first category, scientism, Sarkar lists definitions that are described as non-normative that are often based on one or more of three criteria: richness as to the number of units, difference as to whether new ‘biodiversity units’ are introduced to those already present in an area or community, and rarity or uniqueness, which refers to endemism when a species is limited to a specific

30

Introduction and background

geographical region (2017, 2019). The possible two-term combinations of these factors are richness and difference, richness and uniqueness, and difference and uniqueness (Sarkar 2017: 46ff). A central problem of the scientist approach to defining biodiversity, Sarkar contends, is that there is no systematic way of resolving ‘disagreements between proponents of different scientific definitions’ (2019: 377). One can, however, imagine pragmatically motivated procedures for settling such conceptual disputes, such as establishing some form of voting systems among scientists. The concept of the ‘Anthropocene’, the current geological epoch named after the substantial influence that humans are having on the planet, was established after a vote in the Anthropocene Working Group, part of the International Commission on Stratigraphy.3 Similarly, the decision to exclude Pluto as a planet was the result of a vote by members of the International Astronomical Union.4 Consequently, there is the possibility of setting up processes for establishing scientific definitions, but few such examples have been proposed in the context of providing a universally valid definition of biodiversity. This may be partly because there is no need for such a universal definition. This leads to the second approach, eliminativism, which suggests that biodiversity should not be accepted as a legitimate scientific concept (Santana 2014, 2017, 2018). The failure to find an operative scientific definition of biodiversity has led to a plethora of definitions; even worse, though, these divergent definitions may give users of the concept the notion that they are talking about the same thing when they are not. If ‘biodiversity’ is a proxy term that is several steps remote from what is empirically observed, the concept is redundant and should be eliminated (Santana 2017). The reason for why it is remote to that which is empirically observed is partly due to the use of surrogates for assessing levels of diversity, since we, in most cases, cannot observe all species in an area, and ‘a true surrogate is some feature that strongly correlates with biodiversity’ (Odenbaugh 2021). If for no other reason, ‘biodiversity’ ought to be eliminated for reasons of conceptual clarity and parsimony, due to its being a poor measure and inviting us to neglect differences in what is measured. It remains a poor comparative measure because of its vagueness and imprecision (Santana 2017). Moreover, Santana extends this argument to cover the normative aspects of biodiversity, as not everything valuable in nature can be properly labelled ‘diversity’ (2017: 94). Yet the concept continues to be used in science and policy alike. There are other alternatives to scientism besides eliminativism. One is deflationism, which means that definitions of biodiversity should be sensitive to local contexts and conventions. To see what biodiversity refers to entails seeing ‘what is implicitly protected during the construction of conservation area networks’ (Sarkar 2017: 49ff.). This has the unfortunate consequence that biodiversity is restricted to how it is used in local contexts, which leaves little leeway for discussing how biodiversity should be defined, or inferring definitions with a better prospect for generalization. Furthermore, deflationism approaches eliminativism to the extent that it ‘provides local conventions complete freedom in

Background

31

determining the conservation goals in any particular circumstance’ (Santana 2017: 93) and, to that extent, is thus unconstrained by both biology and diversity (Sarkar 2017: 50). While advocates of both deflationism and eliminativism concede that biodiversity is void of empirically observable and scientific content, the former prefers to retain the concept, while the latter recommends eliminating it altogether. Sarkar attempted to solve this problem by stipulating three conditions: that the entities referred to are biotic, that variability should be included, and that taxonomic spread be important (2017: 50); he later added that the components ‘must be precise enough for their presence and abundance to be measured’ (2019: 394). These conditions constrain the concept of biodiversity, even under deflationism. Furthermore, the components included in biodiversity should be based on normative considerations (Sarkar 2017: 50). That is, that the components – the three conditions – are such that the preservation of them is a desirable social goal (Sarkar 2019: 379). This brings us to normativism, which takes heed of the fact that Soulé and others regard biodiversity as having normative content (Sarkar 2017, 2019). This approach to defining biodiversity considers local varieties of the values of biodiversity (Sarkar 2019: 379). Gathering data and performing empirical observation could inform decision-makers and the values and norms of a given community (similar to relational values discussed in Chapter 7). However, ‘what is critical is a community’s vision of the future it desires including but not limited to its perception of its proper role in the natural world’ (Sarkar 2019: 379). While retaining a healthy distance between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, this normativism nevertheless invites contingency, as does deflationism. The difference is that normativism invites normative contingency, in the sense of being restricted to what values a specific community has; if those values are omitted, then an ecosystem has no particular value, whereas deflationism provides contingency in the sense of unconstrained definitions of biodiversity. The role of contingency is problematic, and there is something deeply unsatisfactory about fully constraining the value of biodiversity to a local group. What if that local group does not see any value at all in biodiversity, or believes that the community’s ‘proper role in the natural world’ is one of unalloyed exploitation and deterioration? Would that not warrant a response? There are also vast local varieties of what should be preserved and valued, and it may well be difficult for normativism to resolve such disagreements. Sarkar suggests that conflicts may be solved by trade-offs between different groups (2019: 390), which, however, seems to ascribe only extrinsic value to biodiversity. It is a good to be traded, with local losses compensated for by other means. The source of its value is extrinsic, dependent upon contingent factors such as relations, and that value can be traded against other values. Sarkar wants to bridge the gap between normativism and scientism by combining local values and conditions that constrain definitions of biodiversity. Something that has not been considered in the literature is whether biodiversity is what philosophers call a ‘thick ethical concept’. Such concepts are commonly described as simultaneously describing the world and providing

32 Introduction and background

reasons for actions (Williams 2011: 144) and as being both ‘world-guided’ and ‘action-guiding’ (Kirchin 2017: 12). Examples include concepts such as treachery, promise, and courage, which have both empirical and normative content. A promise describes that something has been provided – a contract of sorts – of an action to be performed or refrained from and that this promise ought to be kept. Thickness has also been ascribed to concepts such as ‘risk’ (Möller 2009). While the prospect of biodiversity fulfilling the conditions of being a thick ethical concept, such a conclusion would cohere with the intuition that it is valuable and that it refers to an empirically observable characteristic. Is ‘vagueness’ a problem?

Many have considered biodiversity a vague concept, too vague to serve as an operative notion to guide conservation efforts; indeed, because it does not clearly refer to an empirically observable and general property, it ought to be eliminated (Santana 2017). Some definitions of biodiversity are notably broad in the sense of relating to all life on earth (Wilson 1997; Haila 2017). However, is vagueness always and inevitably a problem? Surely, conceptual clarity is a virtue, and it is central to be clear about what one is speaking of, if for no other reason than the analytical benefits of clarity. In philosophy, this virtue cannot be overestimated. As Bernard Williams notes, analytical philosophy ‘gives reasons and sets out arguments in a way that can be explicitly followed and considered’ and ‘makes questions clearer and sorts out what is muddled’ (2014: 213ff.). This includes careful analysis of any concepts used (Hansson 2006). It should be noted that the concept of ‘biodiversity’ has been significantly clarified and made more precise since Soulé and the CBD, but there remains a general view that it requires further specification, depending on context (Haila 2017), and any general definition intended to work in all contexts is bound to exclude something that ought to be included or include something that ought to be excluded. Ideally, a definition excludes all elements that are not intended and includes only those elements that are intended. If it includes something that is not to be covered by the definition, it is too broad, but if it excludes something that should be included it is too narrow (Hansson 2006: 12). But definitions of vague concepts may leave two unsatisfactory choices. When the definition is as vague as the defined concept, it may not provide additional information on how the concept can be used. However, if the definition is more precise than the concept, ‘it will not mirror the meaning of the term defined’ (Hansson 2006: 24). Sven Ove Hansson has distinguished between one-dimensional and multi-dimensional vagueness, a distinction that focuses on whether the concept refers to ‘a property for which we have a well-defined scale’ (2006: 24ff.); for example, consider the two definitions of ‘water-soluble’: (1) A substance is water-soluble to the extent that it can be dissolved in water at 20°C.

Background

33

(2) A substance is water-soluble if and only if at least 1 weight-unit of the substance can be dissolved in 10 weight-units of water at 20°C. (Hansson 2006: 24) The first is vagueness-preserving, whereas the latter is vagueness-resolving. While the former is often sufficient for everyday purposes, the latter form of the definition is more often needed for scientific uses or standard setting for legal purposes (Hansson 2006: 25). As an example of multi-dimensional vagueness, Hansson used the concept of the ‘safe car’. It is impossible to narrow this concept down to a single property or metric. Instead, definitions will have to be vagueness-preserving: ‘a motor vehicle is safe to the extent that it has features that reduce either the probability of accidents or the effects on human health of any accident in which it may be involved’ (Hansson 2006: 25). The definition contains many different properties, and other definitions may be possible. But where does that leave biodiversity? It would most likely be considered a multi-dimensionally vague concept that may be difficult to reduce to a single property or criterion, such as species richness, whether within a habitat or across habitats, or a variety of ecosystems. However, the challenges of scientism notwithstanding, biodiversity continues to be a scientific concept. While conceding that there are possibilities for differing definitions of biodiversity, Regan, Colyvan, and Burgman (2002) discuss such variety as an issue of linguistic uncertainty, which can be classified into five different types. First is vagueness, which affects even central concepts such as ‘endangered’, given that there are borderline cases and that there is ‘no fact of the matter about whether some borderline case is threatened or not’ (Regan, Colyvan, & Burgman 2002: 622). There are other vague predicates such as ‘critically endangered’, ‘threatened’, and ‘viable population’. One possibility for coping with such uncertainty is to construct multi-dimensional gauges ‘involving measures of population size, growth/decline rates, extent of habitat decline, and so on’ (Regan, Colyvan, & Burgman 2002: 622). Another uncertainty is context dependence, which is ‘a failure to specify the context in which a proposition is to be understood’ (Regan, Colyvan, & Burgman 2002: 622). For example, the statement, ‘the population size of an unspecified taxon is small’ cannot be understood unless one has the context of whether it refers to vertebrate species, plant species, or something else. One strategy to reduce such uncertainty is to specify context. It should also be noted that ‘small’ is also vague without clarifying the scale involved (Regan, Colyvan, & Burgman 2002: 622). Another relevant linguistic uncertainty is the indeterminacy of theoretical terms, as ‘future usage of theoretical terms is not completely fixed by past usage’ (Regan, Colyvan, & Burgman 2002: 624). The concept of ‘biodiversity’ lacks a widely accepted definition, and its very meaning is in dispute. One solution, according to Regan, Colyvan, and Burgman is to ‘fix the meanings in ways that are fruitful and in keeping with the intuitive themes the words initially evoke’ (2002: 624). That is, suitable meanings are found and agreed

34 Introduction and background

upon, while some terms may be discarded because they are not fruitful or lack suitable reference (Regan, Colyvan, & Burgman 2002: 624). Although the fact that ‘biodiversity’ is still used, despite its meaning being negotiated, may be a reason to continue using it, it seems sensible to concede that biodiversity eliminativism has a point. A more modest conclusion would be that, since there are strategies for managing linguistic uncertainty, there is no need to discard the concept of biodiversity. Indeed, there are those who consider vagueness a strength that gives additional power to a concept that is attractive to those who feel strongly about ecological systems and that can be operationally defined depending on context (see Haila 2017 for a discussion). Unfortunately, the dependence on context erases the possibility of establishing general biodiversity goals that work equally well across all contexts (Haila 2017). Biodiversity may thus continue to be a vague, but used, concept. Examples

If we assume that biodiversity is important to us, and biodiversity refers to the quality of variation or species richness, then it may generate something akin to a decision-making principle that would state something like ‘biodiversity ought to be promoted, and biodiversity entails increasing species variation or richness in an area’, ‘a decision which increases species richness is better than one that reduces it’, or something similar. Species richness in a given biota is often an operative definition of biodiversity (MacLaurin & Sterelny 2008). Restricting biodiversity to ‘species richness’ has the benefit of there being ‘widespread agreement that species are objectives features of the biological world’ and that ‘there are natural ways of supplementing information about species richness’ (MacLaurin & Sterelny 2008: 137). Our choices are conducive to how something is defined and the moral significance that we attach to what is defined. Consider having to make a choice between preserving two different areas; only one can be chosen for reasons of budget limitations, or similar, and the two areas differ only in the following way: Area A: Consisting of 200 morally relevant organisms, low evenness, common species Area B: Consisting of 200 morally relevant organisms, high evenness, rare species I have omitted information on how many species are in the respective areas. This is consistent with the discussion below on where to place moral significance. I think it is most reasonable to place it on individual beings such as animals or plants (see also Baard 2021). Regardless of which area we choose to conserve, equal numbers of morally relevant organisms will be saved. For the sake of argument, we will also assume that the 200 morally relevant organisms have equal moral relevance. Yet the qualities of evenness and rarity may intuitively play a part. Whereas species richness is a measure of how many species are

Background

35

in a given area, species evenness is a measure of the distribution of species. Area A has low evenness, meaning that it may be dominated by one species, whereas Area B has a greater distribution among the species. Let us assume that it is the case in Area A that 90 per cent of all specimens belong to a specific species. Choosing Area B seems more consistent with decisions conducive to biodiversity than choosing Area A because that choice would preserve variation. Yet just how important are these qualities? Consider a different choice: Area A: Consisting of 200 morally relevant organisms, low evenness, common species Area C: Consisting of 150 morally relevant organisms, high evenness, rare species Would the choice of Area C be more consistent with decisions conducive to biodiversity? Possibly, but it would most likely be a more context-dependent choice that would require knowing how rare the species in Area C are and a detailed assessment of how the evenness differs between the two areas. Area A may be dominated by just a few species, whereas Area C has a more even distribution. But what if we have a choice between Area A and the following: Area D: Consisting of 50 morally relevant organisms, high evenness, rare species At what point does the moral relevance of properties such as ‘evenness’, ‘richness’, or ‘rarity’ shade into moral irrelevance relative to other properties? At this point it may be counter-intuitive to prioritize Area D relative to Area A. Should it be the case that Area D consists of endemic species that cannot be found elsewhere and are deemed highly important to outmatch the aggregated value preserved in Area A, then D should be given prevalence relative to A. What I am pointing towards here is that definitions matter in the sense of teasing out what we find important about biodiversity. Biodiversity often involves aggregative numbers such as species richness and relative notions such as variation and evenness. But do these have moral value? Even if we settle for pragmatic reasons on the concept of biodiversity as being exhausted by species richness, we still have issues. The first involves making ‘richness’ valuable. It is not especially clear to what extent this quality is morally significant. If we state that the number of species is unconditionally and always valuable, this will lead to the counter-intuitive conclusion that one can increase the value of an area by continuously adding species (assuming this will not lead to a breaking point where the ecosystem collapses and species richness deteriorates). This would of course be inconsistent with the many calls for ‘natural’ biodiversity (Angermeier 1994). Second, the term ‘species’ evokes several issues. It is not obvious what form of the category this is, as there are many different concepts of species (Maclaurin & Sterelny 2008; Ereshefsky 2017), and it is also not clear to what extent the property of species membership matters

36 Introduction and background

morally. Elliot Sober (1995) formulated what he called the n + m problem, in which the biocentrist – the one who is committed to moral relevance only applying to individual beings – cannot morally distinguish between a situation with n + m number of sperm whales and no blue whales and one with n number of sperm whales and m number of blue whales, since the individual whales of both species have similar capacities to feel pain, express interest, and so on, and species membership as such does nothing for the moral reasoning of the animal liberationist (Sober 1995: 225; Regan 2004: 359) or to biocentrist accounts, due to ‘species impartiality’ (Taylor 2011). This is true despite the fact that one species is endangered while the other is not (at least when Elliot was writing in 1995; according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which publishes a ‘red list’ of endangered species, the sperm whale is now vulnerable,5 and the blue whale endangered6). To perspectives that only concede the moral significance of individual beings, species membership does nothing to add moral relevance. Yet to other perspectives that are consistent with the moral relevance of species or ecosystems, species membership is all that matters (Sober 1995). One shortcoming of Sober’s stipulation of the problem is that we do not know the exact number represented by either n or m. We know that the environmentalist would prefer to preserve both species, but is it 1 sperm and 99 blue whales, 99 sperm and 1 blue whale, or 50 of each? Thus, the stipulation fails to acknowledge the issue of evenness. I believe that there is something to the idea that the holistic factors included in the concept of biodiversity, such as evenness, richness, and rarity, do have some form of intuitive value. However, those values are not unconditional. If they were, counter-intuitive practices such as adding species to areas would be permissible, even encouraged. If rarity has intrinsic value –that is, without reference to anything else – that could be used to justify the slaying of many individual members of a species to make them rare and thus increase the value of each individual specimen. By contrast, I believe that such features are prima facie value-adding, meaning that they add value in the sense of attaching or enhancing other existing values (see Woods 2017: 243). This does not make such properties as numbers or distribution of species count unconditionally, but it does make them morally relevant in our choices – up to a point. Admittedly, this is only an intuition, and it quickly meets several challenges in the sense of how one can, in a structured fashion, reason in the face of choices such as those between Areas A and D above. To make a convincing case that biodiversity and its properties are prima facie value-adding is extremely difficult (McShane 2017: 164). It will require proposing a hierarchy of sorts to make clear just what features are valuable and at what point they shade into not being valuable. We can think of a number of properties that would direct our priorities regarding which ecosystems to devote resources to on a finite budget (Norton 1987), such as, but not limited to, the following: • •

There are species in the ecosystem that are at risk of extinction. The ecosystem can be maintained in a cost-effective manner.

Background

• • • • •

37

The ecosystem provides us and other morally relevant species with ecosystem services. The ecosystem itself, or species that depend on it, has cultural significance. The ecosystem contains species that are genetically distinct and unique. The ecosystem has high aesthetic value. The ecosystem contains keystone species.

Such properties can all guide our choices, but my suggestion is that none of them is by itself sufficient to direct our priorities. Rather, properties such as the above provide us with pro tanto reasons that may be overruled by other, stronger, reasons, to preserve a specific ecosystem. Such properties may add value and thereby direct our priorities but have to be considered relative to other concerns. Should we single out any specific one of the properties, it would first beg the question of why that single property is given prevalence over all the others. Given that there are many different relations that one can have to nature, and the environment can both provide us with ecosystem services, but also with cultural meaning, it would seem futile to find any single property that would be relevant in all cases. Moreover, troublesome implications would likely follow from singling out any one property. If we are restricted to for instance only devoting resources to uphold ecosystems that provide us with known ecosystem services, we may neglect those that contain species that are at risk of extinction, or have cultural significance. Each choice comes with a cost, and it therefore seems more accurate to weigh different reasons against one another. This will be further discussed later on when we see that there are different kinds of reasons. Later, I will try to make a case for a nuanced view of instrumental values that offers one piece of such a puzzle and moves beyond the mere intuition that such features are valuable. This, in part, requires finding a middle ground between those ethical theories that place moral significance only on individual beings, such as animals or plants, and those that place it only on holistic features such as species or ecosystems. As Part II makes clear, my reasoned intuitions side with the former, individualistic accounts, but I do think that aggregated and relative properties, such as species richness, evenness, and rarity, can play a part in adding value under some conditions. The precise extent of that added value depends partly on instrumental factors. It may be reasonable to preserve a highly unique area with endemic and endangered species if threatened by establishments that are merely conducive to preference satisfaction rather than serving fundamental interests, but it is unlikely reasonable to preserve an ecosystem area of vulnerable species if needed to satisfy the fundamental needs of beings having moral standing.7 Admittedly, many more investigations than have been performed or reported here must be conducted to make a more convincing case for biodiversity as a value-adding property and to explicate and assess the different factors that influence such a conclusion.

38 Introduction and background

BOX 2.2 THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN ‘IS’AND ‘OUGHT’,THE NATURALISTIC FALLACY,AND CONTROVERSIES IN ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS The distinction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ marks a firm separation between descriptive (‘is’) and normative (‘ought’) statements and beliefs. Originating with Hume, the ‘is’–‘ought’ distinction tells us that not only are they separate but also that no prescriptive inferences can be made from solely descriptive premises.While facts will play a role, they are not sufficient to merit such a conclusion.The moral philosopher G. E. Moore (2004 [1903]) warned of ‘the naturalistic fallacy’ and held that normative prescriptions cannot be derived from factual statements.The two domains are separate.A central moral concept such as ‘goodness’ cannot be defined with an appeal to factual content; nor are normative prescriptions deducible from factual arguments, and empirical arguments are different in kind from ethical arguments (Frankena 1967). A concept such as ‘goodness’ was too elementary to be defined with such appeals. If we accept the distinction between is and ought, which is quite in line with how we ordinarily think about ethical issues on one hand and empirical issues on the other, then an assessment of biodiversity deterioration does not in itself provide an argument to stop deterioration. Rather, it must be given an additional, normative, premise.That premise may either be alluded to or treated as a given, such as an unproven axiom. But if it is merely implied then it is difficult to convince sceptics. Several environmental ethicists have rejected the distinction, as is echoed in claims regarding innate ‘biophilic’ human nature and relations to the environment (Wilson 1984;Taylor et al. 2020). Holmes Rolston has stated that ‘it is an easy move from “is” to “ought”. […] Take a drive to the mountains. Enjoy the view, look at the fields en route – the waving wheat, and think of how air, soil, water are basic human needs’ (Rolston 2012: 49).We should, Rolston states in an early article,‘follow nature’ (Rolston 1979). Callicott has argued that the distinction is based on a misreading in the first place (Callicott 2013). Similarly, conservation biologist Edward O.Wilson and philosopher Michael Ruse consider the distinction to be incorrect and lament the belief that ‘the facts of life cannot of themselves yield an ethical blueprint for future action’, suggesting that sociobiology is central to ethical reasoning and provides us with normative principles (1986: 173).The implications of rejecting the is–ought distinction are that one derives a prescriptive conclusion based merely on ‘is’-premises. There may be some merit in such a rejection.When one encounters a beautifully vast and sublime environmental area, it may sometimes provide the perception that the only reasonable response is to preserve it. But rejecting the is–ought distinction, for the sake of argument,

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may have troublesome implications. One’s perception and unreflective judgment of an environmental area are facts, and if one should base prescriptive conclusions on facts, those facts are to be regarded. Stating ‘this area ought to be preserved’ then does nothing more than express an approval or liking of the area. But how does one settle situations where two conflicting judgments are both recorded about the same area (Kitcher 2006: 583)? And does not a rejection permit following any inclination that one has, given that they are ‘facts’, in the sense that one has them? This appears to weaken the foundation from which to make second-order judgments about the reasonableness of those unreflective judgments.These are high costs. But many ethicists have also reaffirmed the distinction, stating that emotivism, meaning that there are no external grounds for assessing the truth or falsity of moral judgments, expressed by Wilson, raises several meta-ethical issues that it does not solve (Kitcher 2006). As becomes apparent in Chapter 8, I believe that it is difficult in practice to uphold a firm distinction between facts on the one hand and values on the other.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

www.cbd.int/convention/ I would like to thank Sven Ove Hansson for explicating this point. www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01641-5 (24 May 2021). www.iau.org/public/themes/pluto/ (24 May 2021). www.iucnredlist.org/species/41755/160983555 www.iucnredlist.org/species/2477/156923585 There may however be other obligations at present in such instances. If a local population needs to clear land containing highly unique ecosystems to grow crops needed for them to survive, this may present a ‘biodiversity conflict’. Some have suggested that environmental ethics can be criticized for, in such cases, downgrading fundamental human needs and prioritizing instead the value of non-human organisms (Plutynski & FujitaLagerqvist 2017). I think it reasonable that other obligations are then in place, such as purely human obligations to provide aid to people in such dire situations to avoid them being forced to clear-cut ecosystems with high levels of biodiversity for their survival.

References Angermeier, P., 1994. ‘Does biodiversity include artificial diversity?’, Conservation Biology, 8, pp. 600–602. Baard, P., 2015. ‘Managing climate change: A view from deep ecology’, Ethics & the Environment, 20, pp. 23–44. Baard, P., 2021. ‘Biocentric individualism and biodiversity conservation: An argument from parsimony’, Environmental Values, 30(1), 93–110. doi: 10.3197/096327120X157528103 24048 Barnosky, A.D., et al., 2011. ‘Has the Earth’s sixth mass extinction already arrived?’, Nature, 471, pp. 51–57.

40 Introduction and background Callicott, J.B., 2013. Thinking Like a Planet. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ceballos, G., et al., 2015. ‘Accelerated modern human-induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction’, Science Advances, 1, 1–5. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1400253 DeLong, D.C., 1996. ‘Defining biodiversity’, Wildlife Society Bulletin, 24, pp. 738–749. Ereshefsky, M., 2017 ‘Species’ in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Fall 2017 edition. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/sp ecies/ Frankena, W.F., 1967. ‘The naturalistic fallacy’ in Foot, P. (ed.) Theories of Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 50–63. Haila, Y., 2017. ‘Biodiversity: Increasing the political clout of nature conservation’ in Meadowcraft, J. & Fiorino, D.J. (eds.) Conceptual Innovation in Environmental Policy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036580.003.0009 Hansson, S.O., 2006. ‘How to define: A tutorial’, Princípos, Natal, 13, pp. 5–30. Kirchin, S., 2017. Thick Evaluation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kitcher, P., 2006. ‘Four ways of ‘biologizing’ ethics’ in Sober, E. (ed.) Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 575–586. MacLaurin, J. & Sterelny, K., 2008. What is Biodiversity? Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. McShane, K., 2017. ‘Is biodiversity intrinsically valuable? (And what might that mean?)’ in Garson, J., Plutynski, A., & Sarkar, S. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Biodiversity. London: Routledge, pp. 155–167. Möller, N., 2009. Thick Concepts in Practice: Normative Aspects of Risk and Safety. Dissertation: Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. Moore, G.E., 2004 [1903]. Principia Ethica. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc. Næss, A., 2002 [1998]. Life’s Philosophy: Reason and Feeling in a Deeper World. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Newman, J., Varner, G., & Linquist, S., 2017. Defending Biodiversity: Environmental Science and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Norton, B., 1987. Why Preserve Natural Variety? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Odenbaugh, J., 2021. ‘Conservation Biology’ in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Spring 2021 edition. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2 021/entries/conservation-biology/ Oksanen, M. & Vuorisalo, T., 2019. ‘Conservation sovereignty and biodiversity’ in Casetta, E., et al. (eds.) From Assessing to Conserving Biodiversity, History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences 24: DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-10991-2_21, Cham: Springer Nature Plutynski, A. & Fujita-Lagerqvist, Y., 2017. ‘Putting biodiversity conservation into practice: The importance of local culture, economy, governance, and community values’ in Garson, J., Plutynski, A., & Sarkar, S. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Biodiversity. London: Routledge, pp. 281–293. Regan, T., 2004. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press. Regan, H.M., Colyvan, M., & Burgman, M.A., 2002. ‘A taxonomy and treatment of uncertainty for ecology and conservation biology’, Ecological Applications, 12, pp. 618–628. Rolston, H., 1979. ‘Can and ought we to follow nature?’, Environmental Ethics, 1, pp. 7–30. Rolston, H., 2012. A New Environmental Ethics: The Next Millennium for Life on Earth. London: Routledge. Ruse, M. & Wilson, E.O., 1986. ‘Moral philosophy as applied science’, Philosophy, 61, pp. 173–192.

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Santana, C., 2014. ‘Save the planet: Eliminate biodiversity’, Biology and Philosophy, 29, pp. 761–780. Santana, C., 2017. ‘Biodiversity eliminativism’ in Garson, J., Plutynski, A., & Sarkar, S. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Biodiversity. New York: Routledge. Santana, C., 2018. ‘Biodiversity is a chimera, and chimeras aren’t real’ Biology & Philosophy, 33, pp. 1–15. Sarkar, S., 2017. ‘Approaches to biodiversity’ in Garson, J., Plutynski, A., & Sarkar, S. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Biodiversity. New York: Routledge. Sarkar, S., 2019. ‘What should ”biodiversity” be?’ in Casetta, E., et al. (eds.) From Assessing to Conserving Biodiversity, History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences 24: DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-10991-2_18, Cham: Springer Nature Sober, E., 1995. ‘Philosophical problems for environmentalism’ in Elliot, R. (ed.) Environmental Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 226–247. Soulé, M., 1985. ‘What is conservation biology’, BioScience, 35, pp. 727–734. Taylor, B., Chapron, G., Kopnina, H., Orlikowska, E., Gray, J., & Piccolo, J.J., 2020. ‘The need for ecocentrism in biodiversity conservation’, Conservation Biology, 34, pp. 1089–1096. Taylor, P.W., 2011. Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics. 25th anniversary edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. United Nations (UN), 1992. Convention on Biological Diversity. Available online: https:// www.cbd.int/doc/legal/cbd-en.pdf Williams, B., 2011. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Williams, B., 2014. Essays and Reviews 1959–2002. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Wilson, E.O., 1984. Biophilia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wilson, E.O., 1992. The Diversity of Life. London: Penguin. Wilson, E.O., 1997. ‘Introduction’ in Reaka-Kudla, M., Wilson, D.E., & Wilson, E.O. (eds.) Biodiversity II. Understanding and Protecting Our Biological Resources. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, pp. 1–3. Woods, M., 2017. Rethinking Wilderness. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press.

Part II

Ethics and biodiversity

3

Ethics and the environment Biodiversity and conservation through the lens of environmental ethics

Introduction In this chapter, I guide you through some methods, fundamental concepts, and ethical theories that can be used to reason about biodiversity preservation. Though taking the shape of a rough outline, my hope is to provide you with valuable insights into what ethical reasoning looks like and its relevance. The chapter is structured as follows: I begin by discussing a classic thought experiment in environmental ethics, originally labelled ‘the last man on earth’ argument. This thought experiment aims to convince the reader that the value of nature is not dependent on humans. That presentation is followed by different accounts of what has moral standing, relative human interests, preferences, and values: anthropocentrism, non-anthropocentrism, and the difficulties these perspectives have in providing a clear answer to the moral standing of biodiversity per se. I then discuss methods, concepts, and theories of moral philosophy in general and in environmental ethics specifically. The aim is to show that there are different ways of making reasonable the proposition that biodiversity ought to be preserved. This chapter functions as a lengthy preamble for the subsequent chapters of Part II, which will go more into detail. This will set the scene for Part III, where we will return to biodiversity conservation from a more practical view. Moral philosophy in general attempts to ground its positions in accordance with reason and rationality, without appeal to either a God or to sentiment. One may ‘feel’ that an action is wrong, but if accepting sentiment is a ground for providing moral reasons, then one must also accept those that have sentiments supporting a diametrically opposite position. How successful attempts are at basing universally valid principles on reason is of course a great debate in moral philosophy. The following discussion is limited to environmental ethics but does venture out, somewhat pragmatically and only where necessary, to offer a glimpse of other forms of moral reasoning to provide a reasonable and sound account of the positions. At the very least, it can be assumed that we have reasons for acting in accordance with what is right. We want to investigate whether there are solid moral reasons for preserving biodiversity and assess actions that reduce levels of biodiversity as wrong – not DOI: 10.4324/9781003110712-3

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just wrong to me or someone who happens to like biodiversity, but wrong in a more categorical way for reasons that everyone should recognize.

The last man on earth, intrinsic values, and the beginning of environmental ethics In 1973 philosopher Richard Routley (later Richard Sylvan) asked whether there ‘was a need for a new, an environmental, ethics’ (1973). He claimed that the dominant Western view was inconsistent with an environmental ethic, for ‘according to it nature is the dominion of man and he is free to deal with it as he pleases (since […] it exists only for his sake), whereas on an environmental ethic man is not so free to do as he pleases’ (Routley 1973: 206). At the core of any theory or system of principles seeking to make the dominant view reasonable he found human chauvinism. This principle admits the moral relevance of other people but only of people. One is permitted to destroy nature but not to the extent that it harms others. This view is often called anthropocentrism, because it ascribes moral relevance only to humans and human sentiment and interests. One example is the view often ascribed to Immanuel Kant (Korsgaard 2018), who wrote about the dignity of persons and the respect for others in which such dignity resulted. Kant also suggested that animal cruelty is wrong, but it is not wrong because one imposes suffering or something similar to the animal. The animal does not have dignity and is thus not worthy of respect on that basis. Rather, animal cruelty may make one cruel in dealing with other people, to whom we have direct duties, according to Kant (Rachels & Rachels 2010: 136). For this reason, to avoid animal cruelty is an indirect duty to the animal that is derived from those direct duties to people. In an effort to remedy the situation, Routley invites us to undertake several thought experiments, including the last person on earth argument (1973: 207): The last man: The last man surviving the collapse of the world system lays about him, eliminating, as far as he can, every living thing, animal or plant (but painlessly if you like, as at the best abattoirs). What he does is quite permissible according to basic chauvinism, but on environmental grounds what he does is wrong. The basic idea of this experiment is that any assessment deeming this person’s acts to be wrong cannot be explained with reference to the interests of other humans. The abattoirs are included so that wrongness cannot be explained by the last person causing pain. The problem is that no available moral theories, according to Routley, can provide a reason for why these acts of the last person are wrong, since all available theories are based on human chauvinism, according to which the wrongness or rightness of actions can only be made reasonable with reference to human characteristics, such as sentiments, dignity, or interests. Yet, the intuition that the last person does something wrong may persist – how can this be explained? To Routley, the answer consists of the intrinsic

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value of nature. This means the non-derivative value of nature, that its value is not dependent on its usefulness to human interests or well-being, but is rather valuable unto itself. It is an end in itself (O’Neill 1992). There are alternative versions of the last-person argument. Paul Attfield (1981) offers two variations. In one, he asks us to imagine not only the last person but also the only sentient being remaining, so that the last person is also the only being capable of feeling pleasure and pain. Moreover, the last person will die in a few minutes since all life on the planet is to be terminated by multilateral nuclear warfare, but the last person himself has access to a missile capable of destroying all the remaining diamond resources (Attfield 1981: 45). In an alternate version, he asks us to imagine the last person in a similar scenario, but with a difference: But this time we imagine him considering the symbolic protest of hewing down with an axe the last tree of its kind, a hitherto healthy elm which has survived the nuclear explosions and which could propagate its kind if left unassaulted. Nothing sentient is ever likely to evolve from its descendants: so the question which he faces, and we can ask about him, is whether there is anything wrong with chopping it down and whether the world would be the poorer for the loss of it. (Attfield 1981: 51) For Attfield, something morally wrong occurs in the second scenario, unlike the first, in which the destruction of diamonds is contemplated. Most people would conclude, Attfield surmises, that the unnecessary destruction of the last tree of its kind would make the world poorer. Thus, reducing diversity is a wrong. An explanation of the judgment depends, Attfield contends, on the existence of intrinsic value, or well-being or flourishing, of that tree (2018: 26). Meanwhile, Mary Midgley raises the question of whether Robinson Crusoe had any duties on his island (Midgley 1983). Would he be permitted to devastate the island of which he is the sole inhabitant? Midgley’s case does not assume that all humans have died out except for one person; rather, that one person is stranded on an island. What is he permitted to do? Crusoe, like most of us, would feel ‘an invincible objection’ to the ‘senseless destruction’ of the island (Midgley 1983: 36). Unlike Routley and Attfield, Midgley investigates duties arising from contractual and non-contractual foundations, rather than intrinsic values, to see if they can obtain the result that Crusoe would be committing a moral wrong. If successful, this has the benefit of avoiding issues like whether intrinsic and non-anthropocentric value exists. Midgley concedes that there are limits to contractual theories when it comes to making sense of Crusoe’s potential wrong. Contractual theories are based on rights and duties that stem from an imaginary or hypothetical social contract, rather than on intrinsic values. Yet it does not seem as if the concept of rights can explain Crusoe’s wrong, as it would be difficult to make the case that the island and its non-human life have rights. Rather, rights have been ‘developed mainly for

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the protection of people’, being articulate and autonomous (Midgley 1983: 41). Rights and duties are correlative, in the sense that having certain rights evokes duties in others to respect those rights.1 Midgley proposes that there are duties that do not depend on correlative right-holders. She suggests that ‘most people are used to the idea’ that we have duties to the environment without invoking or investigating the plausibility of corresponding ecological duties or something similar (Midgley 1983: 43). She lists several duties that have non-contractual bases, meaning that they do not arise from an (actual or hypothetical) agreement between rational individuals, such as duties towards the deceased, posterity, but also to sentient animals, plants, and arts and sciences (Midgley 1983: 40). But just how successful are these thought experiments in convincing someone of the intrinsic value of or duties to the environment without requiring a detour through human interests and values? First, it should be noted that Routley, Attfield, and Midgley all appear to assume that ‘most people’ would be convinced. This may partly be a rhetorical move, but it evokes several challenges. First, would most people in fact agree with their intuitions? Many could have the opposite intuition, which raises the issue of how to give precedence to either the intuition that is consistent with their viewpoint or to the opposing view (Sandler 2012: 31). Or, even if the intuition is consistent with the intended one, that does not merit concluding that the case is proven. Rather, the intuition may be against wanton destruction in general (Sandler 2012: 31). Peterson and Sandin (2013) suggest that other factors may explain the wrongness of the acts of wanton destruction in which the last person on earth engages. We do not know anything about this last person or the person’s motives. The actions may ‘violate some deontological prohibition unrelated to the non-instrumental value of nature or display some questionable character trait’ (Peterson & Sandin 2013: 128). However, the prominence of Routley’s thought experiment in the environmental ethical literature provides some confidence in believing that the intuition that a wrong has been committed is correct (Peterson & Sandin 2013). What has moral standing? Anthropocentrism and its critics

The last-person argument attempts to provide us with an account of what has moral standing and indicates that moral standing is not limited solely to humans and their interests. ‘Moral standing’ has been defined in a multitude of ways: ‘which beings matter where ethics is concerned’ (Attfield 2018: 19ff.); ‘to say that something has standing is to say that it counts, morally speaking, in its own right’ (Kagan 2019: 7); something has moral standing when it has interests or other characteristics providing the foundation for obligations (Melin 2013: 48; Samuelsson 2008: 68). If we offer the judgment that biodiversity ought to be preserved, there are a few options that may explain why it would be reasonable to accept and act according to such a judgment. It may be that biodiversity, or a component like

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species richness, has moral standing, in which case biodiversity matters ethically, or that it provides us with a moral reason to act because of its property or set of properties. It may be that biodiversity is instrumentally important to beings that have moral status, although biodiversity does not in itself provide such reasons. Much of environmental philosophy consists of challenging anthropocentrism; that is, the view that only humans have moral status or that practical reasoning ought to be strictly human-centred. Few philosophers openly describe themselves as arguing for anthropocentrism but outside animal or environmental ethics, most theories are limited to human interest, dignity, or well-being. This is what Routley called ‘human chauvinism’ (1973) and what the last man argument was crafted to militate. But beyond being a standard framework or premise in most ethical theories, anthropocentrism has also been afforded explicit formulations. Francis Bacon, a Renaissance philosopher, understood human dominion as ‘the right and power to use nature for human benefit’ (Attfield 2001: 105). Regardless, almost any environmental ethics worthy of consideration entails some form of non-anthropocentrism. In contrast, many conventional conservation tools are significantly anthropocentric, such as assessments of ecosystem services when defined as ‘the conditions and processes through which natural ecosystems, and the species that make them up, sustain and fulfill human life’ (Daily 1997: 3). Non-anthropocentrism entails only that moral status is not limited to humans; it does not claim that humans have no moral status, only that other beings do as well. Rejecting standard anthropocentrism usually involves taking one of several possible routes, including the following (Attfield 2015): • • •

Sentientism: all beings capable of feeling pleasure or pain have moral status Biocentrism: all living beings have moral status Ecocentrism: all of nature, or entities such as ecosystems and species, has moral status

Historically, these positions have been expressed in various ways. Francis of Assisi (1182–1226), for example, upheld the goodness of creation in all its diversity (Attfield 2001: 103). The growth of sentientism, biocentrism, and ecocentrism in applied ethics gained momentum during the 1970s possibly due to growing concerns about environmental issues and animal well-being, but they hang moral relevance on different hooks. Sentientism relies on the capacity for feeling pleasure or pain, which merit moral status, whereas biocentrism relies on the argument that living beings can be harmed or are teleological life centres meriting respect (Taylor 2011), and ecocentrism suggests that there are characteristics of holistic entities, such as ecosystems, rivers, or species, that merit moral consideration. Figuratively, one must ‘think like a mountain’ to understand the latter perspective (Leopold 1968). There are tensions between these three theories. The set of moral relevant beings is much wider in biocentrism than in sentientism and, while both

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sentientism and biocentrism restrict moral status to individual beings, ecocentrism is holistic. Individualistic and holistic theories may give opposing recommendations. From a holistic ecocentric perspective, it is the functioning of whole ecosystems that count, whereas individualistic viewpoints hold that it is individual lives that count. Thus, from an ecocentric perspective it is permissible, even obligatory, to shoot animals, such as a large number of deer whose natural predators are absent and whose grazing worsens the state of an ecosystem; however, this would not necessarily be permitted on an individualistic account. Indeed, Tom Regan (2004: 361) charged holistic accounts with downgrading the importance of individual life in favour of holistic concerns. In response, some ecocentrists have sought to avoid Regan’s charge by adding second-order principles (Callicott 2013: 66). First, the duties and obligations generated by membership in intimate and venerable communities take precedence over those generated by membership in larger, more impersonal ones; second, stronger duties and obligations take precedence over weaker ones (Callicott 2013: 66ff). Finally, a third-order principle specifies the sequence in which the two second-order principles are to be consulted. The outcome is that a demand generated by a venerable community is outweighed when conflicting with a stronger demand that protects the well-being of the individual. Ecocentrism, for its part, suggests that a human being is not a conqueror but a ‘plain member and citizen’ of the land community (Leopold 1968: 204). The much influential ‘land ethic’ was originally formulated by Aldo Leopold, who also offered an overarching ecocentric principle: ‘A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise’ (1968: 224–225). This is a sharp departure from anthropocentrism, suggesting that moral standing is inherent to the biotic community as such. Ecocentrism is sometimes regarded as being motivated through appeals to ecological science, and this is already evident in Leopold’s work. After shooting a wolf, Leopold felt responsible for ‘taking over the wolf’s job’ (1968: 132) of clearing the herd of other animals that are wolves’ prey, such as deer. If not ‘taking over’ that job, it would have detrimental consequences for the flora and fauna of the entire mountain and would upset the ‘integrity, stability and beauty’ of the biotic community, making it a wrongful act. Consequently, some would say that ecocentrism is more consistent with ecological science and maintaining the integrity and stability of wild ecosystems. A prerequisite for such a stance is knowing how an ecosystem ought to be, which is permeated with challenges. Surely, ecosystems show some signs of being in specific states, such as achieving a balance between species of predator and prey, or the ‘bouncing back’ of resilience after disturbances (Cahen 2003). But such phenomena are likely more due to stochasticism than to any specific interests or goal-directedness.2 While it may be suggested that an ecosystem apparently strives to be in a specific state, that goal-directedness is rather a by-product of the individual specimens and adaptive fit in that ecosystem (Cahen 2003). An ecosystem per se does not have an interest, it is not sentient, and does not necessarily strive towards any goals.

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Consequently, it is difficult to extend existing concepts for assessing moral standing to include ecosystems. Contrast this with sentientism or biocentrism, focused on individual entities regarding which we can more clearly ascertain their well-being and goal-directedness. An additional component of species extinction is that we may fail to learn more about them, and ecosystems, when they go extinct. Holmes Rolston reiterates the difficulties of establishing a clear relationship between species numbers and other factors such as ecosystem balance or integrity, primarily due to how ecosystems are ‘loosely structured’, even if there is ‘reliable knowledge that the loss of many species can upset ecosystems on which humans depend’ (Rolston 2012: 131). He vividly states: ‘Destroying species is like tearing pages out of an unread book, written in a language humans hardly know how to read, about the place where we live’ (Rolston 2012: 131). Some species are resources, Rolston suggests, whereas others are not. Yet his statement need not necessarily support the conclusions that all species should be exempt from extinction, nor that species variation or richness necessarily adds to this knowledge. Rather, Rolston’s suggestion seems primarily to suggest a different attitude towards nature and provides a possible outline for further reasoning. But it is not clear what has intrinsic value on this account, whether it is species, or knowledge about the place that we live needed for our well-being (and furthermore, whether we need living species to generate such knowledge), or our well-being as such. Regardless, species is given extrinsic value in this account with an appeal to knowledge or our well-being, the latter a view he later objects to, stating that what is offensive in current extinction rates is not ‘merely senseless loss of resources, but the maelstrom of killing and insensitivity to forms of life’ (Rolston 2012: 153). Rolston suggests that the extinction of a species is a far greater violation than the killing of an individual member of it, as extinction ‘shut down a story of many millennia, and leave no future possibilities’ (Rolston 2012: 135). It is evident in this that Rolston places an emphasis on the moral standing of species as such that exceeds its extrinsic value. While there is some intuitive credibility to this, it is not certain how to justify such judgments. Perhaps most importantly, species per se lack many of the characteristics that we employ to ascribe moral standing, such as capacities to feel pleasure or pain, or autonomy, although individual specimens do. Rather, additional components must be added to make such an argument successful, and to make the judgment reasonable that species per se have moral standing unto themselves. But this would not solve the issue of the moral standing of species richness or biodiversity. But the above discussion is not instructive as to how individualist theories would provide an answer to why one should preserve ecological communities. I believe that they can incorporate more holistic concerns that are not restricted to anthropocentrism, and some quotes are instructive in this regard: Were we to show proper respect for the rights of the individuals who make up the biotic community, would not the community be preserved?

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And is not that what the more holistic, systems-minded environmentalists want? (Regan 2004: 363) We cannot do harm to a species-population without doing harm to a great many of the organisms that make up the population. (Taylor 2011: 285) These two quotes suggest that holistic concerns are a residual outcome of caring for individual beings. If we care for them, they will not be harmed and ecosystems and biodiversity levels will be maintained. A different perspective is offered by Taylor and, more recently, by Korsgaard and Attfield: By damaging or destroying the ecological balance and integrity on which the well-being of an entire biotic community depends, harm is done to many of the species-populations that constitute the community. A great number of instances of violations of duty are thus involved. (Taylor 2011: 285) Some environmentalists seem to reason this way: Habitat loss is bad because the members of a species need a place to live, and if they don’t have a place to live, the species will go extinct. And that’s bad, because every species is intrinsically valuable. […] Short as it is, this piece of reasoning has way too many steps. Habitat loss is bad because animals need a place to live, period. (Korsgaard 2018: 209) Unlike ecocentrism, biocentrism avoids making a (vulnerable) appeal to the supposed intrinsic value of the health of ecosystems, supporting ecosystem preservation rather through its importance to the well-being of creatures. A biocentric ethics supports biodiversity preservation. (Attfield 2015: 147) Consequently, there is an indirect moral worth to holistic concerns that do not take the more theoretically contentious detours that ecocentrist theories require (Baard 2021). First, biodiversity levels remain – or are at the very least not reduced – because of paying respect to those individual beings having moral standing. Second, biodiversity, and habitats, ecosystems, and so forth, are possibly prerequisites for those individual entities having moral standing, and ought therefore to be preserved. Yet, it is often difficult to establish a clear correlation between species richness per se, and other characteristics such as resilience (Norton 1987; Newman, Varner & Linquist 2017). Thus, biocentrism starts from establishing respect for individual entities, whereas ecocentrism considers the holistic system to have moral standing. Yet, the latter must make somewhat contentious hierarchies of principles to avoid powerful objections, in addition to establishing how an ecosystem ought to be and the role of biodiversity in maintaining that state – which is the consequence of ‘taking

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over the wolf’s job’. It may not be impossible to face such objections, but for reasons of parsimony individualist theories are favoured (Baard 2021). Even if one concedes that individualist theories are preferable for reasoning about biodiversity, one still has two non-anthropocentric individualist theories available: biocentrism and sentientism, and the quotes above contain philosophers of both stripes. After having rejected the claim ‘biodiversity has intrinsic value’ is unlikely to be supportable, Newman, Varner, and Linquist suggest that sentientism provides ‘an enlargement of the circle of moral considerability giv[ing] environmentalists some powerful arguments for supporting certain kinds of conservation activity, such as direct conservation of sentient species, but it causes some difficulties for other parts of the environmentalist agenda’ (2017: 396). This follows from an extensionist view, meaning that sentientism can ‘extend familiar ways of thinking about ethics in relation to our fellow human beings to broader categories of individuals’ (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017: 233). Extensionism takes widely shared moral beliefs and they suggest that it should also incorporate (some) non-humans – those that can feel pleasure or pain. They also rule out the relevance of biocentric individualism (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017: 395). Admittedly, biocentrism is endorsed by few environmental ethicists (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017: 395) and a defence of it either has to deal with many of its objections cursively, or alternatively to suggest that the respect for nature in which it results is anything other than a weak form of respect, dissimilar to our respect for other persons. Biocentric approaches include Paul W. Taylor’s biocentric egalitarianism, according to which respect for nature is grounded upon entities being teleological centres of life, meaning that they have inherent worth and ‘a good of their own’ (Taylor 2011: 75). Taylor suggests that one way of seeing whether an entity has a good ‘is to see whether it makes sense to speak of what is good or bad for the thing in question’ (2011: 61), possibly after prolonged observation and getting to know, for instance, how a specific entity or specimen of a species behaves to ascertain the good of its own, and its goal-directedness (Taylor 2011: 120). One cannot make a parallel case for ecosystems, being much more ephemeral and having vaguer boundaries than a specific entity (the same also goes for species per se, whereas individual specimens of even nonsentient species can be said to be in a better or worse state). While biocentric egalitarianism, in the sense of all forms of lives counting equally, is ‘indefensible and impossible’ (Attfield 2015: 40), basing biocentrism either on goal-directedness of living entities (not limited to sentientism), or on interests (Varner 1998), at the very least merits respect. This may not result in a strong moral standing as sentientism, but it would capture more parts of the environment into the sphere of moral relevance for justifiable reasons. Those reasons being that it makes sense to speak of what is good or bad for the thing in question. Biocentrism has a more expanded view than sentientism but would include even entities, both terrestrial and marine, without the appeal to capacity to feel pleasure or pain. Consequently, biocentrism is not extensionist in the same manner as sentientism, but rather bases moral standing on looser and vaguer grounds than capacity for pain and pleasure. Accepting biocentrism (without

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egalitarianism) would require not only extending existing moral reasons applicable to other humans and stating that they are relevant also to non-humans but would also require a change of perspectives (see Chapter 5 for the ‘biocentric outlook’) in addition to solving many difficult issues of hierarchies and assessing strengths of normative reasons (see Taylor (2011), Næss (2005), Attfield (2015), and Varner (1998)).3 Biocentrist individualism does not aim to personify or anthropomorphize living non-sentient entities such as plants or trees,4 but aims towards understanding their preconditions – again, through for instance prolonged studying. But it does provide, at the minimum, prima facie reasons for respecting nature. This means that those reasons can be overruled and are likely, in many cases, quite weak regarding non-sentient beings. But to put it in other words, the biocentric perspective would provide some positive, though not absolute, moral standing relevant for discussing biodiversity. It seems to me that there is a strength of an individualist perspective that can incorporate biodiversity, either as a residual consequence of not respecting individual specimens, or as a prerequisite for such respect. Travelling in the opposite direction – from the moral standing of ecosystems or species, having contentious foundations, but also to fit individual lives in a coherent and morally justifiable manner relative to such holistic entities – faces more challenges, but is a possibility to accommodate for the moral relevance of biodiversity being a property of ecosystems and, possibly, a prerequisite for their stability, integrity, and beauty. But such an argument would have to accommodate the looseness of delineating and defining ecosystems or species and assessing their health or goals. That is, of delineating the entity, in this case the ecosystem or species, the former having vague boundaries and the latter of which there are many different definitions, that is morally relevant. Reasoning about biodiversity is more troublesome for sentient perspectives than biocentrist, as it risks replicating the instrumental view on biodiversity – that is, the second option above, but with a more restricted view of what counts morally and to which entities that biodiversity, being a part of a healthy ecosystem, is a prerequisite for (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017: 393). That is, if biodiversity loss entails harm to sentient beings having moral value, then biodiversity loss is wrong indirectly. But this would require also identifying in what way biodiversity loss would be harmful or reduce well-being. It may be that biodiversity levels contribute to healthy ecosystems, which is a relation that is difficult to establish in a general sense (Norton 1987; Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017, especially Section 2.3). In contrast, biocentrism enlarges the scope of instrumental values when also including non-sentient beings. Furthermore, instrumental values can be nuanced as I will suggest is reasonable in Chapter 4. The first alternative above, that biodiversity conservation is a consequence of showing respect for beings having moral status, is seriously reductive if limited to sentientism, as biodiversity is made up of a significant number of species the specimens of which are not sentient. If biodiversity loss follows from disrespect for morally relevant beings, then biocentrism has a much wider scope. The result of biocentrism may be weaker than sentientism, but both are less

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complicated than holistic approaches (Baard 2021). Given that biocentrism, albeit resulting in weaker demands, is based on credible notions of good of its own, and if we can identify what is good or bad for a specific specimen of a species, the further reach that biocentrism provides relative sentientism greatly expands the reach of moral standing. In summary, many efforts have been devoted in environmental ethics to go beyond the conventional restriction of moral standing to only humans. While the previously presented theories all expand the sphere of moral relevance, they all face challenges for providing guidance to manage biodiversity per se, despite expanding the sphere of moral relevance to animals who can feel pain as sentientism does, or to all living individual beings as biocentrism does, or to holistic properties like species or ecosystems as ecocentrism does. But it is difficult to fit the quality variation into the aforementioned categories. What would species richness entail from an anthropocentric perspective? It could mean that species richness is valuable, should it be the case that it adds some form of value to humans; humans may find value and meaning in the diversity of species and the intricate relations between species in ecosystems. However, there are at least two reasons to resist the anthropocentric approach. First are the standard reasons for criticizing anthropocentrism, namely, that it does not capture the full range of morally relevant entities. Restricting moral standing to humans appears to neglect the many values found in nature. Second, it may not be biodiversity as such that we find valuable in nature. Rather, it may be natural value, or ecosystem services, or something else. This was pointed out by Donald S. Maier: ‘biodiversity may be the wrong hook to hang the value of nature on’ (2012). This is also relevant for ecocentric interpretations of the moral standing of nature, where it is the aggregated value of a whole ecosystem or a holistic entity like a species, that has moral value (Rolston 2012), but not necessarily species richness or the variation of species. How valuable those characteristics are would to a large degree be derivative of their relation and function to ecosystems. Some ecocentric theories would concede that species have intrinsic value. This may get us only halfway to biodiversity as being valuable, but it misses the characteristics of richness or variation. An additional problem for ecocentric theories is that it simply may not be the case that species have intrinsic value. Disregarding subjective accounts of intrinsic values – that something may be of final value should it be the case that some entity having moral standing considers it to have such a value – it is unlikely that species as such have objective interest-based values, or what Ronald Sandler calls ‘inherent worth’ (2012: 34). It suffices here to note that species per se are not sentient, do not have interests, and are therefore arguably excluded from the sphere of inherent worth (Sandler 2012: 35). To biocentrism, biodiversity is related to individual living entities either as a consequence of respecting individual entities, or as a prerequisite for their wellbeing in a wider sense that includes non-sentient beings, as suggested above. If we act in ways detrimental to their lives, they will decrease in number or even disappear, and species richness will be diminished as a result. Alternatively,

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species richness is a prerequisite for those individual entities having moral standing. Put differently, caring for them would entail also caring for the prerequisites of their well-being. Species richness may be one such prerequisite, but there are shortcomings with such a response. Partly, it would only recognize an instrumental value of biodiversity. Yet, I argue for an instrumental view of biodiversity in later chapters, with an expanded view on beings having moral standing, and a nuanced account of instrumental values.

Methods and tools of applied ethics: Intuitions and refective equilibrium We have the intuition that biodiversity ought to be preserved and that a wrong occurs when species becomes extinct or biodiversity is lost for anthropogenic reasons. But how can one go about ‘proving’, or making reasonable, such an intuition? Do we not always rely to a substantial extent on intuitions or gut feelings? If that is the case, then we have no way of offering arguments against someone who makes an opposing judgment regarding biodiversity, which is the same thing for which Soulé’s approach was criticized. Merely having the sentiment that biodiversity is good and that others ought to agree means little if we cannot offer a systematic way to scrutinize the foundations that support different moral statements. Philosopher Paul Attfield has suggested that ‘an obstacle to making progress with moral principles is the widespread belief that issues of what ought or ought not to be done are all matters of opinion, and that they do not admit of knowledge’ (Attfield 2018: 44). But is there any rigorous way of assessing the robustness of judgments? In this section I guide the reader through some influential approaches of making sentiments and moral principles coherent. Thought experiments are used for testing judgments. The appeal to intuitions, which we saw playing a large part in justifying the thought experiments above, has been a common approach in moral philosophy. In fact, intuitions have played a substantial role in the methodology of ethics. Examples include the utilitarian philosopher Henry Sidgwick, who defined the rightness and wrongness of an action as intuitive, by which he meant ‘that its truth is apparently known immediately, and not as the result of reasoning’ (quoted in Crisp 2015: 97). Similarly, W. D. Ross considered intuitive moral truths to be those that are ‘self-evident’ (quoted in Regan 2004: 133). To John Rawls, ‘any ethical view is bound to rely on intuition to some degree at many points’ (1999: 35) and the task is one ‘of reducing and not of eliminating entirely the reliance on intuitive judgments’ (1999: 39). Tom Regan has suggested that one basis for evaluating competing ethical principles concerns the extent to which they conform with our moral intuitions (2004: 133). Yet, neither of the appeals to intuitions above refers to a colloquial sense of ‘unexamined moral convictions’ or relies on prejudicial sentiments or ‘gut feelings’ for confirmation of moral judgments. Moreover, consider instances in which there are conflicting intuitions or where multiple actors have several

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different intuitions. To then put all trust in such intuitions per se does not provide any systematic and critical tool for solving such dilemmas (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017: 212). To distinguish the intuitions at play in practical reasoning, Regan puts it thusly: ‘Our intuitions are those moral beliefs we hold after we have made a conscientious effort to satisfy five […] criteria of making an ideal moral judgment’ (2004: 134). The conditions for ideal moral judgments that Regan enumerates are as follows: 1. Coolness: strong emotions are not a reliable guide when doing or judging what is best; the more emotionally charged we are, ‘the more likely we are to reach a mistaken moral conclusion’, while the calmer we are, ‘the greater the chances that we will avoid making mistakes’ (Regan 2004: 129). 2. Rational: although a difficult concept, rationality involves ‘the ability to recognize the connection between different ideas, to understand that if some statements are true, then some other statements must be true while others must be false’ (Regan 2004: 127). 3. Impartial: a formal principle of justice, impartiality holds that ‘justice is the similar, and injustice the dissimilar, treatment of similar individuals’ (Regan 2004: 128). In other words, one should not treat alike cases differently due to some morally irrelevant factor. 4. Conceptual clarity: we must be able to determine what something is before reaching a judgment. If someone states that ‘X is wrong’, then we must understand what the speaker refers to by X and what ‘wrong’ means. 5. Relevant information: moral questions arise in the real world, Regan states, ‘and a knowledge of the real-world setting in which they arise is essential if we are seriously to seek rational answers to them’ (2004: 127). It should be noted that these conditions pertain to ideal moral reasoning, and it may be difficult to reach such ideals. For example, conceptual clarity may be stifled by linguistic uncertainty. Our concern for biodiversity may be motivated partly by our sentiments and experiences of wild nature, which may not be entirely consistent with the condition of coolness. Despite this qualification, I think it is a proper ideal. Linguistic uncertainty may be reduced, and our sentiments and experiences may be starting rather than end points of ethical reasoning. When considering these conditions by reasoning, the outcome consists of considered beliefs rather than gut responses (Regan 2004: 134). One influential manner of continuing the process of ‘testing’ intuitions against moral principles is often called reflective equilibrium, a method that consists of pitting considered beliefs against our moral principles to reach coherence (Rawls 1999; Regan 2004: 135). However, this result may not always be the case, or the theory may cohere with one considered intuition but fail to account for another. What must be done then is to go back and forth between the considered intuitions and the moral principles to revise either the intuitions or the principles until coherence is achieved (de-Shalit 2000).

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An example is the last-person argument. We may have the intuition that what the last person does is wrong, but our moral theories require that human interests or well-being are harmed in some way for something to be wrong, and this is not the case in the last-person argument. Yet, our principles have guided us well hitherto, even if limited to human harms, and we consider them robust. Still, they cannot account for the wrong of the last person. Thus, we may either keep our principles and reject the notion that the last person is doing anything wrong. Alternatively, we can reject the current state of our principles in order to make room for the wrongness of the last person’s actions. This means that we expand the moral principles to include non-anthropocentrist accounts of moral wrongs. We may deem it appropriate to include sentient beings but not ecosystems, or include ecosystems but not necessarily sentient beings. Then, we have the issue of how to match intuitions and moral principles that separate the various non-anthropocentric approaches discussed above. One concern, however, is whose intuitions should be considered. De-Shalit has suggested three levels of intuitions and theories in the process of reflective equilibrium (2000: 23), which is instructive here because biodiversity is a public good requiring collective decisions and policies. Table 3.1 presents the three levels of intuitions and theories. The categories are instructive because they illustrate the extent to which environmental philosophy is a form of philosophy that requires assessing the intuitions and theories of non-philosophers. It is also consistent with what I am trying to do here, as I make clear in Part III, where I survey an analysis of different proposals and scrutinize the extent to which extent they cohere with moral principles. ‘Private reflective equilibrium’ is the standard philosophical approach. De-Shalit exemplifies it with John Rawls, whose influential A Theory of Justice (1999 [1972]) identifies the principles of justice appropriate for a well-ordered society. A key methodological approach for doing this is to agree on principles under fair conditions. To meet this end, Rawls asks us to imagine a veil of ignorance, referring to a hypothetical original position in which we do not know Table 3.1 Typology of reflective equilibrium discussed in this chapter Model of reflective equilibrium

Intuitionsa considered

Theories considered

Private reflective equilibrium Public reflective equilibrium

The philosopher’s

The philosopher’s and other philosophers’ The philosopher’s and the public’s; the philosopher is engaged in and conducts the discourse

The philosopher’s and the public’s (especially activists)

a The original states ‘institutions considered’, but the text reveals that it should read ‘intuitions considered’. I have also deleted a category from de-Shalit (2000): ‘contextual’ reflective equilibrium. The reason is that while interesting, the concept adds little here, where the difference between ‘private’ reflective equilibrium and ‘public’ reflective equilibrium are more central to the discussion.

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which position we will have in a future society but are asked to identify the principles of justice that should guide this society. Through this process, principles are agreed upon that will meet the conditions of justice regardless of which position a given person may have in the future society. A part of the influential and radical outcome of this procedure was that inequality is only permissible should it benefit the least advantaged. Methodologically, this approach reduces the risk of self-interest influencing the formulation of principles, since one does not know which position one will have. It is a method by which one can ‘nullify the effects of specific contingencies which put men at odds and tempt them to exploit social and natural circumstances to their own advantage’ (Rawls 1999: 118). The main point here is that anyone can adopt this original position and ponder the foundational principles of justice for a well-ordered society (Rawls 1999: 120). This is also why de-Shalit places Rawls in that category since anyone can imagine him- or herself ‘in circumstances of perfect detachment’ (de-Shalit 2000: 23). From an environmentalist perspective, de-Shalit criticizes private reflective equilibrium on three grounds. First, it encourages a ‘place-less’ contemplation, a view from nowhere, and it is this uprooting that makes people indifferent to the environments around them in the first place (de-Shalit 2000: 25). Second, Rawls’s striving for universally valid principles means the end of belonging to a community – indeed, it asks us to disregard all community belonging and viewpoints when under the veil of ignorance. However, this seems to mean detaching oneself from the problems formulated by environmental communities (de-Shalit 2000: 25). One response to de-Shalit would be that Rawls’s primary task lay in identifying the principles for the basic structure of a wellordered society. Rawls reiterates that his theory is primarily ideal and that its principles are not necessarily apt for solving all cases. Yet, Rawls also suggests that the ideal principles are appropriate for providing a basis for systematically grasping more pressing practical problems (Rawls 1999: 8). De-Shalit’s third objection to private reflective equilibrium is that it is a ‘professional’ procedure, that ‘detaches moral principles from ideas of the good held by the general public’ (2000: 25). Given that environmentalism belongs to the latter category, it is excluded from Rawls’s approach. To deal with these three objections of uprooting, detaching from communities, and detaching from ideals of the good held by the general public, de-Shalit suggests a ‘public’ reflective equilibrium. This approach starts off not by identifying principles for the basic structure of a well-ordered society but from practical problems and concerns (de-Shalit 2000: 29). This is an inclusive approach that does not rely on differences between the intuitions and theories of professional philosophers on the one hand and those of the rest of the public on the other (de-Shalit 2000: 30). The division, rather, should be between well and badly constructed arguments. The philosopher must then be sensitive to ‘the arguments from activists and the general public’ and refine those arguments and weigh them against intuitions and beliefs (de-Shalit 2000: 30). This procedure motivates the discussion of the subsequent chapters in

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this volume, where different suggestions from activists and the public are put forward and assessed, such as relational values (Chapter 7) and the rights of nature (Chapter 8). Public reflective equilibrium has several strengths. First, it relates specifically to concerns and problems that activists and the general public face. Moreover, it invites wider participation. Yet, it does not mean that all propositions and judgments are given equal validity. Rather, it sets a bar of refined arguments that are then weighed using the philosopher’s tools of reflective equilibrium to see whether principles or judgments ought to be revised, and activists’ theories are critically examined (de-Shalit 2000: 32). The insistence on considering the concerns of activists and the general public also entails that the principles should have practical relevance and that they should be open to perspectives that are often excluded. The process enables refining arguments and weighing them against theories that are taken to be reasonable. If the judgment seems reasonable but cannot be explained or justified with an appeal to existing principles, then one may have to expand those principles, or revise one’s judgment, for reaching coherency. The remainder of Part II will look more closely at specific concepts and theories. This will set the stage for Part III, in which we will discuss recent proposals found in conservation policies and science and assess them using the concepts and theories found in Part II.

Notes 1 Some theories have attempted to ascribe rights – moral, legal, or both – to the environment; they are discussed in Chapter 8. 2 Such assumptions provide the foundation for rights of nature, which will be discussed in Chapter 8. 3 In all fairness, the need for hierarchies between entities having moral standing also befall accounts that are limited to sentient beings – see for instance Shelly Kagan’s (2019) critical discussion of unitarianism, being the view that moral status is not a matter of degree, that there is only a single moral status which an entity either has or lacks. Kagan writes: ‘My own view is that [unitarianism] is mistaken, and that an acceptable normative theory will incorporate hierarchy, assigning a higher moral status to people than to animals, and a higher moral status to some animals than to others’ (Kagan 2019: 39). 4 For some holistic attempts to ascribe personhood to ecosystems such as rivers or forests to generate rights, see Chapter 8.

References Attfield, R., 1981. ‘The good of trees’, The Journal of Value Inquiry, 15, pp. 35–54. Attfield, R., 2001. ‘Christianity’ in Jamieson, D., (ed.) A Companion to Environmental Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 96–110. Attfield, R., 2015. The Ethics of the Global Environment. 2nd edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Attfield, R., 2018. Environmental Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Baard, P., 2021. ‘Biocentric individualism and biodiversity conservation: An argument from parsimony’, Environmental Values, 3(1), 93–110. doi: 10.3197/096327120X1575281032 4048 Cahen, H., 2003. ‘Against the moral considerability of ecosystems’ in Light, A. & Rolston, H. (eds.) Environmental Ethics: An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 114–128. Callicott, J.B. 2013. Thinking Like a Planet. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Crisp, R., 2015. The Cosmos of Duty: Henry Sidgwick’s Methods of Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Daily, G.C., 1997. Nature’s Services: Societal Dependence on Natural Ecosystems. Washington, DC: Island Press. De-Shalit, A., 2000. The Environment between Theory and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kagan, S., 2019. How to Count Animals: More or Less. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Korsgaard, C.M., 2018. Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leopold, A., 1968 [1949]. A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Maier, D.S. 2012. What’s So Good about Biodiversity? Dordrecht: Springer. Melin, A., 2013. Living with Other Beings: A Virtue-Oriented Approach to the Ethics of Species Protection. Münster: Lit Verlag. Midgley, M., 1983. ‘Duties concerning islands’, Encounter, LX (Feb. 1983). Næss, A., 2005 [1999]. ‘Ranking, yes, but the inherent value is the same: An answer to William C. French’ in Drengson A. (ed.) The Selected Works of Arne Næss. Dordrecht: Springer Publishing, pp. 547–50. Newman, J., Varner, G., & Linquist, S., 2017. Defending Biodiversity: Environmental Science and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Norton, B., 1987. Why Preserve Natural Variety? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. O’Neill, J., 1992. ‘The varieties of intrinsic value’, The Monist, 75, pp. 119–137. Peterson, M. & Sandin, P., 2013. ‘The last man argument revisited’, Journal of Value Inquiry, 47, pp. 121–133. Rachels, J. & Rachels, S., 2010. The Elements of Moral Philosophy. 6th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill. Rawls, J., 1999 [1972]. A Theory of Justice. Harvard, MA: Harvard Belknap Press. Regan, T., 2004 [1983]. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press. Rolston, H., 2012. A New Environmental Ethics: The Next Millennium for Life on Earth. London: Routledge. Routley, R., 1973. ‘Is there a need for a new, an environmental, ethics?’ in Proceedings of the XVth World Congress of Philosophy. Varna, Bulgaria: Sofia Press, pp. 205–210. Samuelsson, L., 2008. The Moral Status of Nature: Reasons to Care for the Natural World. Umeå Studies in Philosophy 9. Umeå: Umeå University. Sandler, R.L., 2012. The Ethics of Species: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, P.W., 2011 [1986]. Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics. 25th anniversary edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Varner, G.E., 1998. In Nature’s Interests? Interests, Animal Rights, and Environmental Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

4

Intrinsic and instrumental values, and their relations

In this chapter, I clarify two central concepts in environmental ethics – intrinsic and instrumental values – before explaining what role those axiological (i.e. value-related) categories play in practical reasoning. The category of instrumental value is commonly viewed as inferior to intrinsic value because a bearer of instrumental value has value because of its standing in a specific relation to something with intrinsic value. I argue that the relation between instrumental and intrinsic value merits more consideration than has previously been the case. Intrinsic value was what the last-person argument intended to prove. This is an extremely important concept in philosophy because it provides reasons for action. In the chapter I will focus significantly more on instrumental values, and how they relate to intrinsic values. This is partly because intrinsic values were discussed in the preceding chapter and will be discussed in the subsequent. I also think that most readers will recognize what is meant by intrinsic values, and where something’s value is not derivative of its relation to something else. It is an end in itself (O’Neill 1992). Strengthening the focus here on instrumental values is how intrinsic values are often defined negatively, as ‘non-instrumental’ values (O’Neill 1992; Sandler 2012). After an overview of intrinsic and instrumental values, I dispute what I refer to as the ‘mere’ view of instrumental value, which seems to presume that all entities with instrumental value have equal moral relevance and that instrumental values are a lesser form of value than intrinsic value – which they admittedly are, though nuances can be provided.1 It is clear that there is a distinction between intrinsic and instrumental value, but all things that have instrumental value are not equivalent.

Intrinsic and instrumental values First, a point of clarification. While instrumental values are often contrasted with intrinsic values, that approach is mistaken (Peterson & Sandin 2013; Sandler 2012: 17). Instrumental values are values that are derivative of standing in a causal relation to something of intrinsic value. There may be long chains of instrumental values. I may want to eat dinner so as not to be hungry, and I want to avoid hunger so I can read my book on eighteenth-century art, and DOI: 10.4324/9781003110712-4

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I want to read that book to learn more about art, and I want to learn more about art to better appreciate beauty. I do not want to appreciate beauty for any ulterior reason, so beauty has intrinsic value. There are different definitions of intrinsic value. Intrinsic value is sometimes primarily defined negatively, as that which has ‘non-instrumental’ value, whereas intrinsic value at other times refers to the value of an object in virtue of its inherent, non-relational, properties; a beautiful object has value ‘solely in virtue of its intrinsic characteristics’ (O’Neill 1992). Intrinsic value is what the ‘last man’ argument set out to establish regarding nature – that is, has value as an end in itself. Its value is not restricted to the usefulness to human interests or well-being. I will use the concepts non-instrumental, final, and intrinsic value on the one hand, and instrumental, and extrinsic on the other, somewhat interchangeably. What is of importance is that in the first category, there are those values that are not derivative of their relation to something else, whereas in the second category the values are derivative. This means that they are not valuable unto themselves, in contrast to intrinsic values, but rather require an appeal to something else. For clarificatory purposes, the two value categories are separated in Table 4.1 with respect to whether they are derivative, or non-derivative. Instrumental values are derivative of final (non-instrumental) values (Sandler 2012: 17) but can be defined in various ways, as the following quotes make clear: Objects, activities, or whatever, have an instrumental value if they are valued for the sake of something else. (Korsgaard 1983: 170) Table 4.1 Typology of value categories discussed in this chapter Category

Value

Description

Non-derivative

Intrinsic, final, non-instrumental

Derivative

Extrinsic, instrumental, option value (future instrumental value)

Source of value of entity is found in some non-relational characteristic inherent in entity. It is valuable ‘for its own sake’. An entity has non-derivative value to the extent that it has non-instrumental value. Examples include beauty, knowledge, well-being. Value of an entity is extrinsic if the source of value of it is derivative of it standing in a specific relation to something of non-derivative value. Value of an entity is instrumental if that relation is causal, or if an entity tends to give rise to something of non-derivative value.

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An object has instrumental value insofar as it is a means to some other end. (O’Neill 1992: 131) These definitions fail to specify the relation between the bearer of instrumental value and the ‘something else’ by virtue of which it is valued, but it is usually implied that there must be something of intrinsic value to avoid infinite regress (O’Neill 1992: 131). Some definitions specify the end that the bearer of instrumental value is derivative: To attribute instrumental goodness to some thing is primarily to say of this thing that it serves its purpose well. (von Wright 1963) Whenever we judge that a thing is ‘good as a means’, we are making a judgment with regard to its causal relations: we judge both that it will have a particular kind of effect, and that that effect will be good in itself. (Moore 2004: 22) Many objects are valued merely as means to other objects – they are valuable solely by virtue of the fact that they will produce (or help produce) those other objects. Those things valued as a means in this way possess ‘instrumental’ value. […] But eventually – or so the thought goes – we must reach objects that are valuable as ‘ends’ or ‘for their own sake’. (Kagan 1998: 278–279). Instrumental value is the value that something – an entity, act, or state of affairs – has as a means to an end. […] That something is an effective means to some end does not itself result in it having instrumental value. The end must also be that of some entity or be valuable or worthwhile. Thus, instrumental value is always derivative on the final (non-instrumental) value of something else. It is also always conditional. (Sandler 2012: 16–17) Rønnow-Rasmussen (2002) proposes two different senses in which the notion of ‘instrumental value’ is used, one strong and the other weak: Strong: ‘x has instrumental value’ means ‘x bears a (certain particular) value, and it bears this value only if x is conducive to (the existence of something that has) a final value’. “Weak: ‘x has instrumental value’ means ‘x is conducive to (the existence of something that has) a final value’. (Rønnow-Rasmussen 2002: 25) Some stress that the very term ‘instrumental value’ is a misnomer and focus only on the ‘means’ character of such entities: ‘Instrumental values’ are not in fact values at all, but merely non-valuable means to things which are valuable. (Crisp 1998: 477)

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While there is some merit to reducing instrumental values to only standing in a means–end relationship to something of intrinsic value, I do think there are good reasons to preserve the notion of instrumental value and not strip such entities of any value at all. The reasons for this are partly due to intuitive confirmation but also that it does not seem reasonable to reject the notion that entities that stand in a causal relation to something of intrinsic value also have value and furthermore that such values can be distinguished, as is further discussed below. Intrinsic value stands in opposition to that which has instrumental value, as the ‘source’ of value is found outside the things carrying instrumental value. Intrinsic value is the response to the question ‘What for?’ that can be directed towards actions or entities. Extrinsic value must be derivative of something that has intrinsic value, but in contrast to instrumental value, no causal relation is implied. Thus, we may derive the following definitions: Intrinsic (non-instrumental value): X has intrinsic value if the value of X is not derivative of its relation to something else. Instrumental value: Y has instrumental value if the value of Y is derivative of something of intrinsic value to which Y stands in a causal relation.2 As an extrinsic value, the definition of instrumental value requires that Y’s source of value is extrinsic to Y, in X. But unlike extrinsic value, instrumental value also contains a condition of standing in a causal relationship to X. Y is valuable to the extent that it is a means to an end, that end being X. This makes instrumental value somewhat different than purely extrinsic value. To point out the difference, consider a pen, having primarily instrumental value. But consider the pen that Abraham Lincoln used to sign the Declaration of Independence. That pen arguably has intrinsic value derivative of it having been used for that purpose (Kagan 1998: 285). The source of that value for that pen is extrinsic to the pen itself, through relying on its instrumental value. Instrumental value is a more pedestrian category of value than intrinsic value and has not generated the same amount of analytical effort as intrinsic value. There are good reasons for this, partly since intrinsic value is a more overarching and central axiological category. Indeed, instrumental values are defined by their relationship to something(s) of intrinsic value. According to some, ‘instrumental value arguments for preserving biodiversity are relatively less complicated philosophically’ (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017: 41). While I concede that this is partly true, I do think there are several aspects of instrumental value that merit further analysis. Moreover, such extended analyses can also provide an argument for biodiversity conservation from an instrumental perspective. Instrumental values can be further distinguished into the categories of present value and option value. That is, something may currently be a means to something of intrinsic value, whereas one may want to retain the possibility of

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using something at a later time, in which case it has option value. Some have defended the value of some biodiversity using the category of option value, as a sort of insurance plan (MacLaurin & Sterelny 2008). However, it is not at all certain that there are good reasons for preserving biodiversity per se with reference to option value (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017). Without going into excessive detail, part of the issue has to do with the possible costs of bioprospecting for investigating possible agricultural or medicinal use of species (see Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017; MacLaurin & Sterelny 2008; 164ff) and assumptions that all species, or species variation, are necessary in maintaining ecosystems and providing ecosystem functions. Many oppose arguments that ascribe ‘merely’ instrumental value to the environment. Thus, for instance, environmental philosopher Arne Næss would state that the question of value relates to ‘the (for me) fundamental question “Inherent value or merely instrumental value?”’ (Næss 2005: 548). This is partly because the locus of moral status is not ascribed to the environment and its entities as such, but it is also because an instrumental value account does not capture the many components of the environment. As a result, there are many entities that are without value, critics lament. There is some truth to this. If the value of ecosystem X is derivative of its producing something for us, for the sake of argument say only a pleasantly aesthetic sensation and nothing else, then that ecosystem can be substituted for something else, Y, that produces an aesthetic sensation of similar pleasantness, even if Y is artificial, such as a parking lot with intricate ornaments. Indeed, should Y produce a more pleasant aesthetic sensation than X, then Y must be substituted for X. In a similar way, if two species fulfill the same ecosystem function, they are substitutable. Eric Katz has termed this the ‘substitution problem’, which is inconsistent with the recognition and respect of intrinsic value of nature which does not permit substitutability (Katz 1985). A third interpretation of ‘intrinsic value’ is objective value, the value an entity has irrespective of the judgment a valuer makes (O’Neill 1992). However, both instrumental and non-instrumental values come in subjective and objective kinds (Sandler 2012: 19), or more specifically agent-relative and agent-neutral kinds. This is a point worth teasing out since it could shed more light on the distinction. A specific environmental area may have intrinsic value to you for specific relational reasons. It may be that you grew up near it and that it evokes fond memories of childhood, and you wish for it to be preserved even after you are deceased. For you, visiting that area may be a non-instrumental goal. Since I lack that relation, I do not have such experiences. By contrast, if ecosystems have objective intrinsic value, both you and I would have agent-neutral reasons to preserve them (for an early discussion on the power of ecological knowledge in transforming anthropocentric values, see Norton 1987). The distinction is also relevant to instrumental values. This is somewhat surprising, given that if something is a more efficient means of attaining something, that efficiency should not be relative to an agent but rather depend on established independent criteria. Yet, we may both agree that driving a car is a more efficient way of getting to the office, so driving a car has instrumental

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value in that sense. However, you may abhor cars, which will lower the subjective instrumental value of driving a car to work (Sandler 2012: 19; see also von Wright 1963). I think it reasonable to argue that instrumental values should be given more attention, and the nuances of instrumental values be explicated. This would make the distinction between ‘intrinsic’ and ‘instrumental’ values less binary, as an entity that is the sole entity of achieving something of intrinsic value can be said to reflect that intrinsic value. We could, in this instance, reflect on the great extent to which our lives depend on healthy ecosystems and biodiversity. Even if the latter does not have intrinsic value, on aggregated levels it provides the prerequisites for life, and is therefore of great instrumental value. This takes the edge off accusations of the ‘pedestrian’ character of instrumental values. The next section will look more closely at the relation between intrinsic and instrumental values.

BOX 4.1 NATURAL VALUE AND THE NATURE CONSERVATION PARADOX ‘Natural value’ is a specific category that has a certain moral weight in environmental ethics that it does not have in other areas of ethical investigation. Ideas of ‘nature’ and ‘natural’ are often appealed to when discussing the moral standing of the environment, both as foundations for practical reasons and for establishing desired outcomes.Thus, a case may be made that one ought to conserve an area in its ‘natural state’ or as close to it as possible or that ‘natural’ provides some specific characteristic which can guide moral decision-making. Despite its weight and intuitive plausibility, it creates many problems and difficulties. It is therefore quite understandable that it has generated a lot of discussion in environmental ethics. There are those who stress the importance of ‘natural’ as opposed to ‘artificial’ biodiversity.With such a distinction, a line of moral relevance is intended to be drawn. Biologist Kenneth Angermeier (1994) considered it a misuse of the term biodiversity to include human-generated elements.‘Natural value’ seems intuitively confirmed. After all, is not something that has come to be through human action, intention and design more of an artefact than a natural entity? The consequences for conservation are vast, as are the consequences for restoration. In some legal systems natural value also plays a role. For example, in Sweden, which has a long preservationist tradition, maintaining areas as ‘untouched’ as possible is an overarching ambition of forest area management (Steinwall 2015). Land in national parks should be preserved ‘in its natural condition or essentially unchanged’ according to the Swedish Environmental Code (SEC ch.7; Steinwall 2015: 36).

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Yet, the insistence on naturalness and natural value risks inducing a paradox. It has provided a foundation for what has been called ‘the received wilderness idea’, which holds roughly that ‘the practice of wilderness preservation fails to preserve wilderness’ (Woods 2017).Think of it this way.You cherish a friend due to the independence of that friend. In the concept of independence you include conditions such as never having to ask for help. However, he or she asks you for help.You should help a friend. However, your friend is your friend because you admire the fact that this friend never asks for help.Thus, a paradox is created. But the paradox may be misguided. Instead of basing value on the absence of a characteristic (‘having been subjected to human intention’), there have been attempts at providing positive definitions, that ‘wild’ is to be understood as ‘a capacity for authentic, autonomous, and spontaneous expression’ (Woods 2017: 255) or that naturalness is based on characteristics that an environmental area has, rather than on its history and how it came to be (Siipi 2017).This seems sensible, especially during the Anthropocene, when human influence is found virtually everywhere. Regardless, a too narrow definition of naturalness and natural value and adjacent concepts such as ‘wilderness’, risks defeating the purpose.As suggested by Bernard Williams, ‘anything we leave untouched we have already touched’, and it is worth reminding ourselves that ‘our refusal to be anthropocentric must itself be a human refusal’ (Williams 1995: 240).

The relation between intrinsic and instrumental values and the value of biodiversity I think that it is difficult to provide a reasonable argument for why biodiversity as such has intrinsic value (McShane 2017; Odenbaugh 2021, 2017; Sarkar 2005). There are also few environmental ethicists who argue that biodiversity as such has intrinsic value, with one noteworthy exception being Arne Næss based, on intuition (Næss 1989; Oksanen 1997). This would do little to convince those who do not share the intuition or, if it is a considered intuition, it ought to be backed by arguments or consistency with principles. Usually, it is not specifically the quality of variation of species or ecosystems that we value in nature. If that were the case, counter-intuitive practices would follow, such as the justification of deliberate attempts to add more species to ecosystems, depending on how the supposed intrinsic value of biodiversity would rank relative to common definitions of natural values that depend on excluding human intention and intervention (see Box 4.1). None of the theories would suggest that it is variation as such that has moral status (Oksanen 1997). Variation may be good to uphold their resilience and functioning, but that is an argument

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from instrumental values. Biodiversity, or its components such as species and richness, is not an entity that has interests or dignity or can feel pleasure or pain, which are the usual characteristics by which intrinsic value is determined. The characteristics may reasonably be applicable to individual specimens, and maybe, if doubtfully, to species (Odenbaugh 2017). Yet, even if applicable to individual specimens, it could warrant a defence of biodiversity preservation, such as the biocentrist defence in the preceding chapter. Despite this, we may still have some form of intuition that biodiversity as such is valuable and ought to be preserved, and perhaps instrumental value can provide such an argument, especially when added with biocentric components, despite difficulties of establishing the instrumental value of specific levels of species richness. The mere fact that instrumental value is derivative of intrinsic value is often taken to justify regarding it as a ‘lesser’ form of value. Something that has instrumental value has no value on its own regard but only due to its standing in a specific causal relation to something of non-instrumental value. While there is some truth to this, as instrumental value is wholly dependent on standing in a given relation to something of intrinsic value, I believe that it makes things too easy. Moreover, it is often taken to allow for substitutability, which intrinsic value does not allow. That is, while X1 and X2, which have instrumental value due to their relation to Y, which has intrinsic value, are substitutable for each other, Y cannot be substituted for something else of intrinsic value. While I concede that instrumental values are a ‘lesser’ form of value, since they do not ‘stand on their own’ due to their dependency on intrinsic values, I do not think they are as trivial as one might imagine. Therefore, it would serve us well to look a bit more closely at the specific relation between the two forms of value. First, I think it is important to draw attention to how entities of instrumental value differ. Consider the following cases (from Baard 2019): Parsimony: There is only one means φ, to intrinsic value Y Temperance: There are several, but few and limited, entities {φ1, φ2, φ3} that enable Y Gluttony: There is an intrinsic value, Y, which can be fulfilled through innumerable means {φ1, φ2, φ3, … φn} Now, these are three very different relations between means and ends. The single φ is different from the set {φ1, φ2, φ3}, which is different from {φ1, φ2, φ3, … φn}. Let us assume that all cases of Y are of equivalent intrinsic value. In gluttony, if the different φs are disjunctive, meaning that each individual φ is a sufficient condition for Y, but none is necessary, it seems quite possible that any φ can be substituted for any other: φ1 and φ999 can both achieve Y in isolation. However, it seems unlikely that there are large sets of means to the same objective. Often, however, it is more likely that there are more restricted sets, such as a few limited entities, that can enable something of intrinsic value; this is the case of temperance. Consider knowledge, which has

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both instrumental and intrinsic value and which offers fewer ways to attain it than pleasure offers. W. D. Ross suggested three elements that characterize being in an epistemic state of knowing: the degree of its groundedness on fact, the degree to which the strength of conviction with which it is held corresponds to its groundedness, and the generality of the fact known (2002: 148). Much can be said about this, but here it serves primarily illustrative purposes. Each of these is sufficient, but none is necessary. One may have some very general knowledge that seems reasonable but less grounded in fact; by contrast, one may have very specific facts available that do not permit generalizability. If the latter is not possible, then the former is. Finally, parsimony stands in contrast to the other cases. Here, it would not necessarily be erroneous to state that the φ that can enable Y reflects it or may even be worth the same respect as Y. Suppose there is only one landscape of sublime beauty and wilderness. Without that landscape, sublime beauty and wilderness remain solely abstract ideas without any physical manifestation or any vehicle through which they can be experienced. Now, it should be stated that this landscape still has value derivative to sublime beauty, and this may offer one reason to prioritize bearers of direct intrinsic value in its stead. Should it be discovered that the landscape is the only remaining place for growing crops that are needed to feed starving people, then – by virtue of the intrinsic value of those people – it would follow that it would be permissible to transform the landscape for agricultural purposes.3 We should resist here the conclusion that it is permissible, or obligatory, to reduce the number of means to achieve the same end in order to raise the value of that entity. Rather, we can take it as a plain fact that if there are few means to achieve something of intrinsic value, then it is justifiable with reference to their rarity and the intrinsic value to which they are derivative to act with great care for them. For a more common example, think of a passport. It does not have intrinsic value, but it is a necessary (but not sufficient) means to international travel. As such, we may go to great lengths to store it safely, and so on, despite it having derivative value. Aristotle stated that ‘the end is generally supposed to be more desirable than the means, and of two means, that which lies nearer the end’ (Aristotle Top. 116B22–23). And it seems reasonable that not all means are of equal value. In addition to the number of means to enable something of intrinsic value, the moral status of entities having instrumental value will most likely differ depending on where in a causal link they are placed and the extent to which they are necessary and/or sufficient conditions for that which has intrinsic value. Usually, many different means making up long causal chains are required to achieve something of intrinsic value. Assessing such value chains to each of the different elements requires some work; some entities may be substitutable but not all. Say that there is a long causal chain to experience our landscape of sublime beauty. Some of these conditions are necessary, whereas others are not. Let us assume that some of them are necessary – such as balancing availability and protecting the landscape. Without these two conditions,

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the sublime beauty of the landscape cannot be experienced. Consequently, these two conditions are to be given more consideration than other conditions required for the experience. The reasoning on instrumental value has a bearing on species conservation. Consider the difference between keystone and umbrella species. A keystone species is instrumental in maintaining the structure of an ecological community (MacLaurin & Sterelny 2008: 115), whereas an umbrella species is an endangered species that requires a large habitat. The keystone species is a necessary condition to maintaining the ecosystem, while the umbrella species is a sufficient condition for protecting the biodiversity of an area (Baard 2019). In a different vein, Paul Attfield suggests that ecosystems, though having instrumental value, that instrumental value is so great ‘through facilitating the existence and flourishing of whole generations of creatures bearing intrinsic value’, that is, individual creatures consistent with Attfield’s biocentric view, ‘which could not exist without them’ (2015: 41). To finalize this discussion on the relation between instrumental and noninstrumental value, let us consider what form of value biodiversity has. It seems highly questionable to suggest that biodiversity as such has intrinsic value. We may ascribe intrinsic value to ecosystems or to individual animals but rarely to the characteristic variation of species or something similar. I believe there are good reasons for protecting biodiversity due to its instrumental value, especially when supplemented with biocentrism (which also provides the additional possibility of biodiversity loss being a residual outcome of failing to respect living, even non-sentient, beings). Perhaps most importantly, we cannot recreate biodiversity, and there are thus limits to its substitutability. There are at least two caveats to substitutability. One concerns value and the other uncertainty (Baard 2019). It may be a moral wrong to permit substitutability of either individual specimens of species or of species as a whole, depending on which non-anthropocentric moral theory one holds. From a biocentric perspective, individual animals are not interchangeable since they have moral standing, whereas from ecocentric perspectives ecosystems are not equivalent. That is, neither can be freely substituted. We can compare this to other relations that give rise to moral standing, such as friendships. While another person may give rise to a friendship, one’s current friendships provide reasons for special obligations. This suggests either that there may be relational reasons for biodiversity conservation or that there are specific characteristics that would be violated if one regarded substitutability as a viable option. Even from anthropocentric perspectives, there are reasons to, at the very least, reduce rates of biodiversity loss and species extinction that rely on uncertainty (Norton 1987). While not offering as substantial a defence as non-anthropocentric perspectives would enable, the uncertainty of possible effects following species extinction and habitat loss can provide reasons for preservation. This can take at least two forms. We may not know in what way species extinction could detrimentally affect an ecosystem and ecosystem services. Even if most species do not contribute in any significant way to the resilience of ecosystems

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(Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017: 51ff.), it would at the very least provide a defence for keystone species. The other form of defence against habitat loss that anthropocentric and instrumental values can justify concerns the possible consequences of reducing habitats for wild animals, which may increase health risks for humans; according to some estimates, risks such as zoonoses, meaning diseases that can spread from animals to humans, will increase following biodiversity loss.4 Consequently, habitat loss and species extinction may not only threaten the ecosystems on which we rely but also risk spreading infectious diseases. Expanding the sphere of moral relevance to animals, which is arguably consistent with most moral theories, would expand the reach of arguments for species and habitat preservation to safeguard their well-being. Expanding the sphere even further to include non-sentient beings, such as biocentrism, would expand the instrumental value defence even further, and moreover provide the possibility of biodiversity loss being the outcome of a failure to respect living entities. Admittedly, relying on instrumental value will not suffice to protect all species, but it would likely slow and possibly reverse current trends in extinction rates, the reason being that stable ecosystems and habitats are prerequisites for entities having moral standing. If that includes both all sentient beings, as well as non-sentient ones, that provides for a defence of quite substantial amounts of habitat. Another issue regarding substitutability is our failure to recreate the ecosystems that support us and other animals, they simply cannot be recreated (Odenbaugh 2017). Thus, the case of Parsimony above may be relevant for discussing biodiversity and the biosphere. They reflect the intrinsic values that they enable due to not being substitutable for other means, even if their value would be derivative. Additionally, failure to reduce rates of biodiversity loss is the outcome of a failure to respect entities having (some positive, though not absolute) moral standing. In conclusion, there are reasons to be wary of an overly simple understanding of the relation between instrumental and intrinsic values. Surely, the latter have a greater importance as the former are derivative of the latter. However, instrumental values come in many forms, and our understanding of the relation between an entity having instrumental value can range from its reflecting intrinsic value to being fully substitutable by other entities that are sufficient conditions for reaching that intrinsic value. This merits reflection on how we relate to our surroundings and on the necessity of non-human life for human well-being.

Reasons and goodness To environmental philosopher Robin Attfield, ‘things are valuable when there are reasons to promote, preserve, protect, or respect them’ (2018: 23). There are several motivations for why axiological (i.e. ‘value-related’) issues have such importance in environmental ethics. One motivation bears on the centrality of reasons, which come in many forms, including epistemic reasons.

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These are reasons why one should hold a specific belief due to the evidence for it. You may hold the belief that it will rain tomorrow because the weather reports, which you find trustworthy, have provided that assessment. That the meteorologist has made that estimate counts in favour of your holding the belief that it will rain tomorrow. Such instances may aptly be labelled ‘reasons for believing’ and are evidential reasons (Foot 2001: 63). In contrast, there are also practical reasons which state that one ought to act or refrain from acting in a certain way. Philosophers have discussed reasons in many different ways, but certain common themes can be identified, such as whether reasons are always agentrelative, or agent-neutral. Such issues are important because moral imperatives are often derivative of agent-neutral reasons and justifications of actions are dependent on reference to reasons. Others can assess the validity of the reasons that one puts forwards as a justification for action, and one can – perhaps in vain – suppose that putting forward reasons for acting in a specific way may persuade someone to act in that way. As Roger Crisp puts it: If ever I am rationally justified in doing something, there must be some value grounding that justification. My jogging is justified if it promotes my health, which promotes welfare values good in themselves, such as pleasure. My campaigning to save the whale will be, in a sense, unreasonable if it is not grounded on some hope of making the world a better place and perhaps also a better place for whales and other animals. (Crisp 1994: 83ff.) In environmental ethics, concepts such as intrinsic value, duties, rights, and virtues all provide reasons for acting or refraining from acting in specific manners. Think of it like this. Above, intrinsic values can be separated into subjective and objective intrinsic values (Sandler 2012); the former are also sometimes called ‘valuer-dependent intrinsic values’ (Sandler 2009). A sufficient condition for something to have intrinsic value is that it is valuable without reference to anything else. This was something that set intrinsic values apart from other values, where value results from standing in a specific relation to something that has intrinsic value. An agent cherishing something without appeal to something else is thus coherent with the definition of intrinsic value. Others do not necessarily have to recognize that intrinsic value for it to hold for that agent, and the intrinsic value may be a large part of the motivation for that agent; it may be the case that an agent cherishes a specific environmental area for its own sake and that this provides that agent with motivation to save it, but others do not have to recognize it. On the other hand, some entities have valuer-independent or ‘objective’ intrinsic value (Sandler 2012). Such valuer-independent values give reasons to act on behalf of what has value. Derek Parfit, who devoted much of his time to thinking about reasons, stated the following about goodness: [When we call something] good, in what we can call the reason-implying sense, we mean roughly that there are certain kinds of fact about this

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thing’s nature, or properties, that would in certain situations give us or others strong reasons to respond to this thing in some positive way, such as wanting, choosing, using, producing, or preserving this thing. (Parfit 2011: 38) Parfit here stresses that goodness, in a reason-implying sense, is derivative of certain kinds of facts about the thing’s nature or properties. These facts provide us with reasons to respond in some positive way. If restricting ourselves to environmental ethics, we may say that, for instance, the goodness of an ecosystem’s natural value provides us with reasons to preserve that ecosystem. In environmental ethics, the issue of the reason-implying sense of intrinsic value has been investigated by, amongst others, Lars Samuelsson (2008, 2010), who states that ‘a normative reason for action is provided by a fact that counts in favour of acting’ (2008: 35). A normative reason ought not be conflated with an explanation. While a normative reason may explain why an action was performed (or refrained from), a normative reason does something more: ‘it calls for doing something, or for intending to do something’ (Samuelsson 2008: 36). If we assume that an endangered species has intrinsic value, then that intrinsic value explains why conservation efforts are devoted to preserving it. But those facts, that the species is endangered and has intrinsic value, also call for doing something. To Samuelsson, reasons for action are ‘independent of whether anyone is actually motivated by this reason, or even acknowledged that it is a reason’: rather, ‘it is its counting in favour of that makes it a reason’ (Samuelsson 2008: 39). Bernard Williams (1981) proposed a distinction between internal and external reasons. Basically, internal reasons state that my reasons are partly or fully derivative of what I am motivated to do (Crisp 1994: 85ff.). The statement ‘A has reasons to φ’ (where ‘φ’ designates an action or verb) is relative to agent A having some motive ‘which will be served or furthered by his φ-ing’ (Williams 1981: 101). External reasons states that ‘the reason-sentence will not be falsified by the absence of an appropriate motive’ (Williams 1981: 101). According to the external thesis, whether A has reasons to φ will not be derivative to A’s motivations, whereas the internal thesis states the opposite. To the external thesis, an ‘ought’ applies independently of what the agent happens to want (Williams 1981: 106). The centrality of this issue lies in how it will affect the relation between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons. If it is the case that there are agentneutral reasons, but they do not motivate me as much as agent-relative reasons, then there is a potential moral dilemma. I may be called upon, as a matter of justice, to donate money to charity and to devote less time to reading philosophy. Such reasons may be quite robust in an agent-neutral sense of being applicable to all. Given the enormous levels of famine in the world and the suffering that could be abated if large parts of humanity donated money to charity without simultaneously reducing their welfare in any noticeable manner, then that would be required. However, I may be more motivated by self-interest

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and thus refrain from donating my money to charity. The internal reason thesis suggests that my motivation provides me with reason. The internal thesis, if true, would lead to great scepticism about the objective, or agent-neutral, foundations of ethical life. Another interpretation, however, is that it is primarily possible to live an ethical life from the first-person perspective. The actions that will be undertaken will be my actions (Williams 2011: 68). Such agent-relative reasons will play a part when we discuss relational values in the coming chapters. However, recall that philosophers such as Samuelsson hold that reasons, or things ‘counting in favour’ that underlie reasons, hold regardless of whether anyone is actually motivated by the reasons or acknowledges that they are reasons (Samuelsson 2008: 39). As Samuelsson suggests, we may sometimes determine that someone acted for bad reasons (2008: 39). A person performed an action for specific reasons that were consistent with that agent’s motivational set but for, as it were, bad reasons. If the internal reasons thesis is true, the only way to support such a judgment would be through assessing whether an action is consistent with the agent’s motivational set. The issue of reasons is closely related to the issue of moral status. If an entity, say an animal or an ecosystem, has direct moral status, this means that there are reasons to act in specific ways towards it and that it is wrong to act otherwise. In this way, direct moral status is related to normative reasons. Samuelsson has provided the following clarifying definition of moral status: ‘(i) X has direct moral status’, can be defined as ‘(ii) X has some property or set of properties that gives rise to a direct normative reason, applying to any moral agent, to act towards it’. (Samuelsson 2008: 57) Samuelsson suggests that any environmental ethicist who wants to ascribe intrinsic value, moral standing, or something similar to species or ecosystems ‘also holds that there is some direct normative reason, applying to any moral agent, to act towards it (where this reason obtains in virtue of the fact that nature possesses some property or properties)’ (2008: 58; Samuelsson 2010). In other contexts, Samuelsson suggests that the focus on intrinsic values invites misunderstandings and that the reason for establishing intrinsic values ‘is that such values would lay claims on us – that they would supply us with reasons for action with respect to their bearers’ (2010: 530). Moreover, to focus directly on reasons would reduce the subjectivist components of intrinsic values. This is quite common in environmental ethics: saying ‘that nature has intrinsic value is just to say that at least some people value nature for its own sake’ (Samuelsson 2010: 531). This parallels the issue of the subjectivism of intrinsic values above and plays a role when we discuss relational values later. There is a risk of conflating ‘x is valued’ with ‘x has value’, but if that is the case, ‘then there is no need to talk of anything’s “having value”, since all that

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is taking place is valuing’ (Crisp 1998: 478). While it does appear important to socially contextualize values, one must also think carefully about the moral implications of doing so. Is the mere fact that something is valued by a moral agent sufficient (or perhaps not even necessary) for something to be considered to have direct moral status? Samuelsson’s move is interesting in this regard, as it suggests that ‘what is normatively and practically interesting is not whether some people in fact value nature’ (a descriptive fact), ‘but whether we (or at least they) have reason to do so’ (2010: 531). These last two chapters have covered a lot of ground. Much more can be and has been said on these matters. My hope is that it has provided you with insights into some of the tools commonly used in moral philosophy. Moreover, I have proposed some tentative conclusions, namely, that many standard environmental ethical theories are ill equipped to facilitate reasoning about biodiversity as such and why it should be preserved. Yet, I have also argued that one should perhaps look elsewhere, to the relation between instrumental and intrinsic values. When providing a more nuanced view of that relation, conjunct with acknowledging how entities – which I do not limit to humans – having moral standing are dependent upon healthy ecosystems of which biodiversity is at least some part, a stronger case can be made. This requires supplementing the conventional environmental ethical accounts to provide reasons for why biodiversity ought to be preserved, and why biodiversity loss is objectionable.

Notes 1 One may notice a similarity between my refutation of the ‘mere’ instrumental view, and Immanuel Kant’s view that it is a moral wrong to treat other persons merely as means, and not as ends. I discuss that analogy in the subsequent chapter, but here it suffices to state that the analogy requires that ecosystems or biodiversity also have intrinsic value, in addition to instrumental value. 2 Here I follow the same structure as in Baard (2019), with a focus on causality. But it should be mentioned that causality is often very difficult to establish. Rather than utilize the concept of causality, it may therefore be more correct to state that ‘X often follows Y’, or ‘Y tends to give rise to X’, or similar. I will leave the thorny issue of establishing causal relations aside. 3 Keeping up with the issue of ranking of intrinsic values, one could also state that such a choice is not between, on one hand, the landscape having conducive value relative to beauty and, on the other, people’s well-being.The choice may rather be one of differences between the intrinsic value of beauty and the intrinsic value of people’s wellbeing, in which case the latter would most likely rightfully be given the upper hand. 4 www.who.int/docs/default-source/climate-change/qa-infectiousdiseases-who.pdf?sfv rsn=3a624917_3; www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m3389.full

References Angermeier, P., 1994. ‘Does biodiversity include artificial diversity?’, Conservation Biology, 8, pp. 600–602. Attfield, R., 2015. The Ethics of the Global Environment. 2nd editions. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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Attfield, R., 2018. Environmental Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Baard, P., 2019. ‘The goodness of means: Instrumental and relational values, causation, and environmental policies’, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 32, pp. 183–199. doi: 10.1007/s10806-019-09762-7 Crisp, R., 1994. ‘Values, reasons and the environment’ in Attfield, R., & Belsey, A., (eds.) Philosophy and the Natural Environment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 75–88. Crisp, R., 1998. ‘Animal liberation is not an environmental ethics: A response to Dale Jamieson’, Environmental Values, 7, pp. 476–478. Foot, P., 2001. Natural Goodness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kagan, S., 1998. ‘Rethinking intrinsic value’, Journal of Ethics, 2, pp. 277–297. Katz, E., 1985. ‘Organism, community, and the substitution problem’, Environmental Ethics 7, pp. 241–256. Korsgaard, C., 1983. ‘Two distinctions in goodness’, The Philosophical Review, 92, pp. 169–195. MacLaurin, J., and Sterelny, K., 2008. What is Biodiversity? Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. McShane, K., 2017. ‘Is biodiversity intrinsically valuable? (And what might that mean?)’ in Garson, J., Plutynski, A., & Sarkar, S. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Biodiversity. London: Routledge, pp. 155–167. Moore, G E., 2004 [1903]. Principia Ethica. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc. Næss, A., 1989. Ecology, Community and Lifestyle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Næss, A. 2005. ‘Ranking, yes, but the inherent value is the same: An answer to William C. French’ in The Selected Works of Arne Næss, edited by Alan Drengson. Dordrecht: Springer Publishing, pp. 547–50. Newman, J., Varner, G., & Linquist, S., 2017. Defending Biodiversity: Environmental Science and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Norton, B., 1987. Why Preserve Natural Variety? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Odenbaugh, J., 2017. ‘Protecting biodiversity and moral psychology: Or why philosophers are asking the wrong questions’ in Garson, J., Plutynski, A., & Sarkar, S. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Biodiversity. London: Routledge, pp. 193–211. Odenbaugh, J., 2021. ‘Conservation Biology’ in Edward N. Zalta (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Spring 2021 edition. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2 021/entries/conservation-biology/ Oksanen, M., 1997. ‘The moral value of biodiversity’, AMBIO, 26, pp. 541–545. O’Neill, J., 1992. ‘The varieties of intrinsic value’, The Monist, 75, pp. 119–137. Parfit, D., 2011. On What Matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Peterson, M., and Sandin, P., 2013. ‘The last man argument revisited’, Journal of Value Inquiry 47, pp. 121–133. Rønnow-Rasmussen, T., 2002. ‘Instrumental values: Strong and weak’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 5, pp. 23–43. Ross, W.D., 2002 [1930]. The Right and the Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Samuelsson, L., 2008. The Moral Status of Nature: Reasons to Care for the Natural World. Umeå Studies in Philosophy 9. Umeå: Umeå University. Samuelsson, L., 2010. ‘Reasons and values in environmental ethics’, Environmental Values 19, pp. 517–535. Sandler, R.L., 2009. ‘The value of species and the ethical foundations of assisted colonization’, Conservation Biology, 24, pp. 424–431.

78 Ethics and biodiversity Sandler, R.L., 2012. The Ethics of Species: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sarkar, S., 2005. Biodiversity and Environmental Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Siipi, H., 2017. ‘Unnatural kinds: Biodiversity and human-modified entities’ in Garson, J., Plutynski, A., & Sarkar, S., (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Biodiversity. New York: Routledge. Steinwall, A., 2015. ‘Naturalness or biodiversity: Negotiating the dilemma of intervention in Swedish protected area management’, Environmental Values, 24, pp. 31–54. von Wright, G.H., 1963. The Varieties of Goodness. London: Routledge. https://www.gif fordlectures.org/books/varieties-goodness/ii-instrumental-and-technical-goodness Williams, B., 1981. Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, B., 1995. ‘Must a concern for the environment be centered on human beings?’ in Making Sense of Humanity and Other Philosophical Papers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 233–240. Williams, B., 2011. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Woods, M., 2017. Rethinking Wilderness. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press.

5

Ethical theories and practical reasoning

In this chapter, I investigate how three moral theories can be employed in reasoning about biodiversity: utilitarianism, duty ethics, and virtue ethics. Admittedly, this outline will sacrifice many details, arguments, and objections. The aim is to provide a link between the prior discussion of the methods and fundamental concepts of moral philosophy and the application of those concepts to biodiversity. Each section adopts roughly the same disposition. First, the background of the ethical theories in question is provided. Many of these theories can be formulated in simple statements, or rules of thumb, or as decision criteria by which to assess the right action to undertake relative to ethical theory. Alternatively, one can call them principles of the right action (Attfield 2018). They all relate to the question of what one ought to do and why and provide ways of reasoning about such issues. Put differently, the right actions are deduced from moral principles assumed to hold over a broad range of issues. While being highly reductive, those statements are primarily used for illustrative purposes. You should keep in mind that these theories have been discussed over decades and, in many cases, centuries. Finally, the principles will be followed by a discussion of some common objections to the ethical theories discussed and possible refutations of those objections. Though my presentations of the theories are necessarily inconclusive and incomplete, I strive to provide fair accounts of them.

Consequentialist approaches You may think of a decision, any sort of decision. When assessing what choice you should make, you may consider the consequences of your possible actions. You consider that one choice, A, will make you, in some rational sense, happier than the other choice, B. The consequences of choice A may be more in line with your preferences than B. Such seemingly easy decision analyses are what characterize utilitarianism. Robin Attfield has described consequentialism, of which utilitarianism is a part, as an ‘ethic for all seasons’, as it ‘is applicable to situations of disaster and of minimal co-operation as well as to ones of near-Utopia, and to the range of cases in between’ (2015: 40).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003110712-5

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Utilitarianism gets its name from utility, which is the measure of moral relevance. For classic utilitarianism, utility was equivalent to the degree of pain and pleasure that followed from an action. If, on balance, an action resulted in greater aggregated levels of pleasure, then it was obligatory. This motivates the principle of utility, formulated by Jeremy Bentham: Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognises this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. (1970: 11)1 Or, as John Stuart Mill more succinctly put the Principle of utility: an action is right or wrong to the extent that it tends to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question.2 Like other ethical theories, the notion of what has intrinsic and nonderivative value is central to motivating the principle of utility. To utilitarianism, happiness had positive intrinsic value, whereas unhappiness had negative intrinsic value (Attfield 2015: 41). The aim for happiness may partly explain the versatility of utilitarianism. As suggested by Bernard Williams, one of the harshest critics of utilitarianism (Smart & Williams 1973), ‘however much people differ, they at least want to be happy, and aiming at as much happiness as possible must surely, whatever else gives way, be a reasonable aim’ (Williams 1993: 83). Utilitarianism provides a common metric and can determine the rightness of actions by empirical calculation (Williams 1993). The strictness of the principle should not be neglected. To Henry Sidgwick, one should adopt ‘the point of view of the universe’ and assess what levels of utility or happiness are the outcomes of one’s actions. Thus, even if an action means great costs to you, it may increase others’ happiness. This has severe and, some would argue, overly demanding implications. Utilitarianism has been evoked to justify the moral standing of non-humans. Even Bentham, one of the earliest proponents of systematic utilitarianism, suggested that a being’s moral standing did not depend on the ability to talk or reason but on the extent to which that being could feel pain. After all, if the extent to which an action results in pain or pleasure is the only variable by which to assess whether an action is right, then all pain and pleasure that an action results in should be included (see Singer (1975) for a highly influential contribution to vegetarianism from a utilitarian perspective). This is often called sentientism, as it is based on the capacity to feel pain and pleasure, which

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merits inclusion (and exclusion) in moral calculus. It should be noted that utilitarianism says little, if anything, about non-sentient beings that cannot feel pleasure or pain. Should a forest rich in biodiversity be logged, that would only matter to the extent to which this action would cause pain or pleasure. If people will find it painful for aesthetic reasons, because livelihoods will be negatively affected, ecosystems are lost, or because animals will lose their habitats and thus be left to live in hardship, then the biodiversity loss of that forest will be morally relevant. But it will not matter in its own right, since the ecosystem is not a sentient being. Robin Attfield has defended ‘biocentric consequentialism’ (2015), which expands the reach of consequentialism to an extent relevant to the case at hand. One shortcoming of utilitarian theories is that the only non-derivative or intrinsic value is pleasure or, more broadly, utility. Everything else is granted instrumental value to further this end. Consequently, the value of a specific act or ecosystem is derivative of the extent to which it contributes to pleasure or utility, which reduces everything else to receptables of positive or negative value (Regan 2004: 205ff.). Attfield’s biocentric consequentialism, however, places the instrumental value of ecosystems in the foreground; he writes that ‘intrinsic value lies in the good or well-being of the bearers of moral standing’, which is an expansion of the classical utilitarian viewpoint, being that ‘positive value lay solely in happiness, and negative intrinsic value solely in unhappiness’ (2015: 41). In a move akin to virtue ethics, he takes such goods to be relative to capacities essential to members of their kind. Thus, the good to be promoted of a bird is to fly and have access to habitats of a certain quality and with certain characteristics, inter alia. Attfield goes on to defend instrumental values, insisting that some entities, including ecosystems, ‘have so great instrumental value, through facilitating the existence and flourishing of whole generations of creatures bearing intrinsic value […] as to be capable of outweighing the value in the lives of even the individual human beings who could be brought into being and located there in their stead’ (2015: 41). Thus, despite being derivative, the total value of an ecosystem can be so great as to equal or possibly outweigh the value of conventional bearers of intrinsic value. As was discussed above, there are good reasons to expand and challenge standard notions of instrumental value (see Baard 2019). Imagine a world in which there is only one piece of art or natural area that is sublimely beautiful. In such a case, that artwork or area could be regarded as identical – or at least quite close – to sublime beauty (Baard 2019). On the other hand, if there is a substantively large set of entities that give rise to satisfaction or pleasure, then those are interchangeable (Baard 2019). This substitutability is also a criticism that can be raised regarding utilitarianism. If a specific entity, A, leads to an increase in measurable happiness of +20, and another entity, B, does the same, then one can remain agnostic about which to preserve. The consequence of this view is that it may allow for the substitutability of an environmental area and a shopping mall, should they generate the same utility levels.

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Attfield suggests that biodiversity is valuable by being conducive to the well-being of individual creatures of many different species (2015: 142). Reducing biodiversity reduces well-being and harms the individual creatures whose moral standing is included in biocentric consequentialism. Drawing on the ecocentrist philosopher Holmes Rolston (2012), Attfield suggests an argument from resources (2015: 144). The argument states that destroying biodiversity and contributing to making species go extinct ‘is comparable to burning a library of volumes that have not even been read’ (Attfield 2015: 144; Rolston 2012: 131). This includes possible medicinal or similar uses of species. Many species go extinct before we even know of them, so we know even less about their roles in preserving ecosystems or their possible utility. This argument has several shortcomings. First, it does little for those species that are not instrumentally valuable; namely, species endemic to small niches and which are neither important to maintaining an ecosystem nor of medicinal or similar value to humans (Rolston 2012: 131). According to estimates, quite a few species are central to upholding ecosystems per se. Usually, ecosystem functioning and resilience increase drastically when only a few species are present, but further increasement peters out on a stable level as additional species join the ecosystem (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017: 65). Second, if it becomes on balance too expensive to preserve a species relative to the expected gain from it (including costs of searching for individuals and extracting compounds that could be of pharmaceutical value, which are both very costly (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017), that would count as an argument for not preserving it. An additional if inverse argument may also require including the potential harms of species extinction and biodiversity preservation. Species extinction may lead to the loss of potential future gains to the instrumental argument, but the loss of ecosystems is harmful in several ways. First, as Attfield suggests, it entails that many morally relevant creatures lose their habitats and are thus harmed. Second, several risks arise from biodiversity loss besides the loss of habitats for morally relevant beings, such as increasing the risk of pandemics, and thus there appears to be strong reasons in favour of avoiding habitat loss – which can lead to forced biodiversity – to prevent future pandemics such as Covid-19.3 Thus, instead of assessing only the potential benefits of biodiversity preservation, one must also include the potential harms in the moral calculus. Much can be said about utilitarianism (Smart & Williams 1973). Several complicating factors emerge when we take a closer look at the simple and seemingly intuitively valid principle of utility. First, what is happiness, and does it not, counter-intuitively, leave out other characteristics that we deem morally relevant? As Bernard Williams puts it, ‘many of the qualities that human beings prize in society and in one another are notably non-utilitarian, both in the cast of mind that they involve and in the actions they are disposed to produce’ (as cited in Smart & Williams 1973: 131). We may cherish qualities like honesty or bravery that do not necessarily lead to increased happiness. There are responses to such rebuttals; one form of utilitarianism comes in the form of preference

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satisfaction, with the idea being that, instead of focusing specifically on happiness or pleasure, one focuses on preferences. Different people may have different preferences, but all are interested in satisfying or maximizing their preferences. But this invites other problems: How does one, in a non-arbitrary manner, exclude satisfaction of those preferences that are morally objectionable, or (say, racist or sexist) or a preference for environmentally damaging activity? Another challenge is posed by what has been called ‘utility monsters’, the people who receive such enormous amounts of utility from their preferences relative to others that the satisfaction of their preferences would have to be sacrificed (Nozick 2013: 41). If one person, X, gets 200 satisfaction points from something that only provides 9 others 10 satisfaction points each, then it is consistent with utilitarianism to allow X to alone consume that product. A third problem is that preferences are adaptive. This means that they are adapted to what are deemed realistic options: preference satisfaction may be obtained despite significantly harsh conditions, making it a rather poor measurement of justice. Lastly, it may not only be sensations that we are after. Philosopher Robert Nozick devised the following thought experiment, called ‘the experience machine’: Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming your life’s experiences? (Nozick 2013: 42) Nozick answers the question of whether one should plug in negatively. First, we want to do certain things, not just have the experience of doing them or the sensation of having done them. Second, we want to be a certain way, to be a certain person. A focus on the satisfaction of preferences or pleasure neglects such possibilities. Furthermore, in what form are desires, pleasures, or preferences to be aggregated? In utilitarianism it is states of affairs rather than individuals that counts (Smart & Williams 1973: 83). This poses a problem. Consider the following two distributions (A and B) and utilities distributed over five actors:

A B

Person 1

Person 2

Person 3

Person 4

Person 5

1 20

1 20

1 20

1 20

97 20

Distribution A has higher aggregated and average values, whereas B seems more in line with egalitarian distributions and hence more fair or equal. One could replace Persons 1–5 with animals, but the example would still stand. Due

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to its narrow focus on aggregated levels, utilitarianism ignores the ‘separateness’ of persons (Williams 1981). Yet, when imagining that persons 1–4 are animals of other species, the acceptability of A over B seems almost trivially to always be the case. Should biocentric egalitarianism be true, then there are good reasons for B. Of course, this would require Person 5 to forfeit the 77 preference points that make the difference. Perhaps Attfield’s notion of biocentric consequentialism has something to it, based as it is on ‘the good or well-being of the bearers of moral standing’ (2015: 41). But this would most likely require a non-arbitrary delineation of what to include in such a utilitarian calculus and making sure that satisfaction of human preferences and desires, above levels of subsistence, are not unconditionally given greater weight. Moreover, it may be difficult to include species in such a calculus, as a species per se does not have desires or preferences. However, the individual members of species can lead better or worse lives, in accordance with what is good for them, and this will most likely include prerequisites such as habitats and ecosystems (Attfield 2015: 41). In conclusion, despite good efforts, it seems that utilitarianism still raises several issues that stem from the derivative value of biodiversity. It would be easier should there be any property or characteristic that gives rise to the intrinsic value of biodiversity. If that were the case, then it would provide direct reasons for biodiversity preservation as such, without taking the route of possible benefits and harms. Many of us may have the intuition that a wrong is committed merely by not granting others direct moral standing, as even humans are reduced by utilitarianism to the degree of well-being or happiness that they possess. A perspective that may grant such a possibility is investigated in the next section.

Duties and rights Many concerns for utilitarianism can be accommodated by one of its most common alternatives. ‘Deontological theory’, or more colloquially, ‘duty ethics’, does not emphasize the happiness-producing or preference-satisfaction aspects of an action. Rather, it is based on a respect for persons, insisting that their welfare cannot be discarded with appeals to aggregated levels of utility. Conjunct with rights, these theories set clear boundaries around individuals and place direct demands on others to respect those boundaries. You may have to perform or refrain from some action because it is a duty to do so, irrespective of how you feel about it and the extent to which that action would produce happiness. Ultimately, such duties are based on others being ends in themselves who give rise to direct moral standing. An action that may harm other people, being ends in themselves, is prohibited unless very specific conditions obtain. There are different ways of formalizing duty ethics. One of the most common is by appealing to the categorical imperative. First formulated by Kant, it comes in different formulations:

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Universality formula: Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law. Humanity formula: Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end but always at the same time as an end. Autonomy formula: The idea of the will of every rational being as a universally legislating will. The categorical imperative set the stage for guiding practical reason and working out possible substantive principles of actions, such as providing reasons for duties. You may recognize the universality formula as akin to the ‘Golden Rule’ inherent in many religions: treat others as you wish they would treat you. A parallel can be drawn between the humanity formula, and the refutation of the ‘mere’ instrumental value-thesis of the preceding chapter. While Kant maintains that one is permitted to use someone as a means, it is wrong to treat them as merely a means (Kerstein 2019). That is, to reduce them to their function. In the preceding chapter I suggested that notions of instrumental values can be nuanced, and not all instrumental values are ‘mere’ instrumental values. By this I suggested to nuance instrumental value depending on factors such as whether an entity having instrumental value is a necessary or sufficient condition, and quantity of other means that it can be substituted for. Kant, in the humanity formula, is not limited to bearers of instrumental value. Quite the opposite, as in his framework it is suggested that another person is foremost an end per se. This is not presupposed in the discussion on biodiversity in Chapter 4. The parallel to Kant would be stronger were it the case that an ecosystem or biodiversity provides us with instrumental value, and also has intrinsic value (i.e., is an end). That would suggest a different kind of ‘mere’ to be refuted. Yet refuting that something has ‘merely’ instrumental value results in increased respect, despite lacking intrinsic value. As an example of the categorical imperative, consider the case of lying to borrow money. Lying to someone would treat them as a means to an end since the lie means that you will get something that you would not have received if you had told the truth. It thus conflicts with the humanity formula. Moreover, should a maxim stating that lying is permissible be regarded as a universal law, profoundly difficult problems would arise. One is that this view entails a contradiction. Should it be the case that everyone is permitted to lie to borrow money, then no one would lend money (Korsgaard 2018: 121). Consequently, it would violate the universality formula. Furthermore, lying as such would reduce the humanity of the liar, as it would stand ‘directly opposed to the natural purposiveness of the speaker’s capacity to communicate his thought, and is thus a renunciation of his personality, and such a speaker is a mere deceptive appearance of a human being, not a human being himself’ (The Metaphysics of Morals, 6: 429, as cited in Williams 2002: 106). To illustrate that the maxim against lying holds irrespective of its relation to benign consequences, here

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is an example from Kant’s ‘On a supposed right to tell lies from benevolent motives’. Imagine that a friend knocks on your door, sweating and telling you that an axe murderer is following him; you respond by hiding your friend upstairs. A few moments later, there is another knock on your door; it is a man with an axe, perhaps the person your friend just told you about. He asks you if you know where your friend is. You know where your friend is, but are you permitted to tell a lie? For Kant you are not permitted to tell a lie, even in this case.4 It is worth bearing in mind the difference with utilitarianism, which would most likely permit lying in this instance on the assumption that it would lead to more benign consequences. The three formulas restrict moral obligations to other humans. They are the bearers of the free will that motivate the universality and autonomy formulas, whereas the humanity formula is restricted to humans for obvious reasons. Yet Kant himself makes use of the humanity formula when discussing prohibitions on cruelty to animals. He states that violent and cruel treatment of animals is […] intimately opposed to a human being’s duty to himself […] for it dulls his shared feeling of their suffering and so weakens and gradually uproots a natural disposition that is very serviceable to morality in one’s relations with other people. (Metaphysics of Morals, 6: 443, as cited in Korsgaard 2018: 101) Kant assumes that if one is cruel in one’s dealings with animals, one risks also becoming cruel to other people. Yet there are no direct moral duties to animals, which many have found unsatisfactory (see Korsgaard (2018) for a defence on animal ethics on Kantian grounds, and Regan (2004)] for animal rights from a deontological approach). An influential account of environmental ethics that is sometimes regarded as Kantian in flavour (Elliot 2001: 187; Svoboda 2012) is Paul W. Taylor’s ‘respect for nature’ (2011). It has been described as ‘ask[ing] us to see all living things as autonomous’, and holding that ‘just as Kantianism enjoins us to respect the rational autonomy of persons, so too a naturalized Kantianism enjoins us to respect the natural autonomy of all living things’ (Elliot 2001: 187). Taylor attempts to establish a framework of rules that merit respect for nature, an attitude with which current exploitative outlooks on nature are incompatible (Taylor 2011: 95). His theory is often labelled biocentric egalitarianism. While it is not as restrictive as animal rights, it is also not as expansive as holistic ethical theories. Stated differently, where animal ethicists either end with sentientism, the capacity to feel pain or pleasure that merits inclusion in a moral calculus (Singer 1975), or animals having welfare interests or being ‘subjects of a life’, meriting consideration in our actions (Regan 2004),5 the biocentric outlook formulated by Taylor is designed to promote respect for nature. Yet, in contrast to ecocentric and holistic environmental theories, Taylor’s biocentrism does not go so far as to ascribe moral status to holistic environmental entities.

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Rather, Taylor’s account merits a respect for nature. This respect is founded on a biocentric outlook that he describes as consisting of four core beliefs (Taylor 2011: 99ff.): (1) The belief that humans are members of the Earth’s community of life in the same sense and on the same terms in which other living things are members of that community. (2) The belief that the human species, along with all other species, are integral elements in a system of interdependence such that the survival of each living thing, along with its chances of faring well or poorly, is determined not only by the physical conditions of its environment but also by its relations to other living things. (3) The belief that all organisms are teleological centres of life in the sense that each is a unique individual pursuing its own good in its own way. (4) The belief that humans are not inherently superior to other living things. These four beliefs provide the foundation for rules regarding what as moral agents we are permitted to do and what we must refrain from doing. They are what motivates the respect for nature. Several of the core beliefs have both empirical and normative content. Thus, belief (1) states an empirical claim regarding community membership, which entails that all members be on the ‘same terms’. The notion of ‘teleological centres of life’ in (3) and the egalitarianism of (4) are two ethical beliefs that are key to Taylor’s biocentric egalitarianism. Earlier chapters have shown that ecocentrist theories appear to be more well supported by ecological science than biocentrist individualist theories. Yet the above shows that biocentrist theories also take note of ecological science, of how human life is intertwined with and reliant upon the continued existence of other species. ‘Teleological life centers’ is the ethical hook on which Taylor hangs his theoretical coat, as was discussed in Chapter 3. An organism is a teleological centre of life when it is ‘striving to preserve itself and realize its good in its own unique way’, its internal functioning as well as its external activities are all goal-oriented, having the constant tendency to maintain the organism’s existence through time and to enable it successfully to perform those biological operations whereby it reproduces its kind and continually adapts to changing environmental events and conditions. (Taylor 2011: 121ff.) Thus, through the realization of its good, an organism is a teleological life centre. It is relevant to ask here how this relates to biodiversity and its components, such as species richness. Tom Regan’s animal rights perspective provides a succinct challenge:

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The rights view is a view about the moral rights of individuals. Species are not individuals, and the rights view does not recognize the moral rights of species to anything, including survival. What is recognized is the prima facie right of individuals not to be harmed. (2004: 359) The individualistic foundations of duty- and rights-based accounts hamper its applicability to collective entities like species or ecosystems, but that makes it even more difficult to apply to a quality, like variation or richness, of such collective entities. This is also a charge that can be levelled against Taylor’s approach. However, there are ways for accounts to strengthen biodiversity, albeit indirectly. If it is the case that individual animals have moral significance, and if habitats are prerequisites for those individual animals, then it is a wrong to diminish or degrade those habitats. Similarly, the animals as such have valid claims and thus rights (Regan 2004: 360). It should be noted that biodiversity preservation is rather a residual consequence of upholding those rights or a prerequisite for upholding them and avoiding habitat destruction. It does not merit concluding that there is any specific relevance of an animal belonging to an endangered species, and this may be a problem. Imagine two animals of similar moral relevance, X and Y, but X belongs to an endangered species while Y belongs to a very common species. Species membership does not add any extra moral significance to individualistic theories. Both X and Y are, everything else equal, granted similar moral significance. However, regarding species membership as a value-adding component could provide a reason to explain why X ought to be given more special treatment relative to Y. Admittedly, that is a weak defence, and value-adding characteristics are at best prima facie, but this view does depart from the egalitarianism of many individualistic perspectives.

Environmental virtue ethics To Bernard Williams, consequentialist theories suffer from a lack of ‘separateness of persons’, which follows from the aggregation of happiness – it is not individual happiness or well-being that counts as morally relevant, but only the aggregated level. Moreover, utilitarianism has been criticized for neglecting the moral relevance of personal relations and being overly demanding in so doing. Duty ethics, for its part, abstracts from the identity of persons, relying instead on universal and categorically valid demands (Williams 1981: 3). Not all approaches rely on the central notion of intrinsic value, or at least not in the same manner as above; namely, that an entity has intrinsic value due to its characteristics or properties. The virtue ethics approach can be traced back to ancient Greek philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and especially Aristotle, and has found its way into environmental ethics. Virtue ethics is more difficult to formalize in a simple statement or criterion of right to determine actions and thus stands in contrast to the systematic efforts

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of the theories described above. To some, this is a strength of virtue ethics, proving instructive in becoming a well-functioning moral subject and not just theoretical, ‘systematic’, or abstract studies of ethics (Melin 2013: 25). Virtue ethics suggests that how a person interacts with the environment is influenced by her attitudes toward it, and it seems to many that a central cause of reckless environmental exploitation is the attitude that nature is merely a resource for satisfying human wants and needs. (Sandler 2007: 1ff.) In virtue ethics, there is a focus on the character of humans. A character is a stable disposition to act in certain ways. We call someone ‘honest’ if we can count on that person telling the truth, just as we call someone ‘generous’ if that person has a disposition to give more than is required by duty. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle describes the following virtues: courage, temperance, generosity, magnificence, magnanimity, mildness, friendliness, truthfulness, wit, shame, justice, prudence, and friendliness (Melin 2013: 98). We may recognize these as desirable character traits in people. To Aristotle, the virtues were means between extremes. Thus, courage is a mean between shameful cowardice and arrogant hubris. In addition to the character virtues, he distinguished between two intellectual virtues: wisdom and prudence (Melin 2013: 31). Whereas wisdom has a more universal character, prudence provides us with guidance in acting virtuously. To do virtuous acts entails acting from the right motive, not only to produce the result of being courageous but also deliberately acting with the intention of being courageous, with knowledge of what is at stake, and with the action stemming from a permanent disposition or habit to act in such a fashion (Melin 2013: 32). In other words, ‘a virtuous person is disposed to desire appropriate things for appropriate reasons, do the right thing for the right reasons, and do so with proper emotions’ (Sandler 2007: 20). The objective of a virtuous action is what Aristotle called eudaimonia which is sometimes translated as ‘happiness’ (Foot 2001; Hursthouse 1999), but it is not happiness in the sense of pleasure, as is the case in hedonistic utilitarianism. Rather, it is a species-specific goodness that is sought. For this reason, eudaimonia is often translated as ‘flourishing’ (Sandler 2007). In contrast to utilitarianism, virtue ethics do not place moral significance on the outcome of an action. If two actions produce the same result, say performing a charitable act, but one does it merely through luck and the other stems from an agent’s firm disposition to act charitably, then it is the latter that is virtuous, despite the two actions generating identical results. The concept of eudaimonia or flourishing directs us to the motivating foundations of virtue ethics. Flourishing is closely bound up with context and what type of being a human is. Indeed, as philosopher Philippa Foot puts it: ‘To flourish is here to instantiate the life form of that species, and to know whether an individual is or is not as it should be, one must know the life form of the

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species’ (2001: 91). Contrast this with another type of species, whether plant or animal. When it is known what form of life a specific tree is, one can determine whether it is in a good or defective state, as ‘an oak with shallow roots and a rhododendron that never flowers are defective’, meaning that they are ‘poor specimens of their kind’ (Sandler 2007: 15). Often, making the evaluative move when it comes to plants and animals concerns their possibilities of self-maintenance (Foot 2001: 31). But according to Foot, this does not entail observing statistical propositions, such as it being the case that most oaks are not hollow or that most rhododendrons flower. Rather, what separates the virtue ethical account is its relation to the teleology of the species (Foot 2001: 33). One can determine the goodness of a member of a species by establishing ‘the fact of the matter about how the parts, processes, emotions, and actions of individuals of a particular species standardly function in the form of life of that species’ (Sandler 2007: 16). Continuing the analogy with oak trees, Foot writes: We are, let us suppose, evaluating the roots of a particular oak tree, saying perhaps that it has good roots because they are as sturdy and deep as an oak’s roots should be. Had its roots been spindly and all near the surface they would have been bad roots; but as it is they are good. Oak trees need to stay upright because, unlike creeping plants, they have no possibility of life on the ground, and they are tall heavy trees. Therefore oaks need to have deep sturdy roots: there is something wrong with them if they do not, and this is how the normative proposition can be derived. (2001: 46) But even if this appears to be the case and putting aside issues of violating the is–ought problem of deriving a prescriptive statement from descriptive premises, we must ask how this can be transferred to humans. After all, our good is almost certainly not restricted to self-maintenance and reproduction. What conditions must be fulfilled for calling someone a good person or human in the way that we can call an oak tree a good oak tree? Aristotle considered humans to be rational and social animals. However, we are not the only social animals, and our sociability is expressed in various degrees and forms that differ in both historical and cultural contexts. Can sociality really be established as a unique trait? In contrast to other animals, we have the unique possibility of reasoning and assessing principles by which to guide our actions. We contemplate alternatives and decide to change things or try new approaches, whereas other animals’ actions are biologically determined (Hursthouse 1999: 220). A virtue ethical decision-making principle could be formulated in the following manner: An action is right if and only if it is what a virtuous agent would characteristically (i.e. acting in character) do in the circumstances. (Hursthouse 1999: 28)

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There have been suggestions of how virtue ethics could incorporate entities specifically relevant to biodiversity. Dale Jamieson suggests virtues that are based not on metaphysical commitments of natural goodness or the good of humanity; rather, when faced with global environmental problems we should try to reduce our contributions to those problems and are more likely to succeed in doing this and living worthwhile lives by developing the right virtues (2014: 186). As for specific ‘green virtues’, Jamieson suggests humility, temperance, mindfulness, and cooperativeness, and the virtue ‘respect for nature’ (Jamieson 2014: 188ff.), an echo of Taylor. There are several forms of respect. One can respect someone as an adversary, something that cannot be assimilated to human practices, or as having a profound aesthetic significance in its overwhelming power (Jamieson 2014: 189). Viewing nature as an adversary was quite common in earlier times when humans were more subjected and vulnerable to the vicissitudes and sheer power of nature. Lastly, something can be respected as a partner in a valuable relationship (Jamieson 2014: 190). This form of respect expresses itself either as describing nature in terms often reserved for more intimate relationships but also through economic language such as ‘natural capital’ or ‘ecosystem services’, as Jamieson puts it (2014). Jamieson cites three reasons to respect nature: prudence, the role that nature plays in our lives, and a concern for psychological wholeness (2014: 190). Thus, respect for nature is motivated by its being in our interest to respect nature and the worry that harming or damaging nature may lead to harm to us. We should note that this is primarily an instrumental reason for respecting nature, but – as was suggested above – such an argument can take off when a more nuanced account of such values is provided. A second reason to respect nature is that nature provides meaning for many people and cultures, from England being ‘a green and pleasant land’ to the cherry orchards in Chekhov’s play of the same name (Jamieson 2014: 191). Despite nature being given obviously different expressions in literature, ranging from the wild nature of Thoreau to more sustained descriptions, it appears that nature may indeed provide meaning, but it is unclear what that meaning is and what its moral relevance might be. The third reason for respecting nature flows from ‘psychological integrity and wholeness’ and the view that ‘respecting the other is central to knowing who we are and to respecting ourselves’ (Jamieson 2014: 191). While this may be true, it seems highly speculative if lacking further empirical evidence regarding respect as such, such as health benefits of recreational activities in nature, which could be connected to instances of respect. Furthermore, like other environmental virtue ethical approaches, Jamieson says very little about biodiversity or species per se. We can assume that biodiversity loss is a form of disrespect for nature. But how? Does it violate an instrumental value? Perhaps, but only to a certain extent and regarding certain species. Does it violate meaning? Possibly, but that would not necessarily be vicious to nature but to other people. Furthermore, it is questionable whether it is the variation or plenitude of species that is meaningful or whether meaning lies in other factors like the sublimity or beauty

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of ecosystems of which species richness may be one component. Lastly, the issue of psychological wholeness may have some traction, but like the second condition, people relate to nature in different ways and find different parts of it meaningful for a variety of reasons that depend on their particular relationship to nature. There have been other attempts to discuss virtues in connection with species extinction. Anders Melin (2013) has investigated which virtues are relevant for species protection. In contrast to Jamieson, this view has the benefit of joining a long tradition of established virtues. Melin suggests that mildness, friendliness, truthfulness, wit, shame, and friendship seem to largely govern our relationships with other human beings. Yet it could be possible that truthfulness is a virtue that is also relevant to our relation to our natural surroundings. Appreciating something usually means reporting and understanding it accurately (Bugbee 1999). Respect for individual beings provides indirect support for species protection (Melin 2013: 100) in ways that are similar to those discussed above in the context of instrumental value. Yet respect for wild animals and plants also concerns knowledge, ‘to give it proper attention by trying to see it clearly and as it really is in its own right, without being too much disturbed by one’s own desires and preferences’ (Melin 2013: 100). Respect for individuals can also expand to reverence for life on earth and for the interdependence of different life forms (Melin 2013: 103ff.). More specifically, Melin identifies four virtues relevant to species protection: prudence, justice, temperance, and courage, in addition to reverence for life on earth. Prudence (phronesis) is an intellectual virtue that is central to practical deliberation. It is distinguished from two other epistemological categories that Aristotle discussed, episteme and techne. Whereas episteme is scientific knowledge or knowledge that concerns that which is eternal and unchanging, techne concerns the ‘know-how’ of a craft (Melin 2013: 104). Prudence, in contrast, is inherently context-dependent. For example, Melin suggests prudence as relevant to decisions such as constructing a highway between two cities: The motor way is expected to lead to increased economic growth in the region, but it will also negatively affect some species of animals and plants. The decision whether to build the motor way or not is highly dependent on our beliefs about what constitutes a good life. If we think that nature has a high immaterial value, such as a high aesthetic or recreational value, we will be less inclined to build the motor way. Moreover, believing that we ought to take species into consideration for their own sake will also affect our decision. (2013: 105) Prudence requires ‘an overall view of what constitutes a good life’; an ethically informed act must aim towards what is good (Melin 2013: 105), and such views can obviously differ. In decision-making, particular normative assumptions are often taken for granted, such as the belief that economic growth is to

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be given prevalence relative other normative beliefs, without providing reasons as to why this is so (Melin 2013: 107). Justice is an additional virtue relevant for species. Whereas Aristotle primarily restricted justice to political justice between free and equal people (Melin 2013: 110), it is possible to extend it to species and biodiversity: retaining levels of biodiversity provides a safeguard for human survival and welfare and is thus relevant for future humans (Melin 2013: 111). However, Melin concedes that justice raises several problematic challenges that defeat the possibility of direct implementation. Aristotle meant the virtue to be primarily restricted to people living in the polis or city-state, and his version of it is ill equipped to deal with pluralism. Yet, even if anthropocentrism is maintained, the interests of future generations are often neglected or heavily discounted in today’s social and economic systems (Melin 2013: 113; see Box 5.1).

BOX 5.1 THE PROBLEM OF FUTURE GENERATIONS Instrumental values, if reasonable, entail that we should preserve biodiversity or species for instrumental reasons. Let us assume that this holds, avoiding complicating factors regarding how one establishes the instrumental values of species and ecosystems.This would require us to preserve biodiversity for instrumental reasons for those who are currently alive. But what about future generations? After all, many thoughts of stewardship and good maintenance of ecosystems and the biosphere are motivated by appeals to the interests of future generations. Consider climate change; continuous reliance on fossil fuels will increase the likelihood of dangerous climate change by raising mean temperatures on a global level. This will have severe effects on future generations. Similarly, combining raising mean temperatures with increased exploitation (which instrumental values permit) is likely to lead to habitat loss. It may not affect those currently living but will have substantial – perhaps lethal – impacts on future generations. The issue of the moral status of members of future generations has proven difficult to define to the discussed ethical theories. Still, the weight we ascribe to future generations’ interests relative to our own or, more specifically, what weight future gains or losses should be given relative to current gains and losses is pivotal. In climate economics, this is often called the ‘social discount rate’ (Jamieson [2014: ch. 4] provides an instructive overview). While perhaps intuitively valid, the discount rate has troubling implications. Even a small discount rate of 5 or 10 percent will, in the long run, place a very low value on future gains and losses, as Derek Parfit has pointed out:‘At a discount rate of 10 percent, effects on people’s welfare

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next year count for more than ten times as much as effects in twenty years.At the lower rate of 5 percent, effects next year count for more than a thousand times as much as effects in 200 years’ (1983). Parfit discusses this issue extensively (1984), asking us to imagine a choice between two policy options,‘conservation’ and ‘depletion’ (Parfit 1984: 361ff.). After two centuries of increases in well-being, depletion will leave people substantially less well-off than the former, although both groups are better off than we are now. Have we wronged someone by choosing depletion? One may say that those existing in depletion are worse off than they would have been if conservation had been chosen. But the people who exist in depletion would not exist at all if conservation were chosen, so we cannot say that they have been wronged, given they would not exist. The reason is that even small differences in circumstances will affect who gets conceived, and the identities of people in the more distant future can very easily be affected by social choices, which will affect what people do, whom they meet, and so forth (Parfit 1984: 363). One possibility for formulating a more intuitively reasonable response to the issue of future gains and benefits is by not assessing the moral status of future generations as such but instead suggesting that it is important to us that some values are upheld and continue into the distant future (Scheffler 2018). We, those people currently alive, already have reasons for caring about future generations, which is evident in our engagement in scientific or artistic activities or in philosophy as an ‘ongoing collaborative process of inquiry’ (Scheffler 2018: 49), and in the sustainment of valuable heritage for our successors. Partly, the value of many of our projects depends on humanity’s surviving and flourishing (Scheffler 2018: 54ff.). Regardless, the issues of temporal discounting and the moral status of the interests of future generations continue to be a point where our intuitions cannot be as easily justified as we may initially think.

Temperance concerns bodily pleasures, and that virtue is transgressed when one goes ‘too far by enjoying that which is despicable or by enjoying too much than which is right to enjoy’ (Melin 2013: 114). Temperance is relevant to species protection to the extent that it concerns our consumption of goods: A prudent person [acting in accordance with temperance] should consider whether the things he or she buys really are necessary in order to live a good life. He or she should resist the temptations of advertisements and commercials that describe a life of consumption as the way to happiness, as

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well as the temptation to increase one’s social status through consumption. (Melin 2013: 114) Temperance would thus not only recommend reducing consumption but also encourage consumption that remains within sustainable limits, such as buying ecological or going vegan, since meat-eating is a factor ‘behind the increase in land use, which leads to species extinction’ (Melin 2013: 115). Lastly, courage is relevant to species protection since ‘it is necessary to make difficult decisions that often conflict with the self-interests of current generations’ like the economic interests of corporations or other groups of people (Melin 2013: 116). In addition, one should not neglect the courage required in some nations to fight for habitat and species protection. It is estimated that 212 environmental activists were killed in 2019 for defending the land or environment.6 Moreover, given the devastating state of affairs for an everincreasing number of species and ecosystems, one needs courage ‘in order not to lose one’s hope despite the over-whelming threats against species’ (Melin 2013: 118). There are some difficulties with virtue ethical approaches in relation to species protection. First, a general criticism of virtue ethics is that it is not always obvious who the virtuous person is and thus whose example one should follow. Second, despite an ambitious effort, Melin on several accounts concedes that Aristotle’s virtues need to be reinterpreted to be made relevant to species protection. This may not be a grave or critical point, as species protection is not something that Aristotle had in mind when working out his virtue ethical account; indeed, it could be a strength of the theory that it can still incorporate species protection as virtuous. In sum, none of the three ethical theories discussed in this chapter – utilitarianism, duty ethics, and virtue ethics – were formulated at a time when species protection was a concern. All of them in different ways are flexible enough to incorporate species protection, but they face varying degrees of challenges when doing so. There are challenges to each theory in general, and more specifically in relation to incorporating biodiversity. This may partly explain the position that is elaborated on in Chapter 5, that moral philosophy is, if not redundant, then partly superfluous to conservation biology. I challenge that proposition and argue for the necessity of clearly stipulating normative viewpoints and premises in conservation. The ethical theories discussed in this chapter, like the concepts and methods discussed in preceding chapters, provide us with tools. They entail that we are not just left to gut responses or unreflective intuitions when it comes to biodiversity and that – when conflicting intuitions are at play – there is no way to settle them. Instead, moral philosophy provides us with reasons to preserve biodiversity and the tools for making such a judgment reasonable. These may not be strong reasons and may, admittedly, often be superseded by other concerns. But they provide a response to sceptics. Moreover, they provide us with much-needed tools in the sixth mass extinction to propel action or,

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alternatively, to assess the extent to which we are blameworthy for not mitigating current extinction rates.

Notes 1 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bentham/#GreHapPri 2 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political/ 3 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02341-1 ‘Why deforestation and extinctions make pandemics more likely’. 4 It is perhaps imaginable that you would respond, ‘He is not far from here’, which does not reveal that he is upstairs.You have not lied but made a deceitful implication, which opens another discussion (Williams 2002: 102). 5 ‘Subject of a life’ merits moral status in one of the most influential animal rights theories. Regan describes subject of a life thusly: ‘individuals are subjects-of-a-life if they have beliefs and desires; perception, memory, and a sense of the future, including their own future; an emotional life together with feelings of pleasure and pain; preferenceand welfare interests; the ability to initiate action in pursuit of their desires and goals; a psychophysical identity over time; and an individual welfare in the sense that their experiential life fares well or ill for them, logically independently of their utility for others and logically independently of their being the object of anyone else’s interests’ (2004: 243). It should be noted that a being that passes the bar of being a subject of a life merits respect for that being, irrespective of whether it has utility for others (such as aesthetic, medicinal, or other instrumental values).This is a substantial difference from sentientism, which Regan spends a lot of time criticizing and from which he pointedly distances his own theory. 6 www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/29/record-212-land-and-environment -activists-killed-last-year

References Attfield, R., 2015. The Ethics of the Global Environment. 2nd edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Attfield, R., 2018. Environmental Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Baard, P., 2019. ‘The goodness of means: Instrumental and relational values, causation, and environmental policies’, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 32, pp. 183–199. doi: 10.1007/s10806-019-09762-7 Bentham, J., 1970. An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. J. H. Burns and H. L. A. Hart. Bugbee, H., 1999 [1958]. The Inward Morning: A Philosophical Exploration in Journal Form. Athens, GA: Georgia University Press. Elliot, R., 2001. ‘Normative ethics’ in Jamieson, D. (ed.) A Companion to Environmental Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 177–191. Foot, P., 2001. Natural Goodness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hursthouse, R., 1999. On Virtue Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jamieson, D., 2014. Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle against Climate Change Failed: and What It Means for Our Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kerstein, S., 2019 ‘Treating persons as means’ in Edward N. Zalta (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Summer 2019 edition. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ sum2019/entries/persons-means/

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Korsgaard, C.M., 2018. Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Melin, A., 2013. Living with Other Beings: A Virtue-oriented Approach to the Ethics of Species Protection. Münster: Lit Verlag. Mill, J.S., https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill-moral-political/ Newman, J., Varner, G., & Linquist, S., 2017. Defending Biodiversity: Environmental Science and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nozick, R., 2013 [1974], Anarchy, State, Utopia. New York: Basic Books. Parfit, D., 1983. ‘Energy policy and the further future: The social discount rate’ in MacLean, D., & Brown, P.G. (eds.) Energy and the Future. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 31–37. Parfit, D., 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Regan, T., 2004 [1983]. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press. Rolston, H., 2012. A New Environmental Ethics: The Next Millennium for Life on Earth. London: Routledge. Sandler, R.L., 2007. Character and Environment: A Virtue-oriented Approach to Environmental Ethics. New York: Columbia University Press. Scheffler, S., 2018. Why Worry about Future Generations? Oxford: Oxford University Press. Singer, P., 1975. Animal Liberation. New York: HarperCollins. Smart, J.J., & Williams, B., 1973. Utilitarianism: For and Against. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Svoboda, T., 2012. ‘Duties regarding nature: A Kantian approach to environmental ethics’ in Kant Yearbook 4, pp. 143–163. DOI: 10.1313/kantyb.2012.143 Taylor, P.W., 2011 [1986]. Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics. 25th anniversary edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Williams, B., 1981. Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, B., 1993. Morality: An Introduction to Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, B., 2002. Truth and Truthfulness. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Part III

Recent developments Relations, rights, and science

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Recent developments in conservation biology Ethics through the lens of conservation biology

In this part I will reverse the focus, and rather than focusing on ethics from the perspective of conservation, I will focus on conservation from the viewpoint of moral philosophy. This includes assessing recent and current discussions with a normative focus that are consistent with the aims of conservation policy – to reduce biodiversity loss. In this and the following chapters I will discuss such proposals as updated normative postulates, relational values, rights of nature, and conservation science, and see what value judgments underlie such reasoning, and whether they are consistent with what we take to be robust ethical principles. This approach is coherent with the methodological approach discussed in Chapter 3. Admittedly, much has changed since Soulé’s 1985 article, and conservation science has evolved in countless ways. Judging from increasing rates of species extinction, however, conservation policies – or rather, their implementation – do not seem to have caught up. Perhaps ethics is lagging behind, being too scholastic and distant to provide the practical guidance that it intends or to provide an impetus to action? Perhaps the normative postulates developed by Soulé were inadequate from the very beginning. After all, should it be the case that biodiversity, understood as species richness or plenitude of life, has intrinsic value, the mere fact that one million species are assessed to be on the brink of extinction due to human influence (IPBES 2019) would signal a moral error of great magnitude if intrinsic value merits protection and conservation. In this chapter, I discuss two recent proposals relevant for normative premises of biodiversity conservation. First, there are updated versions of Soulé’s influential postulates, which however show much to be desired when it comes to substantive ethical content. Second, there are some who directly reject the relevance of ethics, opting instead for inclusive conservation. I argue that both attempts displace and conceal ethical positions that ought to be brought to the forefront. Such suggestions are based on a view of what ought to be done but do not offer firm arguments for their position. This is highly troublesome because it does little to convince sceptics of the need for conservation.

Ethical parsimony I begin with a discussion of a proposal to update the postulates of conservation biology. It is noted that such postulates lack normative content, which DOI: 10.4324/9781003110712-6

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provokes the question of the possible redundancy of moral philosophy to conservation biology (see Baard & Ahteensuu 2019). However, whether conservation biology can do without moral philosophy is a question worth asking. The position1 can be motivated in different ways. It seems reasonable that as conservation science evolves, the leading postulates should evolve to reflect the most recent developments. As stated, I look into some suggestions in subsequent chapters that preclude moral philosophy per se, instead basing the normative reasons for conservation policy on relational values (Chapter 7), legislation and legal rights (Chapter 8), and a firm distinction between facts and values (Chapter 9). Here, however, I focus on the first, critical, step of rejecting or at the very least challenging the relevance of ethical reasoning to conservation science. If the same prescriptive conclusions can be reached without ethical reasoning, then it ought to be reduced for reasons of parsimony. But first let us be clear on what parsimony entails. The issue of redundancy or indifference concerns the contribution that moral philosophy can make. If it is redundant then it should be eliminated from conservation for reasons of parsimony; that is, it carries no extra weight and provides little benefit. In the worst case, it may only complicate things. That something is redundant or indifferent means, in this context, that it is not needed, and that the same result or conclusion can be obtained without it. Stated differently, the same judgment can be made reasonable without implementing to or relying on the concepts and theories from environmental ethics. Parsimony may also be a factor when determining which out of several ethical theories are more appropriate to a specific prescriptive conclusion. To illustrate parsimony, consider the difference between holistic ecocentric and individualistic biocentric perspectives to explain biodiversity. While a holistic perspective can explain why species carry moral weight, it cannot directly explain the moral status of species variation; it needs to add elements such as ‘biodiversity is good for ecosystems’ and ‘ecosystems have moral status’. But ecocentric theories would then have to explain how to cope with conflicts between holistic concerns and the neglect of individual interests and moral status of individual creatures that will follow. For this, it needs to add additional components and principles. Compare this with individualistic biocentric arguments. Such arguments can work from the opposite end. They start with the moral status of individual creatures and then add species membership and variation as a value-adding component that provides pro tanto reasons. Such reasons can be overridden. Thus, the two theories reach the same conclusion regarding biodiversity, but the ecocentric theories will have added many more elements. Given that the same conclusion can be reached by biocentric theories using fewer elements, such theories are preferable for reasons of parsimony (Baard 2021). The above example assumes that simplicity has a function in ethical reasoning. What is often referred to as lex parsimoniae or more popularly as ‘Occam’s razor’ is a rule of thumb or principle in scientific explanations. Most briefly, it can be summarized ‘that it is better (i.e. rationally preferable) to explain

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phenomena by making as few assumptions as possible’ (Regan 2004: 7), or that ‘it is futile to do with more what can be done with fewer’ (Sober 2015: 5). While the extent to which this principle is applicable to ethical reasoning is not obvious, there are examples that arguably make the principle relevant to ethical reasoning as a rule of thumb when considered with other theoretical virtues, such as consistency, coherency, scope, and generality (Baard 2021; Tardiff 1996). Ethical parsimony concerns the number of normative or axiological concepts, including principles, required to make a judgment reasonable to adopt, which includes measures to avoid moral conflicts (Baard 2021). Perhaps, though, we do not need to be informed by moral philosophy and the conceptual distinctions on which environmental ethicists have dedicated so much work. Conservation biology already seems to have objectives, and biodiversity loss is incompatible with those objectives. If that holds, then it is the case that what can be reached by the tools and methods of environmental ethics can be reached by conservation on its own. Consequently, for reasons of parsimony, those tools and methods should be eliminated. There may be tools that can fill the same function as ethics. As Chapter 7 shows us, relational values discard the crucial distinction between intrinsic and instrumental values, whereas legal rights omit moral rights, as is discussed in Chapter 8. Chapter 9 primarily addresses the value-neutrality of conservation science. All use different accounts for assessing the reasons for biodiversity conservation that make little explicit appeal to ethics. The implications of accepting the indifference of ethics are enormous. As is noted above, Chapters 7–9 propose alternatives that do not require the tools and methods of moral philosophy discussed in Chapters 3–5, but those alternatives replace normative premises with other means: relational values, legal rights, and conservation science, respectively. To that extent, they preserve foundations for normative premises in conservation policies and decisions. As will become evident, I argue that they are unsuccessful. Since the remainder of this chapter addresses two suggestions for the redundancy or indifference of ethics in more detail and subsequent chapters analyse some specific proposals, in the rest of this subsection I only mention a few of the general costs. First, there is the question of foundations. Chapters 3–5 discussed moral philosophy, which is defined there as providing tools and methods for the systematic analysis and critical scrutiny of reasons and concepts used in practical reasoning pertaining to what to do. Such concepts include values and goodness. Should we fully refute such foundations, it would leave conservation, as a practical discipline, in a sort of normative freefall. There would be no way of sifting through different evaluative statements regarding what ought to be done because there would be no tools or methods of assessing what reasons count as legitimate or justified. All normative propositions would have equal validity. They would not refer to anything else but at best to an attitude of the speaker who expresses a judgment.2 Consistent with this view is that there is no way of offering assessments of practical reasons that are anywhere near as robust as factual statements supported by empirical evidence. Yet, even if that is the case,

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it does not merit concluding that the sole option is that there are no manners of assessing the validity of normative statements in any way. Without any foundation to provide robust reasons that hold up to critical scrutiny, there is little possibility of convincing sceptics or adversaries. If one speaker states that ‘biodiversity should be preserved’ and another that ‘biodiversity should not be preserved’, then one has no way of settling the dispute. They are merely contradictory statements based on opposing judgments regarding the subject of biodiversity preservation. Without dwelling too long on the domains of meta-ethics and moral disagreements, a few observations that could have practical repercussions – depending on how we regard them – must be made. If it is the case that the two statements are merely contradictory, then in a practical decision-making situation one would have to find a way of making a decision regardless of the contradictory statements. Assuming that a decision concerns conservation, neither the decision to conserve biodiversity nor the decision to not conserve biodiversity would suffice. Arguably, there are methods of multi-criteria decision-making that could invite different trade-offs, which would facilitate appeasing either party, assuming that biodiversity being conserved or not conserved is not the only preference they have or the only preference on which they differ. But if they are two contradictory judgments, there is a moral disagreement that is not always possible to solve by trade-offs. How does one determine that at least one of the contradictory normative propositions is erroneous? In practice, two opposing sides on a conservation policy often will not settle for stating that they have different preferences regarding the value of nature and whether it should be conserved. Rather, they will likely also state that their view is the correct one, the view that should be adopted, and that there are good reasons for making that judgment. The sections below focus on current discussions in conservation biology, but it is worth keeping the above in mind. Can one really do without systematic and robust ethical reasoning, and would one be willing to take on the theoretical and practical costs of doing that? Ethical parsimony is one aspect, but would only permit the exclusion of tools from moral philosophy if there are other means sufficient for reaching the same judgments with similar strength by utilising fewer elements. Given that conservation deals with and supports policies and decisions, accepting the redundancy position and its ensuing normative freefall would have practical repercussions.

Updated postulates for conservation science Soulé (1985) considered conservation science a ‘crisis discipline’, by which he meant that, like medicine, conservation researchers must often act in instances of urgency and with incomplete knowledge. But, as Kareiva and Marvier (2012) observe, medicine has undergone substantial changes since 1985. It has undergone a ‘revolution’, as practitioners rely on ‘systematically accumulated evidence and meta-analyses, rather than personal experiences or word of

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mouth’ (Kareiva & Marvier 2012: 962). One may be curious as to how Kareiva and Marvier regard the medical professions of 1985 or whether they refer to some prior form of medicine in which it was based on the practitioners’ personal experience or word of mouth, which would be troublesome to say the least. Regardless of whether Kareiva and Marvier’s statement regarding the medical sciences is true, it is an argument by analogy, which does not necessarily state anything about conservation science, even if it were of medicine. But conservation science has undergone changes, some of which are quite dramatic. The use of ‘big data’ was unavailable in 1985 (and has evolved since 2012, when Kareiva and Marvier published their article), and biodiversity monitoring relies on aggregating vast amounts of data provided by millions of people, including laypeople, often motivated by concerns (Toepfer 2019: 343ff). The models it uses have been refined and reached new levels of sophistication. Ecological models of ecosystems as systems of energy flows leading to trophic structures have been, if not abandoned, at the very least challenged by empirical confirmation. Ecosystems are not static but in constant flux. The predictive and orderly development of plant communities and ecosystems was an early part of ecology (Woods 2017: 157). However, a nonequilibrium view has replaced that old equilibrium view of ecosystems, from which it follows that ‘ecologists’ ability to make successful predictions about determinate events remains questionable’ (Woods 2017: 160–161). However, community models of ecology still exist that regard communities as ‘self-regulating feedback systems of organisms, populations, and species’ (Woods 2017: 163) that merit mathematical modelling. With sophisticated ecological theories, mathematical methods, and big data, it may be possible to merit prediction. But these are three significant conditions to fulfil, and it is likely that some uncertainty will remain. To reflect the changes in both conservation science and in the global context, Kareiva and Marvier suggest a new, updated set of postulates to guide conservation science (2012: 965ff.) (see Table 6.1). That Kareiva and Marvier include normative postulates may already seem sufficient grounds to reject the position that ethics is irrelevant to conservation biology, but that would be premature. If we look more closely at the content of the normative postulates, they appear to provide quite minimal ethical reasons. First, the notion that conservation must occur within human-altered landscapes follows from the first functional postulates. It is not necessarily a ‘must’ in the sense of a prescriptive conclusion relying on normative premises; rather, it is a ‘must’ that holds that – given that there is no pristine nature – conservation, to the extent that it will occur, can only occur within humanaltered landscapes. This is a matter of practical necessity; it should be noted that this appeal to necessity follows from the functional postulates that Kareiva and Marvier stipulate, but it may be more controversial in relation to the central role that concepts such as ‘natural’ and axiological categories such as ‘natural value’ play in conservation biology. However, as was suggested in Chapter 4, there may be good reasons to weaken the most rigid appeals to natural values.

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Normative

‘Pristine’ nature, untouched by human influences, does not exist. The fate of nature and that of people are deeply intertwined. Nature can be surprisingly resilient, even if it is often portrayed as fragile. Human communities can avoid ‘the tragedy of the commons’. The ‘flat world’ means that local conservation efforts are deeply connected to global forces. Conservation must occur within human-altered landscapes. Conservation will be a durable success only if people support conservation goals. Conservationists must work with corporations. Conservation must not infringe on human rights and must embrace principles of fairness and gender equity.

The second normative postulate is instrumentally strategic to the extent that it says that if people support conservation goals, then conservation can enjoy lasting success. But this merely suggests a necessary condition for such success; it does not state whether durable conservation success is something that ought to be aspired to (and why, is it because of future generations, or other species, and so forth), and in that regard it differs from normative premises in ethical reasoning and the normative postulates stipulated by Soulé (1985), which in addition to the intrinsic value of biotic diversity also stated that diversity of organisms, ecological complexity, and evolution were all good. This goodness, if true, provides ethical reasons rather than strategic reasons for preserving biodiversity. This means that in contrast to Kareiva and Marvier, Soulé provides reasons for why conservation goals should be established, whereas Kareiva and Marvier state how they are more likely to be achieved. Similar points as were raised against the second normative postulate could also be directed at the third; namely, that it is instrumentally strategic by specifying the necessary conditions for conservation success. Inclusion of corporations is motivated with reference to the role that corporations play in much of what happens to lands and waters through the resources used and waste produced by corporate activities (Kareiva & Marvier 2012: 967). It is due to their central instrumental role that corporations are to be included for successful conservation. But this imperative is motivated not by ethical reasons, but rather with reference to instrumental reasons. That is, that conservation will more likely be more efficient, or better, should corporations be involved. The fourth normative postulate may be granted some normative content in its appeal to human rights. However, if the normative premise that warrants such a postulate is that ‘one ought to follow human rights’, that seems

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fairly uncontroversial. Moreover, Kareiva and Marvier do not state that conservation ought to be conducted as a means of ensuring human rights, and a healthy environment being a prerequisite for well-being for both humans and non-humans, but rather that conservation must respect human rights and refrain from pushing people off lands and hunting grounds in the name of conservation (Kareiva & Marvier 2012: 967). This, to me, seems the very minimum requirement. Should someone give greater moral weight to conserving an ecosystem than respecting human rights, that agent would have to provide rather convincing reasons for such a prioritization. This does not imply that all human interests or all the content of human rights are to be given unconditional and necessary precedence over conservation efforts. We would not likely approve of the ‘liberty’ in the ‘right to liberty’ as being unconditional in the sense of such a right allowing running roughshod on the environment. An alternative and more substantial approach to the fourth normative postulate involves evoking environmental human rights (Oksanen, Dodsworth, & O’Doherty 2017). Kareiva and Marvier make other proposals that are not ranked as postulates; in relation to the intrinsic (or inherent) value that was such a central normative postulate for Soulé (see Chapter 2), they write the following: Conservation as Soulé framed it was all about protecting biodiversity because species have inherent value. We do not wish to undermine the ethical motivations for conservation action. We argue that nature also merits conservation for very practical and more self-centered reasons concerning what nature and healthy ecosystems provide to humanity. (2012: 965) This provides the foundation for instrumental and relational values. It would indeed seem conscientious to have a more inclusive approach to conservation. Kareiva and Marvier conclude that they are advocating conservation for rather than from people (2012: 968). That is, rather than conservation in the sense of ‘absence from human influence’ (recall the conservation paradox in Box 4.1), it is conservation that is consistent with people and with people’s interests. Kareiva and Marvier do not propose that moral philosophy is redundant. Rather, what we end up with is a mix of normative postulates devoid of substantive ethical content and a highly anthropocentric perspective on conservation. Their inclusion of ecosystem functions and the need of conservation for people, as well as recognizing the very practical and self-centred bases of conservation, sits quite well with anthropocentric perspectives but is inconsistent with non-anthropocentric perspectives. Despite the apparent recognition of the inherent values of species in their reference to Soulé, one may wonder whether they realize the potential conflicts between anthropocentric and nonanthropocentric perspectives and the recommendations that follow from those viewpoints.

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Despite the concerns expressed above, I agree with Kareiva and Marvier that there are good, human-centred instrumental reasons that count in favour of conservation. As I have argued above, a more nuanced view of instrumental values may work to strengthen those reasons (Baard 2019). As they write, ‘it is not just biodiversity that is at risk’ due to reduced ecosystem functions; ‘it is also human health and happiness’ (Kareiva & Marvier 2012: 965). This is consistent with my rejection of the claim that biodiversity per se has intrinsic value, but could provide different forms of instrumental values.

Calls for inclusive conservation While Kareiva and Marvier present normative postulates devoid of substantive ethical content, which suggests support of the position that conservation biology can fulfil the same objectives of ethical reasons without ethical theories or concepts but does not explicitly state that moral philosophy is redundant – indeed, that they present what they take to be normative postulates suggests that they have some confidence in the relevance of ethics – there are others whose rejection of the relevance of moral philosophy is both more explicit and more vitriolic. Tallis and Lubchenco (2014) circulated a petition calling for inclusive conservation and attracted some 238 co-signatories at that time. While inclusive conservation has many merits, their motivation appears to have been explicitly founded on the shortcomings of environmental ethics. They write that there is an acrimonious debate between advocates for intrinsic value on the one hand and instrumental value on the other. While the former consider ‘partnering with business’ to be selling out, the latter are open to such cooperation (Tallis & Lubchenco 2014: 27). It is unclear why partnering with business plays such a central role for them, as it would not be unimaginable that advocates for intrinsic value would side with businesses that are consistent with respect for intrinsic value (as has indeed been the case, such as the Sustainable Markets’ Initiative supporting a ‘Terra Carta’, which includes recognizing rights of nature),3 and it would not be unimaginable that proponents of instrumental values would resist such cooperation should it be the case that business does not reflect the true instrumental value, or exclude some of the instrumental value (such as the importance of an ecosystem to other species), or have an unnuanced view of instrumental value (challenged in Chapter 4). Surely, it seems as if Tallis and Lubchenco mean that advocates of anthropocentric positions which only permit the instrumental value of nature are more likely to be consistent with business interests than non-anthropocentric positions that acknowledge intrinsic values. The potential differences in strategies that the advocates of the different sides take with regard to business notwithstanding, Tallis and Lubchenco suggest that what started as a healthy debate has now ‘descended into vitriolic, personal battles in universities, conferences, research stations, conservation organizations, and even the media’, and that ‘this situation is stifling productive discourse, inhibiting funding and halting progress’ (2014: 27). What started with the innocuous question, ‘why do we conserve nature’ (Tallis & Lubchenco

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2014: 27), has gone down this path of unproductive dialogue. In its stead, Tallis and Lubchenco propose inclusive discussion, a conservation ethics that ‘recognizes and accepts all values of nature, from intrinsic to instrumental’ (Tallis & Lubchenco 2014: 27). There is much to be said in favour of Tallis and Lubchenco’s proposal. I agree that there are good reasons for inclusion and considering many different forms of values, but for reasons I discuss at more length below, I do not believe that inclusion merits granting equal validity to all perspectives. Furthermore, I believe that Tallis and Lubchenco are generally wrong in their dismissal of ethical discussions. It is somewhat unclear exactly to whom (environmental philosophers or conservation biologists or management) the 2014 petition either objects or lends its support beyond its advocation of inclusiveness. However, it is obvious that the petition considers the distinction between instrumental and intrinsic values to serve no more than a rhetorical purpose. The effect of agreeing with them on that point would be to render redundant one of the most central topics of environmental ethics (Baard & Ahteensuu 2019). There are several reasons to be wary of their arguments. First, their very basic question, ‘why do we conserve nature?’, is not normative. One does not need to assess the reasons for accepting or rejecting intrinsic values of nature to assess the responses provided to this question. Rather, it is a question that can be empirically investigated. A normative question would be ‘why should we conserve nature?’ Given the discussion that follows this preamble, it seems that it is the normative question that Tallis and Lubchenco think ought to be given a newly inclusive conservation ethic and that this is where advocates of different axiological positions go amiss. Second, they suggest a strategic use of the different axiological positions, proposing that intrinsic and instrumental values need not be in eternal opposition; rather, trade-offs may be required. But it is unclear how one would trade an entity’s intrinsic value with instrumental value. Consider the prohibition against infringing someone’s right for instrumental reasons. Furthermore, one could use arguments on both intrinsic values and instrumental values strategically. That is, we can use those values that best ‘align with the values of the audiences that we need to engage’ (Tallis & Lubchenco 2014: 28). This reduces moral philosophy to rhetoric and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the core of moral philosophy’s nature. The petition has also evoked several reactions, many of which reiterate the view that intrinsic value is too important a category to be abandoned or used as a rhetorical device when it is convenient or likely to compel a specific audience to action (Washington et al. 2018; Batavia & Nelson 2017; Baard & Ahteensuu 2019). A petition of commitment to ecocentrism was launched in 2018 and had attracted 1026 signatories by May 2021, while Tallis and Lubchenco’s petition has generated 975 signatories since 2014 (May 2021).4 Such a ‘competition of signatories’ says little about whether there are good or bad reasons to accept intrinsic values, unless one assumes that ethical reasons can be provided by statistical surveys. But even if that were the case, reasons would have to be provided as to why one should find

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prescriptive conclusions from the results of surveys. This merely displaces ethical reasons; it does not omit them. Batavia and Nelson (2017) provide three kinds of reasons for why intrinsic values cannot be regarded in this manner and why the category ought to be kept central to conservation. First, there are logical reasons. Batavia and Nelson suggest that no normative or prescriptive conclusion is deducible from merely empirical or descriptive premises. This is consistent with the ‘naturalistic fallacy’ (see Box 2.2), which states that ethical arguments are different in kind from factual ones and that ethical propositions are not deducible from factual ones or definable through appeals to fact (Moore 2004[1903]; Frankena 1967; Baard & Ahteensuu 2019). Rather, the conclusion that we should protect nature is derived from the premise that there is something fundamentally good that needs protecting (Batavia & Nelson 2017: 372). To show the need for normative premises, Batavia and Nelson suggest arguments such as: P1. Biodiversity is good as an end in itself. P2. We should protect things that are good as ends in themselves. C. Therefore, we should protect biodiversity. The need for ethical premises is prevalent even when relying on ecosystem services as a premise to motivate conservation. The reason is that such an argument would perhaps displace the issue of a fundamental good to human wellbeing, but it would not omit the need for a premise containing a judgment regarding something being a fundamental good. More specifically, Batavia and Nelson suggest that the following argument holds (2017: 372): P1. We should protect things that are essential to human wellbeing. P2. Ecosystem services are essential to human wellbeing. C. Therefore, we should protect ecosystem services. But this holds only if we add the additional argument that human well-being is a fundamental good that ought to be protected: P1. Human wellbeing is good as an end in itself. P2. We should protect things that are good as ends in themselves. C. Therefore, we should protect human wellbeing. Even in the case of relying on ecosystem services to motivate conservation, we have not done away with the need for normative premises. They are still required to draw a prescriptive conclusion. This is similar to how I addressed intrinsic values in Chapter 3, where any chain of instrumental or extrinsic values is conducive to something having intrinsic or fundamental value. Second and third, Batavia and Nelson suggest that there are practical reasons for retaining the category of intrinsic value because it motivates conservationists and that there are ethical reasons to the extent that we are moral beings.

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Summary: Relying on concealed normative premises Just as Hume noticed an imperceptible move from ‘is’ to ‘ought’ without any reasons provided that would provide confidence in the ‘ought’, so too do Tallis and Lubchenco move from a description they take to be the current situation of ethics in conservation and transform it into an inclusive ‘should’. I am not suggesting that such an inclusive ‘should’ is erroneous but merely that it does not follow from the supposed state in which environmental ethics finds itself. Soulé seems to have been more perceptive of that distinction than Kareiva and Marvier, since they, as stated above, focus on how to attain established conservation goals, whereas Soulé provided normative reasons for those very goals. Indeed, their suggestion of inclusive ethics, an idea with which I am largely sympathetic, calls for reasons that count in favour of such a suggestion. It may be that a conservation ethic that is inclusive provides better respect for the environment, and that one should respect the environment, or that inclusion provides better knowledge, such as local ecological knowledge, and the best knowledge should inform conservation. Alternatively, inclusion may be warranted for other reasons, such as its being the case that inclusion makes conservation decisions and policies politically legitimate, and conservation decisions and policies should be politically legitimate. We are not provided with such premises. Instead, we are left with a dissatisfaction that philosophers, as advocates of different axiological positions, reach different conclusions. But it is unlikely that normative premises will go away since they provide the reasons for why biodiversity ought to be conserved and what means and trade-offs have to be considered in such conservation. In the worst case, the viewpoints may result in concealed normative premises (Baard & Ahteensuu 2019) that remain unscrutinized.

Notes 1 In Baard and Ahteensuu (2019), we formulated what we called the redundancy position in the following manner:‘Environmental ethical discussions have little positive contribution to make to conservation, and are therefore redundant’. The position was there, as well as here, refuted. 2 This is akin to what in meta-ethics is often called ‘emotivism’. Put very briefly, the position states that normative statements only express attitudes. Sometimes called the ‘boohurrah’ theory, it suggests that ethical sentences only express the speaker’s emotional attitudes rather than propositions that can be provided with a more solid foundation to assess their validity. Thus, someone stating ‘murder is wrong’ is merely expressing ‘boo to murder’. In some versions, this view provides a ground for practical reasoning to the extent that ethical sentences are prescriptive. ‘Murder is wrong’ expresses a desire that it ought to be prohibited and avoided, for instance. For an introductory discussion, see Miller (2003). 3 https://www.sustainable-markets.org/terra-carta/ 4 www.ecologicalcitizen.net/statement-of-ecocentrism.php; https://blog.nature.org/s cience/diversity-conservation-petition/

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References Baard, P., 2019. ‘The goodness of means: Instrumental and relational values, causation, and environmental policies’, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 32, pp. 183–199. doi: 10.1007/s10806-019-09762-7 Baard, P., 2021. ‘Biocentric individualism and biodiversity conservation: An argument from parsimony’, Environmental Values. doi: 10.3197/096327120X15752810324048, pp. 93-110. Baard, P. & Ahteensuu, M., 2019. ‘Ethics in conservation’, Journal for Nature Conservation, 52. doi: 10.1016/j.jnc.2019.125737, pp. 1-6. Batavia, C. & Nelson, M.P. 2017. For goodness sake! What is intrinsic value and why should we care? Biological Conservation, 209, pp. 366–376. Frankena, W.F., 1967. ‘The naturalistic fallacy’ in Foot, P. (ed.), Theories of Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 50–63. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), 2019. The global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services. IPBES Report: https://ipbes.net/sites/default/files/inline/files/ipbes_global_assessment_ report_summary_for_policymakers.pdf (26 March 2021). Kareiva, P. & Marvier, M., 2012. ‘What is conservation science?’, BioScience, 62, pp. 962– 969. doi:10.1525/bio.2012.62.11.5 Miller, A., 2003. An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Moore, G.E., 2004 [1903]. Principia Ethica. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc. Oksanen, M., Dodsworth, A., & O’Doherty, S., (eds.) 2017. Environmental Human Rights: A Political Theory Perspective, London: Routledge. Regan, T., 2004 [1983]. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press. Sober, M., 2015. Ockham’s Razors: A User’s Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Soulé, M., 1985. ‘What is conservation biology’, BioScience, 35, pp. 727–734. Tallis, H. & Lubchenco, J., 2014. ‘A call for inclusive conservation’, Nature, 515, pp. 27–28. Tardiff, A., 1996. ‘Simplifying the case for vegetarianism’, Social Theory and Practice, 22, pp. 299–314. Toepfer, G., 2019. ‘On the impossibility and dispensability of defining “biodiversity”’, in Casetta et al. (eds.), From Assessing to Conserving Biodiversity, History, philosophy and theory of life science 24, Cham: Springer Nature. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-10991-2_16 Washington, H., et al. 2018. Statement of commitment to ecocentrism. https://www.eco logicalcitizen.net/statement-of-ecocentrism.php Woods, M., 2017. Rethinking Wilderness. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press.

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Relational values and IPBES nature’s contribution to people

The distinction between intrinsic and instrumental values may be too narrow to fully capture our relationships to nature. Consider the following example to tease out the difference between meaningful relations and instrumental value: Suppose that Marianne lives on the edge of a wood. For her, the wood is saturated with meaning. It is where she played as a girl; it is where she used to stroll on Sunday afternoons with the man who is now her husband; it is where the two of them now take their daughter Catherine to hunt for pine cones and other treasures. She enjoys a meaningful relationship with the place. But now suppose that, unbeknownst to them, Marianne and her family receive fresh water from a spring in the mountains high above their home. Though Marianne is causally related to the spring, she need not have a meaningful relationship with it. In fact, she might be unaware that it even exists. (James 2020: 2) The spring has instrumental value to Marianne by providing fresh water. But what form of value do the woods, which provide meaning, have? They may have subjective intrinsic value or something similar (see Chapter 3), but philosophical theories may fail to fully recognize the different relations that we may have to nature, in addition to the moral significance of such relations. At the very worst, philosophy may exclude or deem ‘wrong’ certain relations and valuations of nature despite their benefitting nature conservation. A concept that is inclusive and permitting of many different forms of value is welcome in that regard. But without an external point by which to assess reasonableness, there is a fine line between the inclusive project of recognizing different ways to relate to and value nature and the risk of granting equal validity to those who regard nature as only being valuable for its narrow anthropocentric functions. I argue that moral philosophy offers such a vantage point in its assessment of the soundness of justifications, because the risk is that if one bases the moral significance of biodiversity on the relations that moral agents have to biodiversity, assuming that it is meaningful to talk of relations to a quality such as ‘variation’ (as we see below, actors such as IPBES seem to make such a connection), DOI: 10.4324/9781003110712-7

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then there is no way to make a convincing argument for a specific position. In effect, this may mean that moral philosophy is redundant. Yet the reliance on relational values does have some credibility. Given the difficulties of assessing justification and establishing what value specific environmental entities have, do we really need moral philosophy? If the truth of normative statements cannot be verified, then how can one even begin to distinguish a proper or robust normative judgment from one that is not? If there are no such criteria, all judgments become equally reasonable, or at least that is one possibility, which carries the risk of making moral philosophy redundant. Relational values would support the claim that what we ought to pay heed to is people’s relations to nature: Conservation policies and decisions ought to cohere with and reflect peoples’ relations to nature Although this is a normative principle, it is more generic than the categories of environmental ethics and does not base conservation practices on statements regarding the value of ecosystems or species or something of the sort. It may be a truism that people have different relations to nature. To some, nature serves as a backdrop; they may acknowledge that it provides us with beneficial ecosystem services but otherwise pay little regard to nature. To others, nature is a central prerequisite for culture and history that has a significance beyond any ecosystem services it provides; it serves as a foundation for identity. To still others, nature provides an escape, a disruption of urban life. To all of us, it provides the preconditions for life, regardless of our sentiments, but an ethical framework or conservation policy that does not recognize the moral importance and plurality of our relationships to nature seems insufficient. Moreover, as some proponents of relational values have suggested, ‘few people make personal choices based only on how things possess inherent worth or satisfy their preferences (intrinsic and instrumental values, respectively)’; furthermore, and more importantly, ‘the usual framings of instrumental and intrinsic values fail to resonate with many lay-people and decision-makers’ (Chan et al. 2016: 1462–1463). Rather, people tend to think in terms of relationships and what is appropriate in each relationship (Chan et al. 2016). If this is the case, then what is the purpose of a philosopher’s claim that something has or does not have intrinsic value or something similar? This chapter has two aims, the first of which is to describe the position, which has two main expressions: on the one hand, ‘relational values’, and on the other, what is called ‘nature’s contribution to people’. Both base the loci of value on humans but go beyond the instrumental value of ecosystem services, even as they are not limited to identifying intrinsic values. Second, the chapter aims to provide a critical analysis of these two categories of values. The position has the benefit of acknowledging that people differ in their relationships to nature; ideally, it could lead to an increased recognition of different perspectives, which would have the additional benefit of expanding the often

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reductionist view of biodiversity as primarily being valued due to ecosystem services.

Relational values and the insuffciency of property-based moral philosophy The aim of this section is to provide a sense of what relational views are about and how they differ from the accounts described earlier. We may regard nature and its characteristic biodiversity as providing us with products, or appreciate its beauty, or be in awe of longevity of species and the interdependence of life, or we may view it as an adversary, something that needs to be tamed and from which we need protection. We may agree with philosopher Benjamin Hale’s description: Nature is a cruel mistress. She will send her minions to gobble up your pets, sweep away your belongings in the middle of the night, assault your neighbor with a terminal disease, and sucker punch your family members with a dose of their mortality so brutal and cold that you may wonder whether life is worth living. She sends us hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis; cancer, plague, bird flu, Ebola, malaria, typhoid, meningitis, and even rogue, killer asteroids to pull the dark sheets of death over life just as quickly and fecklessly as she will, with the other hand, breathe life into our newborns and our gardens. It is therefore appalling, to some, that anyone would ever deign to be an environmentalist, that anyone would ever deign to love nature. (Hale 2016: 3) One may find that the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic or final and instrumental values to be insufficient to capture one’s sentiments about nature or, at the very least, that the set of values that nature possesses is not exhausted by these categories. Some, such as environmental philosopher Holmes Rolston, have taken such ineptitude to heart, suggesting that ‘systemic value’ is more appropriate to explain why an ecosystem is valuable than the other categories (Rolston 1994). Objective intrinsic values provide agent-independent reasons that are not bound by contingent facts about the agents, such as the fact that he or she may have a specific relation to an ecosystem. We may not recognize that value, or we may value nature in some other way, while agent-independent reasons should hold for all agents. But ethics may be ill-equipped to provide such reasons. Perhaps it is impossible to establish, once and for all, the type of value an ecosystem has in a form that should be recognized by all rational creatures, or perhaps the conclusions of environmental ethicists fail to reflect the myriad ways we feel about the environment or biodiversity. We may have other reasons that are not consistent with environmental ethics that we think provide us with good reasons for biodiversity conservation, such as cherished memories of a specific ecosystem with some specific species in it. Those

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memories may provide us with meaning and, should those species go extinct, the ecosystem would lose its meaning. Such reasons would then be agent-relative. In this context we may remind ourselves of the discussion of method in Chapter 3. There, private reflective equilibrium was criticized on the grounds that it was a ‘place-less’ contemplation, a view from nowhere, detached from practical concerns, being, and uprooting that explains indifference to nature (De-Shalit 2000: 25). Moreover, the private reflective equilibrium ‘detaches moral principles from ideas of the good held by the general public’ (De-Shalit 2000: 25). Instead, philosopher Avner De-Shalit suggests a method of ‘public’ reflective equilibrium that starts in practical problems and concerns and has an inclusive approach (2000: 29). This approach sits well with relational values, as such values incorporate the moral significance of relations to nature. Yet, as De-Shalit insists, one should separate between well and badly constructed arguments (2000: 30). This means that, despite sensitivity to arguments from activists and the general public such as relations, one must weigh those arguments against intuitions and considered beliefs (De-Shalit 2000: 30). There are many reasons for being positive about relational accounts. For one thing, there seems to be something amiss with the alternative of limiting values to only intrinsic and instrumental values. Mark Coeckelbergh (2012) has criticized conventional ways of reasoning about the value of nature (see also Himes & Muraca 2018; Muraca 2016). He describes, perhaps exaggerating to some extent, the preoccupation of property-based moral theories to find ‘moral status’ as abstracting from processes of ‘development, growth and evolution’ and as ‘treating entities as discrete objects which are removed from life with its relations and change,’ ‘like dead butterflies pinned to a cardboard in a stuffy cabinet’ (2012: 205). This is no doubt a vivid description of how property-based accounts take a detached view of the entities whose moral status they are trying to figure out, a detachment which is counteracted by relational accounts. More formally, he suggests that most ways of reasoning have the following structure, which includes both animal and environmental ethics (Coeckelbergh 2012: 14): (1) (2) (3) (4)

Having property p is sufficient for moral status s. All members of class c have property p. Entity e is a member of class c. Therefore, e has moral status s.

As an example, consider the following argument: (1) having natural value is sufficient to merit conservation; (2) all old-growth forests have natural value; (3) forest X is an old-growth forest; (4) therefore, X should be conserved. But this line of reasoning raises several concerns (Coeckelbergh 2012: 14ff.). How do we establish that specific properties merit a moral status and why is it those specific properties, such as sentience? Moreover, how does one determine whether a specific entity has a particular property? Many of the properties

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that we take to be morally relevant are neither transparent nor even available to us, such as the ability to feel the pain of animals – on some occasions that pain may be obvious, but not at all times. Furthermore, there may be differences in degrees of these morally relevant properties, but how do we sift through them and distinguish those who have it from those who do not? Perhaps most seriously, Coeckelbergh suggests that this provides a rather ‘mechanistic’ approach to ethical reasoning, a reasoning detached from lived experiences; the charge of ‘mechanistic rules’ of some ethical theories such as utilitarianism and deontological ethics, relying on a few principles, has also been used to account for the reasonableness of virtue ethics, which is more contextual and emphasizes relations (Melin 2013). Rather, he suggests that we ought to embrace a moral relational account of being, which can provide a foundation for environmental care. In contrast to solidifying a dualistic view, where we as subjects walk around in nature and identify morally relevant properties, Coeckelbergh (2012) suggests a view that affirms how we are relational beings. We must move to a relational conception of the environment that is supported by our lived experience rather than continue seeking and establishing properties on which to base moral relevance in a manner detached from life (Coeckelbergh 2012: 87ff.). Coeckelbergh also concludes that the primary reasons for the relational view are practical, in the sense that we run into trouble when determining moral status based on properties and we cannot think more relationally without living more relationally (Coeckelbergh 2012: 195ff.). The question, he writes, proposed by property-based theories is ‘what status should we ascribe to entities’, but the ethical question should be ‘what kind of relations we want to have with them’ (Coeckelbergh 2012: 197). Ethics becomes a part of life, not detached from life by establishing principles to determine ethical relevance and mechanically identify properties entailed by those principles, entities that have those properties, and so on. Exempting detachment becomes a prerequisite for flourishing and leading a good life, which is suggested as an imperative of life (Coeckelbergh 2012: 198). Another relational account comes from environmental philosopher J. Baird Callicott. Often regarded as a ‘holistic’ environmental ethicist, Callicott does not commit to the view that moral status is based on property or that it can be ascribed to discrete objects. This stands in contrast to other environmental holists such as Holmes Rolston (1994), to whom value is not something we create; it is something we find. Callicott does not deny intrinsic value but sees it as conferred on entities by various subjects. Callicott – and this is a relational aspect – provides an account of the moral relevance of relations through the notion of biotic community. Derived from Aldo Leopold (1968), such community-based views take heed of the fact that we are parts of communities that also include other species and entities and that it is the community as such that has an often-neglected moral significance. In addition to the view that moral significance is based on belonging to a biotic community, there is an adjacent position called ‘appropriate fit’ by

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Donald S. Maier (2012), who intends to escape the grip of the distinction between instrumental and intrinsic values, which is problematic when discussing biodiversity. He describes his own suggestion of ‘appropriate fit’ thusly: Appropriate fit regards the natural world neither as an instrument to some other good – any more than one would regard a friend as such – nor as a non-instrumentally valued end. […] Appropriate fit finds value, not in achieving certain states of nature regarded as ultimate ends, but rather in a certain way of relating to a part of the world not of human design or under human management. (Maier 2012: 476). Consequently, Maier’s framework maintains a certain form of anthropocentrism, but one that is based on humans being part of inter-related networks, both natural and social, with other beings.

Natures contribution to people and relational values in conservation The above section provided a more general account of how relational values are discussed in environmental philosophy. There are similar concepts to relational values used in the practical discourse regarding biodiversity. One example is ‘nature’s contribution to people’ (NCP), a concept that is increasingly deployed by bodies such as the IPBES: Nature’s contributions to people (NCP) are all the contributions, both positive and negative, of living nature (i.e. diversity of organisms, ecosystems, and their associated ecological and evolutionary processes) to the quality of life for people. Beneficial contributions from nature include such things as food provision, water purification, flood control, and artistic inspiration, whereas detrimental contributions include disease transmission and predation that damages people or their assets. Many NCP may be perceived as benefits or detriments depending on the cultural, temporal or spatial context (my italics).1 NCPs are often justified with reference to relational values and the insufficiency of existing axiological categories applied to nature. Rather, NCPs (also called ‘nature’s benefits to people’ (Diaz et al. 2015)) cannot be reduced to any single measure but are expressed ‘through a diverse set of valuation approaches and methods’ (Diaz et al. 2015: 6). Founded upon the many diverse meaningful relations that people have to nature, the value of nature is expanded. This makes out part of their criticism of ecosystem services, which they claim is dominated by natural science and economics, reducing nature to natural capital (Diaz et al. 2018: 271). In contrast, the IPBES framework offers an opportunity not only to expand value categories but also to supplement existing indicators

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of well-being, such as GDP or the Human Development Index (Diaz et al. 2015: 7). While the economic valuation of nature, which is often reduced to ‘ecosystem services’ is insufficient, so is the argument that nature has some form of intrinsic value (Chan, Gould, & Pascual 2018: A1). Even if intrinsic and instrumental categories of values are critical to conservation, ‘thinking only in these terms may miss a fundamental basis of concern for nature’ (Chan et al. 2016: 1463). Ideally, NCP recognizes and incorporates diversity of values into decision-making processes (Pascual et al. 2017) and thus expands the ways in which nature can be evaluated, ideally motivating stronger biodiversity conservation. NCP differs from prior policy-relevant concepts, such as ecosystem services, in several ways. First, it should be noted how it both incorporates benefits and detrimental contributions and, stated differently, harms. Given that the IPBES definition of NCP was written before the spread of SARS-CoV-2, one may very well emphasize this issue. The contributions from nature are not solely beneficial but include harms. From a positive perspective, NCPs ideally expand the possible benefits that nature gives to people. This is claimed to be a departure from ecosystem services and their more instrumental relation to nature that fails to include stakeholder interests. Some, however, suggest that ecosystem services are well equipped to include culture, stakeholder interests, and pluralistic worldviews, including local and indigenous knowledge (Braat 2018). Second, it should be noted how NCP expands value to perceived benefits and detriments conducive to the ‘cultural, temporal or spatial context’. Instead of sitting down in one’s armchair thinking about or going out into nature on a quest to settle, once and for all and in opposition to all objections, the true value of nature, or biodiversity, regardless of whether that is solely instrumental or exclusively intrinsic, NCP calls for inclusion. According to one description, NCP explicitly recognizes conventionally conflicting values, from humans and nature viewed as fully distinct, to one where ‘human and nonhuman entities are interwoven in deep relationships of kinship and reciprocal obligations’ (Diaz et al. 2018: 271). Exactly how to understand ‘reciprocal obligations’ that include nonhumans and in what such obligation would practically consist of is not further specified. The NCP definition recognizes that decision makers often rely to a great extent on stressing the instrumental value of nature, even while acknowledging ‘symbolic relationships with natural entities to the extent that such relationships are inextricably linked to people’s sense of identity and spirituality, to a meaningful life and to “doing the right thing”’ (Pascual et al. 2017: 11). NCP is dangerously close to the naturalistic fallacy or the ‘is–ought’ problem in its assumption that one can base conservation policies on people’s actual relations to nature. Those relations are social scientific facts: they exist. But this has not yet given a satisfactory reason to undermine the distinction between is and ought. It has merely replaced an empirical observation of a natural fact with an empirical observation of a social fact. Identifying existing norms does not in itself suffice to make a prescriptive argument that something ought to

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be done. This would require an additional, normative premise along the lines that ‘one should do as social norms prescribe’. This is also one of the shortcomings of NCP, which seems to conflate its call for richer descriptions of how people relate to nature with prescriptive demands of moral concern (see also Stålhammar & Thorén 2019). However, the input provided by NCP and relational values could suggest a starting point, if supported by robust and wellreasoned normative concepts and theories. This would also be consistent with the methodological approach of public reflective equilibrium (De-Shalit 2000). Starting off from practical concerns and norms, such a procedure aims towards weighing them against intuitions and beliefs. However, the process does not stop there but rather proceeds with a testing against theories and beliefs to test coherency. If coherency is not achieved, then either the theories must be expanded, or the values rejected. In the context of this chapter, coherency becomes a question of whether existing theories can be expanded to include relational values but preserving the relevance of existing concepts and arguments, or whether the latter ought to be rejected. It is worth mentioning that not only are relational values an existing category on their own in moral philosophy, thus reducing some of the novelty of the suggestion, but the practical implications of NCP are similar to an earlier effort of environmental philosophers: the ‘convergence hypothesis’ initially formulated and then enthusiastically defended by proponents of environmental pragmatism. The convergence hypothesis can serve here as a test case for whether opposing normative commitments would converge on a similar conservation policy. If it would, then it may also be the case that different relations would, prompting increasing conservation efforts. Philosopher Bryan Norton suggests that, in the end, both anthropocentrists and non-anthropocentrists would converge in support of similar environmental policies (Norton 1991; see also Minteer 2009). Or at the very least, this would be the case for what he calls ‘weak anthropocentrism’ or ‘long-sighted’ and ‘enlightened’ anthropocentrism (Norton 1991). Motivated by a disagreement regarding the objective of a moral inquiry being the search for objective intrinsic natural value, Norton proposes a form of anthropocentrism that is enlightened in the sense that it embraces pluralistic views of nature and, although expanding the possible values that nature can have, does not require intrinsic value or anything similar to motivate biodiversity conservation. The idea of the convergence hypothesis is basically that both groups are environmentalists in some sense and would at the very least share some sentiments such as standing in opposition to wreaking havoc on the environment that is allegedly permitted by strong anthropocentrism and the axiological view that only grants instrumental value and substitutability to nature. Both weak anthropocentrism and ecocentrism would support and eventually converge upon similar environmental policies. This hypothesis has generated much discussion (Minteer 2009). First, it may not even be the case that the position that Norton defends, ‘weak anthropocentrism’, actually exists (Westra 2009). In a critical note, Laura Westra

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asks where such a position is to be found and suggests that it is surely not found among politicians and policy-makers (2009: 58), who instead advocate something similar to strong anthropocentrism. Moreover, even if found, it is not certain how such ‘enlightened’ anthropocentrists would vote on decisions where environmental protection conflicts with local jobs or other human aspirations (Westra 2009: 59). Furthermore, Westra suggests that ecocentrism can more easily provide reasons for biodiversity conservation in some cases, as it relies on the primacy and value of wilderness (2009: 59). To others, the convergence hypothesis is false, since there are policies that are based on nonanthropocentric intrinsic values that would not be the same if based on anthropocentric instrumental values (Callicott 2009). Citing the example of the US Endangered Species Act, Callicott suggests that it is nonanthropocentric and is based on intrinsic value and granting legal standing to species. Had it been based on purely anthropocentric instrumental values, it ‘would require the value of endangered species to be quantified on the monetary metric and be subjected to comparison with other anthropocentric instrumental values in Benefit-Cost Analysis (BCA) exercises’ (Callicott 2009: 166). Of course, there are replies to such concerns (see Minteer 2009), but here it suffices to state that it is not at all certain that differing relational values would support the same policy. Similarly, there may be analogous environmental values among a wide group of people, but they may disagree regarding different understandings of states of affairs, such as what is actually the risk to a given environmental area. If not even such scarce and clear-cut positions as weak anthropocentrism and ecocentrism can converge on similar environmental policies, then it begs the question of why a further expansion of normative positions and relations to nature would have any chance of such unity. Many factors separate the convergence hypothesis and NCP. The first is limited to the convergence of weak anthropocentric and ecocentric perspectives on the same policy. The latter seems to either assume that everyone has at least some form of positive or beneficial relation to nature or restricts itself to those who do have such relations with nature. If it is the latter case, then NCP is quite similar to the convergence hypothesis. However, given the sixth mass extinction, such a highly conditional framework seems somewhat contentious, to say the least, and is perhaps limited to environmental activists. However, if the first-mentioned interpretation is the correct one, then the position seems curious. After all, not everyone has a positive or even a specific relation to nature. Relating specifically to the concept of biodiversity, the American non-governmental organization Defenders of Wildlife noted a significant indifference by the public in participating and supporting efforts to protect biodiversity (Norton 2015). Upon hiring a research team to find out why, it found that ‘when respondents were questioned about their actions and preferences regarding the protection of “biodiversity”, they either expressed ignorance or even in many cases showed a negative attitude, as some respondents expressed suspicion

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that scientists were manipulating them’ (Norton 2015: 80). However, when asking about protecting ‘the web of life’ instead of ‘biodiversity’, support significantly increased (Norton 2015). This shows that there may be no specific relation or indifference to nature in general and to biodiversity in particular. Such factors would be a challenge to relational accounts. NCPs may do little to convince those who do not have any specific relation to nature that it is important and worth saving. Without any additional normative premises as to why relations ought to be given special moral relevance, we are at a loss. But even with such premises, little can be offered to those that have no relations to nature. Even more troublesome is that NCPs lack any specific way of excluding those who have only detrimental relations to nature or perceive it as having only an instrumental or monetary value. On its own, the NCP perspective can do little to offer a reasoned argument as to why nature ought to be preserved.

BOX 7.1 RELATIONAL AND NATURAL VALUE: THE LESSER WHITE-FRONTED GOOSE The lesser white-fronted goose (Anser erythropus) resides in northern Scandinavia. It is considered critically endangered (SEPA 2011: 9). During the mid-twentieth century, the lesser white-fronted goose was spread out in a continuous range from the western Fennoscandia mountains to the eastern parts of Russia, but since the 1950s its location has been increasingly fragmented (SEPA 2011). In the late 1970s efforts were undertaken towards the preservation of the lesser white-fronted goose by the Swedish Association for Hunting and Wildlife Management.Through the release of captive-bred geese, the dwindling population was reinforced. This included wild birds caught in Swedish Lapland and captive birds from parks in England and the Netherlands (Díez-del-Molino et al. 2020). The captive-bred geese were given ‘foster parents’ of the species barnacle geese (Branta leucopsis; SEPA 2011: 9). In 2000, when it was suspected that genes from the greater white-fronted goose (Anser albifrons) had been discovered in the reinforcement population of lesser white-fronted goose, the reinforcement was temporarily discontinued until 2010 (Díez-delMolino et al. 2020; SEPA 2011: 9). Organizations such as BirdLife Norway had long opposed the Swedish strategy.A 2016 report by BirdLife Norway was harsh in its criticism (Aarvak, Josten Øien, & Shimmings 2016).The migratory route was considered modified since geese learn such routes from their parents, in this case the barnacle geese foster parents, and there was little evidence of such migratory routes prior to the implementation of the Swedish strategy (Aarvak, Josten Øien, & Shimmings 2016: 11). Furthermore, there were records of captive-bred lesser white-fronted geese at sites used by Fennoscandian lesser white-fronted geese

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(Aarvak, Josten Øien, & Shimmings 2016: 8). In addition, there were allegedly hybridizations between the captive-bred lesser white-fronted goose and the barnacle goose (Aarvak, Josten Øien, & Shimmings 2016: 8).The report concluded that ‘the continued releases in Sweden constitute a significant additional burden and threat to the Fennoscandian population’ and that the threats included alteration of natural behaviour, changes in the sites and habitats used, and genetic introgression (Aarvak, Josten Øien, & Shimmings, 2016: 11).The strategy was deemed unacceptable, and the precautionary principle (see Chapter 8) called for.The criticism has been responded to and refuted by the Swedish Association for Hunting and Wildlife Management. What is of interest here is that this represents widely divergent views on the same species, A. erythropus. While one may suspect that issues of natural value perhaps loom in the background, such as in the fear of hybridization and the modified migration routes, we may in the context of this chapter ask how a framework of relational values would solve this issue. Should one give equal validity to the Norwegian and the Swedish side? Of course, issues of national sovereignty in choices of environmental strategies also come into play. But merely stating that there are two deeply divergent views on the captive-bred lesser white-fronted goose does not seem to cut it. In this case, both the Norwegian and Swedish sides engage in argumentation and refutation as to why its view should be accepted.While the issue is complicated and concerns many different issues, it also involves natural value. Is it better that an endangered species goes extinct, thus reducing species richness, if extensive human intervention is required to preserve it? And if human intervention is acceptable, is there any boundary for when human intervention becomes unacceptable? What risks can be accepted?

Relational values: Comparison to other types of values and critical points Relational values per se are not anything new to moral philosophy. Relational values take stock of the subjective forms of value, the value that is conducive of relations and not some inherent quality or property of a specific entity (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017: 29). One central concern about such values is that basing moral demands on contingent factors such as relations towards an object may lead to inconsistencies. G. E. Moore illustrates this quite nicely: It follows, therefore, from any view of this type, that, whenever any man has (or has not) some particular feeling towards an action, the action is right; and also that, whenever any man has (or has not) some particular

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feeling towards an action, the action is wrong. And now, if we take into account a second fact, it seems plainly to follow that, if this be so, one and the same action must quite often be both right and wrong. (Moore 1966: 46) The ‘second fact’ to which Moore refers, is that persons may have opposite feelings towards the same action, or indeed one individual may have such conflicting feelings (Moore 1966: 46). Much of moral philosophy has tried to exclude contingent factors, such as a demand following by necessity from a norm. In the words of W. D. Ross: If any one can show that A holds actions of type B to be wrong simply because (for instance) he knows such actions to be forbidden by the society he lives in, he shows that A has no real reason for believing that such actions have the specific quality of wrongness, since between being forbidden by the community and being wrong there is no necessary connexion. He does not, indeed, show the belief to be untrue, but he shows that A has no sufficient reason for holding it true; and in this sense he undermines its validity. (Ross 2002 [1930]: 14) While Moore excludes the moral relevance of contingent sentiments since it could lead the inconsistencies of an action to be both right and wrong, Ross excludes them on the grounds that there is no necessary connection between community norms deeming something wrong and something being wrong in a more categorical and universal sense that is supported by reasons. Moore was particularly interested in establishing objective intrinsic value, the ‘intrinsic value that exists in nature independently of human valuers’, by virtue of intrinsic (i.e. non-relational) properties (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017: 28ff.). There is often a reluctance in basing moral significance on contingent relations, instead opting to find more generally and universally applicable reasons on which to base such significance. A purely relational account which allegedly does not require additional justifications as to the appropriateness of reasons to consider an act right or wrong would permit inconsistencies. It would be redundant, with this foundation, to try to distinguish between the logging company’s and the forest conservationist’s view of a natural area, despite their having profoundly conflicting views regarding its preservation. There is an overarching risk in relational values to conflate the descriptive question of the values people have with the normative issue of underlying moral concern (Stålhammar & Thorén 2019). It may be more fruitful to regard relational values as an epistemological framing of ecosystems services, which also includes differing relations, than to regard relational values as an additional value category (Stålhammar & Thorén 2019: 1209). Relational values may provide better descriptions and explanations of how people relate to nature, but this does not settle the underlying normative

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and prescriptive issues (Stålhammar & Thorén 2019). This would require stating that ecosystem services do not already include the pluralism and different relations that NCP enables, which is a position that has been challenged by proponents of ecosystem services (Braat 2018). However, relations do matter morally. Indeed, one specific controversy in moral philosophy in general has revolved around the issue of reasons. A controversy of reasons has revolved around whether one is allowed to prioritize one’s sentiments and emotions and whether one has specific agent-relative duties to those to whom one stands in a particular relation that do not apply to others, or whether relations do not give rise to any special obligations and reasons are ultimately agent-independent. This concerns the ‘agent-neutral’ part of moral demands. Think of it this way. You have 100 USD to spare. You could either donate it to charity, say to one specializing in mosquito nets to be distributed in malaria-infested areas, or you could spend it on a present for a loved one who needs cheering up after being laid off. Now, you may think that the obvious answer is that the relation with your loved one who could use the cheering up is such that it would motivate you to buy the present. You may even make the judgment that it is your duty to spend that money on a gift. However, given that 100 USD would buy a substantial number of mosquito nets and have the potential of saving many people from contracting malaria, that is what you should do. From a utilitarian perspective, that would result in greater happiness, all things considered. Contracting malaria is potentially lethal, and many people would benefit from the nets that those 100 USD could buy. Your loved one will most likely find a new job; he or she is not in the same position as those that potentially will contract malaria. But surely there are special demands conducive of special relations. Consider this example: Surely it would be absurd to insist that if a man could, at no risk or cost to himself, save one of two persons in equal peril, and one of those in peril was, say, his wife, he must treat both equally, perhaps by flipping a coin. One answer is that where the potential rescuer occupies no office such as that of captain of a ship, public health official or the like, the occurrence of the accident may itself stand as a sufficient randomizing event to meet the dictates of fairness, so he may prefer his friend, or loved one. Where the rescuer does occupy an official position, the argument that he must overlook personal ties is not unacceptable. (Fried 1970, cited and discussed in Williams 1981: 17) What Williams is teasing out is that if one is in a situation where there are two drowning people, one a stranger and the other one’s spouse or friend, who is to be saved? Should one flip a coin? Or should one assess whether it would be better, all things considered, if one saves the stranger instead of the person to whom one stands in a special relation? To Williams, this issue concerns

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justification. The fact that one of the people is close to the rescuer would count as an explanation for why that person was saved. But is the justification sufficient, or is some additional reason required? Williams writes, ‘it might have been hoped by some (for instance, by his wife) that his motivating thought, fully spelled out, would be the thought that it was his wife, not that it was his wife and that in situations of this kind it is permissible to save one’s wife’ (Williams 1981: 18). Reasoning in such a matter is arguably blameworthy, a form of ‘one thought too many’, as Williams puts it (1981). What I am getting at is the extent relations lead to special demands that do not apply to all people or situations. That is, one’s standing in a specific relation to someone generates demands that do not apply to others. My duty to those I stand in a specific relation to does not, for instance, necessarily apply to the rest of humanity. According to some, our practical motivations are generated from a firstperson perspective rather than an abstract point of view. What Williams in a different discussion called ‘intrinsic vs extrinsic reasons’ takes note of this point. The reason-giving aspect is a very human characteristic, but we can also evaluate those reasons and assess which reasons are good or bad. According to Williams, we cannot have reasons derived from something that we do not care about. Recall a very central distinction here. According to some – indeed, many – philosophers, moral reasons are universal and are applicable to all. Moral reasons ought to be distinguished from reasons based on sentiments or inclinations. One of several motivations for excluding the latter from the domain of moral reasons is that they are highly contingent. They are neither universal nor categorical. They do not offer a firm foundation for acting rationally or for acting in a way that meets the standards of ethical conduct. Should one make it a moral law that everyone should always follow their inclinations, then ethics loses its foundations, or at least this is what many will fear. Yet many of us are not prepared to act from the abstract standpoint of the universe and consider the consequences to all, even people remotely situated from us in both space and time, and we would much rather be prepared to buy a gift for a loved one than spend that money on buying malaria-preventing mosquito nets, even if the latter would be recommended by many moral theories. We are also historically and socially placed beings, and full detachment may be impossible, but it may also neglect the relevance of being relational beings. To make things more complicated, some also distinguish between relational values on the one hand and moral values on the other, such as Chan, Gould, and Pascual (2018), who maintain that moral values are those that are to be applied universally, whereas relational values can be moral and thus apply universally, but this does not apply to all relational values. Rather, some relational values are intended for private applications; they write that ‘any preference, principle or virtue that is only for oneself would not be moral’ (Chan, Gould, & Pascual 2018: A4). This raises some issues even if one sets the mixing of preferences, principles, and virtues aside. How are we to distinguish between those relational values that are intended to be applied universally and those that are not? If there are reasons such that apply universally, then what is the role of

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those that do not have universal application – why are the criteria not applicable to the latter, and what are the criteria? To suggest that a relational value that is restricted to preferences, principles, or virtues that are only for oneself would not apply universally seems somewhat awkward. For instance, a virtue such as self-respect or a principle to aspire to self-care and avoid self-harm would most likely be recommended to all and thus have universal application, even if they concern one’s relation to oneself. Even if we were to draw a reasonable distinction between those relational values that are intended for universal acceptance and thus moral and those that are not, an additional challenge concerns where this leaves relational values as previously described. How do the non-moral relational values connect to the non-relative values that all should accept, such as the equal consideration of interests of morally relevant beings? What demands stem from them? On a charitable reading, it would seem as if Chan, Gould, and Pascual (2018) suggest that there are both moral values that apply universally and relational values. But if the latter do not give rise to demands that apply to all, then what is their function? Should they merit some specific consideration in our deliberation? If that is the case, for what reason? The mere fact of standing in a specific relation to some entity would require an additional reason to merit a prescriptive, normative conclusion.

Moral philosophy, explicit or implicit Relational values provide an argument in favour of wide participation in decisions concerning environmental issues. While this sounds good, one could perhaps ask for more justification than the mere existence of different valuations of and relations to nature. A moral principle may hold in one context for various reasons but does not hold in other contexts in which those reasons are lacking. But this provides the risk that there are no principles that hold regardless of context and that are thus relevant in all contexts. Such principles aside, relational values remain a concept calling for better descriptions of how people relate to nature, but without any strong reason of whether all relations are to be given equal validity or, if that is not the case, how to distinguish the ‘better’ relation from any other. Merely relying on relational values cuts off any foundation from which to say that someone’s judgment is, if not wrong, then at the very least unsound or mistaken. Consider the manager of a logging company. The company is about to set out cutting down century-old redwoods, an act which may further threaten the habitat of already endangered species. The manager states that, to him or her, profit and employment opportunities are more valuable than preserving old-growth forests or endangered species. Recall that NCP claims to have the potential to incorporate extreme views (Diaz et al. 2018: 271). How would one claim that the view of the manager is mistaken and that there will be value lost that cannot be repaired should the logging endeavour proceed? Moreover, it is not certain that the refutation of the property-based accounts is successful. Recall Coeckelbergh’s objections; the criticism of property-based

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accounts does not as such merit confidence in a relational approach. If successful, his refutation merely shows that there are shortcomings in propertyrelated approaches to establish moral relevance. However, it is questionable whether his criticism is valid. For one thing, he appears to be too quick to dismiss property-based ethical theories. Most frameworks, whether utilitarian or deontological – the two main focal points of Coeckelbergh’s criticism – go to great lengths to provide arguments for what is to count ethically. While the responses may never be conclusive, there is a lively discussion on the matter that is not refuted by Coeckelbergh, who instead seems to base his criticism of property-based accounts on the mere fact that they are based on property and therefore neglects central dimensions of our relations to nature and the demands that follow from those relations (Swart 2013). Yet should it be the case that he would provide us with reasons to fully dismiss property-based accounts, then that per se is no warrant that the relational account would be the proper alternative. There are additional challenges with relational accounts that can be reiterated in the following manner: 1) Would differing relations agree on similar policies (like the ‘convergence hypothesis’)? 2) How are we to reconcile conflicting relations (assuming (1) does not hold)? 3) Do all people have any explicit relation to nature? If not, then what relation ought they have, and what would justify such reasons? While relations do have moral significance, as exemplified in the Bernard Williams example of ‘one thought too many’, and we are members of a biotic community (as both Leopold and Callicott suggest), a reasonable relational account should be able to provide convincing responses to the three challenges above lest it dwindle into ethical relativism or various forms of subjectivism, according to which the validity of moral principles is context-dependent and no such validity is required outside those contexts. There are strengths of relational accounts, as they recognize the plurality of views on and relations to nature. This seems preferable to leaving environmental decisions and spatial planning solely in the hands of ethical (should there be such experts) or other experts. The prevalence of a plurality of views is also evident in the principles for environmental decision-making. One example is the United Nation’s Economic Commission for Europe Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, usually referred to as ‘the Aarhus Declaration’, adopted in 1998 in Aarhus, Denmark by 47 parties, including the EU. The declaration recognizes that a well-functioning environment is essential to human well-being and human rights, especially the right to life (UN 1998).2 Article 6 of the Aarhus Declaration states that, regarding proposed activities that may have

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a significant impact on the environment, the public shall be informed and can participate by giving their views on the proposed activities. The decision, once made, should take due account of the outcome of public participation (UN 1998, Article 6(8)). Participation is also included in Strategic Goal E of the Aichi targets, stating that ‘the traditional knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, and their customary use of biological resources, are respected’.3 Consequently, relations are incorporated in decision-making concerning the environment. The practical implementation of those relations may suffer from many shortcomings, but the principles are there. But problems arise rather quickly with purely relational accounts. Ideally, if conflicting verdicts are made on the same environmental policy, then such conflicts could be settled in some principled manner, such as by appeal to criteria. The NCP framework acknowledges that conflicts will arise; when they do, deliberative approaches would be required for conflict resolution, such as ‘participatory negotiation among stakeholders holding incommensurable values over human–nature relations’ (Pascual et al. 2017: 11). Such a process would include respecting the diversity of values at stake and addressing the power relations through which those values are expressed (Pascual et al. 2017: 11). Ideally, it would be possible to establish ethical discourse frameworks that would enable such participatory approaches, even if one might be curious as to what shape such processes could take and how to nullify power asymmetries and assess the normative status of outcomes. Although some examples exist that identify the need to explicate power relations (see Berbés-Blázquez, Gonzáles, & Pascual 2016 for a discussion), few practical guides are at hand. Perhaps more problematic are instances when value conflicts are to be managed and a decision agreed upon, but that decision remains in conflict with nature conservation. How would an NCP framework manage situations in which a community agrees that job prospects or nature tourism are more important than preserving wildlife? Many may suggest that this is a problematic outcome, but as long as it is consistent with the community and relevant stakeholders (assuming they can be identified in a principled manner), then such a decision is not problematic. It is akin to the criticism of the ‘weak’ anthropocentrism and the convergence hypothesis described above. Theories that place a direct moral significance on ecosystems as such, such as ecocentrism or views of nature as having rights, along with biocentrist perspectives that are conjunct with the instrumental value of biodiversity, can mount a defence of strong nature conservation more easily. Another challenge is posed by those environmental areas to which no one has any specific relation, towards which there is only indifference, or where people may have benign relations but do not act on them. How are such areas to be assessed normatively if relations are all that matter? Again, environmental ethical theories such as ecocentrism or the like can provide arguments for what relation someone should have towards nature. But in the absence of such

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arguments, a relational account is restricted to the protection of those areas to which someone has a positive relation. Lastly, the very claim for participation is itself an ethical claim. As such, it does not omit the relevance of ethics. Calls for the primacy of relational values are claims that something ought to be the case and that views should be included and recognized. This is a noble effort. But without explicating the moral foundations, one risks slipping into moral relativism. The reason for this is that moral concepts, such as moral standing, rights, duties, or intrinsic value, provide reasons that are, ideally, agent-neutral: all moral agents have reasons to recognize them. Following such recognition, action guidance would ensue. Decisions that protect bearers of intrinsic value are consistent with respecting their moral standing. Similarly, to recognize that individual human beings have basic dignity and are worthy of respect restrains what one is permitted to do to them, and purely relying on relational accounts may risk neglecting such values and reasons. Furthermore, moral claims are not avoided by relying on relational values. Rather, they are replaced and remain implicated rather than being explicated and tested to inquiry. The mere fact that someone stands in a specific relation to an environmental entity should not be neglected. Cultural norms matter and greatly influence our behaviour. The plurality of ways in which biodiversity and the environment are perceived and valued may often be too easily neglected in environmental ethics and discussions that aim to establish whether an entity has instrumental or non-instrumental value. There are good reasons to bring such relations to the foreground. However, such an explication would be the start of a process in which judgments are tested against considered intuitions and ethical theories, ideally to reach equilibrium (De-Shalit 2000) and serve as the foundation for well-reasoned decisions and environmental policies. One possible outcome of such a process is of course that principles should perhaps be expanded to be more inclusive. But treating existing relations as a final point for input into decisions works at cross-purposes to ethical reasoning, whereas relational values providing a starting point for ethical deliberation could enrich ethical thinking about biodiversity. Furthermore, if not supplemented with explicit moral reasoning, it risks merely displacing ethical premises that remain untested and evade scrutiny. Related to the ethical parsimony it seems as if a purely relational account fails to explain why the judgment that biodiversity ought to be preserved is reasonable, and without appeal to ethical theories and concepts the position becomes vulnerable to objections.

Notes 1 https://ipbes.net/glossary/natures-contributions-people 2 https://unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/env/pp/documents/cep43e.pdf 3 www.cbd.int/sp/targets/ – GoalE

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References Aarvak, T., Jostein Øien, I., & Shimmings, P., 2016. ‘A critical review of lesser whitefronted goose release projects’, BirdLife Norway 2016. Report 6-2016. https://www.bir dlife.no/prosjekter/rapporter/2016_06_NOF.pdf Berbés-Blázquez, M., González, J.A., & Pascual, U., 2016. ‘Towards an ecosystem services approach that addresses social power relations’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 19, pp. 134–143. Braat, J., 2018. ‘Five reasons why the Science publication ‘assessing nature’s contributions to people’ (Diaz et al 2018) would not have been accepted in Ecosystem Services’, Ecosystem Services, 30 (Part A), pp. A1–A2. Callicott, J.B., 2009. ‘The convergence hypothesis falsified’ in Minteer, B. (ed.), Nature in Common?: Environmental Ethics and the Contested Foundations of Environmental Policy. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University, pp. 142–166. Chan, K.M.A., et al., 2016. ‘Why protect nature? Rethinking values and the environment’, PNAS, 113, pp. 1462–1465. Chan, K.M.A., Gould, R.K., & Pascual, U., 2018. ‘Editorial overview: Relational values: What are they, and what’s the fuss about?’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 35, pp. A1–A7. Coeckelbergh, M., 2012. Growing Moral Relations: Critique of Moral Status Ascription. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, p. 221 De-Shalit, A., 2000. The Environment between Theory and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Diaz, S., et al., 2015. ‘The IPBES conceptual framework: Connecting nature and people’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 14, pp. 1–16. Diaz, S., et al., 2018. ‘Assessing nature’s contributions to people’, Science, 359, pp. 270–272. Díez-del-Molino, D., von Seth, J., Gyllenstrand, N., Widemo, F., Liljebäck, N., Svensson, M., Sjögren-Gulve, P., & Dalén, L., 2020. ‘Population genomics reveals lack of greater white-fronted introgression into the Swedish lesser white-fronted goose’, Nature Scientific Reports, 10, pp. 1–10. Fried, C., 1970. An Anatomy of Values. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hale, B., 2016. The Wild and the Wicked: On Nature and Human Nature. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Himes, A. & Muraca, B., 2018. ‘Relational values: They key to pluralistic valuation of ecosystem services’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 35, pp. 1–7. James, S.P., 2020. ‘Legal rights and nature’s contributions to people: Is there a connection?’, Biological Conservation, pp. 1–4. doi: 10.1016/j.biocon.2019.108325 Leopold, A., 1968 [1949]. A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Maier, D.S. 2012. What’s So Good about Biodiversity? Dordrecht: Springer. Melin, A., 2013. Living with Other Beings: A Virtue-oriented Approach to the Ethics of Species Protection. Münster: Lit Verlag. Minteer, B., (ed.) 2009. Nature in Common?: Environmental Ethics and the Contested Foundations of Environmental Policy. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University. Moore, G.E., 1966. Ethics, 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Muraca, B., 2016. ‘Relational values: A Whiteheadian alternative for environmental philosophy and global environmental justice’, Balkan Journal of Philosophy, 8, pp. 19–38. Newman, J., Varner, G., & Linquist, S., 2017. Defending Biodiversity: Environmental Science and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

132 Recent developments Norton, B., 1991. Towards Unity among Environmentalists. New York: Oxford University Press. Norton, B., 2015. ‘Ecology and the human future’ in Minteer, B.A. & Pyne, S.J. (eds.), After Preservation. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, pp. 74–83. Pascual, U., et al., 2017. ‘Valuing nature’s contributions to people: The IPBES approach’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 26–27, pp. 7–16. Rolston, H., 1994. ‘Value in nature and the nature of value’ in Attfield, R. & Belsey, A. (eds.), Philosophy and the Natural Environment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 13–30. Ross, W.D., 2002 [1930]. The Right and the Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stålhammar, S. & Thorén, H., 2019. ‘Three perspectives on relational values of nature’, Sustainability Science, 14, pp. 1201.1212. Swart, J.A.A., 2013. ‘Mark Coeckelberg: Growing Moral Relations’, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 26, pp. 1241–1245. Swedish Association for Hunting and Wildlife Management, https://jagareforbundet.se/glo balassets/global/projekt-fjallgas/why-are-lesser-white-fronted-geese-from-sweden-shot -in-norway.pdf (25 May 2021). Swedish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), 2011. Åtgärdsprogram för fjällgås 2011–2015. SEPA Report 6434. http://www.naturvardsverket.se/Documents/publikati oner6400/978-91-620-6434-1.pdf UN, 1998. Convention on access to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters. Accessible online: https://unece.org/fi leadmin/DAM/env/pp/documents/cep43e.pdf (5 May 2021). Westra, L., 2009. ‘Why Norton’s approach is insufficient for environmental ethics’ in Minteer, B., (ed.), Nature in Common?: Environmental Ethics and the Contested Foundations of Environmental Policy. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University, pp. 49–64. Williams, B., 1981. Moral Luck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

8

Environmental human rights and rights of nature

One striking suggestion that has recently arisen is to ascribe rights to nature and natural objects like ecosystems, forests, and rivers. The suggestion entails nature’s having legal rights and has been described as a ‘revolution in legislation’ (Chapron, Epstein, & López-Bao 2019). If successful, biodiversity conservation will be strengthened solely by legal instruments, which would support the sufficiency of legislation relative to moral reasons. In this chapter I explore such possibilities. I limit the discussion to the role of moral rights and their relation to legal rights. Consequently, I do not provide in-depth analyses of specific legislative systems or proposals. Rather, my interest lies in the domain of jurisprudence and philosophy of law and the extent to which it can do without moral philosophy when novelties such as legal rights for nature are suggested. Consequently, I investigate the reasonableness of the following proposition, which I refer to as Rights of Nature (RoNs) (Baard 2021): RoNs: Natural objects such as ecosystems, forests, and rivers have rights that result in direct demands on moral agents. Rights provides special reasons for considering and respecting the well-being of a right-holder, usually a fellow human being. But many have also argued that animals have rights; for example, Tom Regan’s influential work The Case for Animal Rights (2004) based right-holding on being a ‘subject-of-a-life’ (Regan 2004[1983]). Being such a subject-of-a-life generates demands of others to respect those rights. However, Regan’s perspective remains individualistic and does not grant any specific status to ecosystems per se, beyond the extent to which such systems are of importance to the well-being and interests of rightholders (among which he includes animals). In 2013, the New Zealand government and indigenous people of the Tühoe tribe reached an agreement regarding the Te Urewera National Park. The Te Urewera Act 2014 establishes the national park as a legal entity, effectively giving it the status of a person. Chapter 11 of the act states the following:1 Te Urewera declared to be legal entity DOI: 10.4324/9781003110712-8

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(1) Te Urewera is a legal entity, and has all the rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person. (2) However,— (a) the rights, powers, and duties of Te Urewera must be exercised and performed on behalf of, and in the name of, Te Urewera— (i) by Te Urewera Board; and (ii) in the manner provided for in this Act; and (b) the liabilities are the responsibility of Te Urewera Board This means that the Te Urewera National Park has very strong legal standing. In 2017, the Whanganui river, also in New Zealand, was also granted legal personhood and thus legal rights. This perspective has gained traction in environmental philosophy and environmental law. In this chapter I will however not necessarily discuss real-life examples but rather try to explicate and analyse the principles and arguments that are deployed to provide reasons to accept the conclusion that natural objects can be regarded as right-holders. I will also critically scrutinize those arguments and suggest that the reasons in favour of RoNs are rather weak in the sense of not providing robust responses to several objections and often based on analogies that do not necessarily suggest what they are taken to suggest. I will also propose that entitlements can be provided for other reasons than an entity being a right-holder and that entities that have rights do not comprise all entities to which we have obligations. Consequently, environmental ethics can provide the same reasons for why biodiversity protection should be upheld as legislation can without taking detours and relying on the flexibility of the concept of rights or of the characteristics by which we usually ascribe rights. Indeed, even conventional notions of rights being limited to humans can provide reasons for strengthening environmental protection by recognizing the importance of environmental human rights (Oksanen, Dodsworth, & O’Doherty 2018). This is especially important, as the detours required to make RoNs reasonable carry significant costs (Baard 2021).

Can nature have rights? If so, which rights? The concept of ‘right’ designates someone to whom something is owed by virtue of having that right, and rights are closely correlated with duties in the sense that others have duties towards a right-holder: something ought to be or not be done towards a right-holder. The important thing to note here is that rights warrant a specific moral standing. The non-trivial interests and well-being of a right-holder have to be given special attention and are, ideally, to be honoured in policies, decisions, and actions. It does not mean that rights are necessarily absolute or that one should always refrain from something that may infringe on someone’s rights. We have agreed to take risks that we regard as leading to greater overall societal benefits. This is the case with road traffic. Although it

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sees many casualties every year, we have agreed that the benefits of permitting driving cars outweigh the potential costs. Similarly, we may go to the doctor for an operation that will cause a temporary physical injury, but we have agreed that this injury is justified by the remedy we will obtain through the surgery. However, a rights perspective entails that one must specifically justify possible infringements on the rights of others. Should it be the case that nature has rights – that is, that natural and inanimate objects have rights – special considerations are to be taken in decisions that may infringe upon those rights. It is common in moral philosophy to distinguish between two different foundations for rights that focus on what rights do for right-holders: interest and will (Kramer, Simmonds, & Steiner 2002). According to interest-based theories, rights protect interest-based claims of right-holders. Thus, to be a right-holder, an agent must have a non-trivial interest, even if the right-holder cannot express that interest. Will-based theories secure autonomy of the rightholder through an appeal to dignity that results in demands on others not to restrict autonomy. In this chapter I do not determine which of the theories provide the better foundation. My interest is primarily to assess whether RoNs can be defended with appeal to existing theories of rights or, if not, then what bases can be given. As will be shown below, the theories suggesting RoNs sometimes are more akin to interest-based theories, where an ecosystem may have an interest as based on a specific state of well-being. Even if the ecosystem cannot voice that interest, guardians can be determined to protect the interest. The idea that natural objects can have rights is not new. A discussion arose during the 1970s following legal scholar Christopher D. Stone’s paper, ‘Should Trees Have Standing? – Towards Legal Rights for Natural Objects’ (1972), in which he stated that ‘I am quite seriously proposing that we give legal rights to forests, oceans, rivers and other so-called “natural objects” in the environment – indeed, to the natural environment as a whole’ (Stone 1972: 456). Stone defends the radical notion that natural objects could be granted legal rights that would result in those natural objects having standing, which ‘is the authority of someone to initiate an action’ (2010: 35). Standing is granted to a plaintiff when he or she (or it) can show that: (1) through breach of a duty owed by defendant to it; (2) plaintiff has suffered an ‘injury in fact’ that is, a legally recognized harm that is both (a) concrete and particularized, and (b) ‘actual or imminent, not “conjectural” or “hypothetical”’; (3) the injury is fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant (‘causation’); and (4) it has to be ‘likely,’ as opposed to merely ‘speculative’, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision. (Stone 2010: 36) The conditions that merit standing refer to notions such as harm and compensation, along with causation, which are primarily, but not solely, moral concepts. In his 1972 paper, Stone identifies three necessary conditions for identifying an entity as being the holder of a legal right (2010: 4):

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(1) The thing can institute legal actions at its behest. (2) In determining the granting of legal relief, the court must take injury to it into account. (3) The relief must run to the benefit of it. Fulfilling these conditions means that an entity has ‘a legally recognized worth and dignity in its own right, and not merely to serve as a means to benefit “us”’ (Stone 2010: 4). This means that rights warrant recognition of the noninstrumental value of natural objects. Stone is sympathetic to those who make conservation efforts by appealing to the instrumental value of natural objects, referring to recreational interests and the like. This warrants conservation arguments on the basis of instrumental values, such as ‘nature is important for recreational interests; humans have a need for areas meeting their recreational needs; therefore, nature should be preserved to meet those human needs’; yet, he writes, such arguments ‘play up to, and reinforce, homocentrist2 perspectives’, and ‘there is something sad about the spectacle. One feels that the arguments lack even their proponents’ convictions’ (Stone 2010: 24). Thus, Stone seems to regard instrumental values as a lesser category (which was discussed and criticized in favour of a more nuanced account earlier). If an entity has rights, this provides others with direct reasons for respecting those rights and that entity. This differs from the indirect reasons provided by instrumental values. If an entity like a natural object has rights, those rights are due to that object counting in and of itself. It is not to be given care because it is important to humans or animals but because it is a right-holder. Thus, any right a forest has arises solely from it being a forest. It is to be considered in our decision-making and be given importance that reflects its status as a right-holder. As an example, humans are non-controversially considered right-holders. They may have rights for reasons of dignity or autonomy or any reasons that are used to promote having a right. In their capacity as right-holders, they have a right to certain things, such as an education or well-being, and a right to not be subjected to certain things, such as harm or actions that in various ways infringe their rights. Their lives cannot be easily traded for some other good. They are not replaceable or substitutable, and so forth. In virtue of having rights, they are worthy of some sort of respect that reflects the fact that they are right-holders. If an action or decision is expected to risk infringing the interests or well-being of humans in their capacity as right-holders, such actions or decisions should either be refrained from or at the very least carefully considered and possibly redressed. If a city plans on building a freeway, and the construction will require demolishing several homes, which runs the risk of their occupants becoming homeless, the construction decision has to be carefully considered. It is not necessarily the case that the proposed construction should be abandoned, but it may give the inhabitants of those houses standing that permits them to initiate an action, and they may be owed redress or some other form of compensation. It may be that the societal benefits of building

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that highway are so great that the city is motivated to build it and that the cost of redress is deemed acceptable, given those benefits, in which case it may be permissible to go ahead with construction. In some cases, biodiversity is considered a prerequisite for the enjoyment of certain human rights, such as the rights to life and health, and for its extensive instrumental value, ranging from medicinal uses to human mental health (UNHRC 2017: 6–7; Corrigan 2021). But the moral relevance of biodiversity is then conducive of its relevance to the well-being of conventional rightholders such as humans – and possibly animals – who rely on functioning ecosystems for their survival. What Stone does, if his arguments are successful, is to give a moral importance to natural objects as such, even those that are not commercially valuable or of relevance to any specific human being or other right-holder. The three conditions Stone lays out refer to the notions of harm and the possibility of redress or relief. If an argument for the rights of natural objects were to be enacted into law, then a case can be brought to stop the pollution of a river because it is the river in its capacity as a right-holder that is injured, regardless of whether any human interests are damaged. As is normally the case, another human being must be ‘able to show an invasion of his rights’ to generate a case for the river (Stone 2010: 5). It is worth pointing out that Stone insists on the need for a guardian or trustee. This is similar to the practical cases of the Te Urewera and the Whanganui, which established a central role for guardians who represent the interests and well-being of an entity that will always be voiceless. To Stone, this is no different from other practices accepted in many judicial systems, such as representatives for the disabled, minors, and others who cannot express their interests. Extending the issue further, there are representatives that can claim the rights of corporations, which are, in many jurisdictions, considered legal persons (Feinberg 1974). To Stone, it is up to the guardian to assess the needs of and possible injury to the trustees, which in this case would be natural objects. Stone suggests the ability to suffer injury or harm as a condition for being a right-holder. He writes that a court must take an injury into account when determining whether to grant legal relief (2010: 4). Again, it is worth pointing out that this concerns harm to natural objects in their own right rather than the potential harm to a natural object because of its impact on humans or human interests. This is consistent with the non-anthropocentrism of Stone’s account in that it requires going beyond human interests and well-being. Regarding the prospect of the guardian to assess needs of natural objects, Stone offers an interesting perspective, akin to an interestbased account of rights: Natural objects can communicate their wants (needs) to us, and in ways that are not terribly ambiguous. I am sure I can judge with more certainty and meaningfulness whether and when my lawn wants (needs) water, than the Attorney General can judge whether and when the United States

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wants (needs) to take an appeal from an adverse judgment by a lower court. (Stone 2010: 11) It is fair to say that we, especially if we have ecological knowledge, can evaluate the wellness of an ecological system by using some non-arbitrarily chosen ecological threshold to determine ecosystem health. It may be that equilibrium or ‘balance’ is disturbed as a consequence of human action, leading to an increased prevalence of predator or prey, or that invasive species have a detrimental impact on an ecosystem. It may simply be that a river is polluted with chemicals that lead to eutrophication and disturb the marine ecosystem. At the very least, this has an intuitive credibility. Finally, Stone considers that relief must be of benefit to the right-holder, stating that it makes perfectly good sense to speak of, and ascertain, the legal damage to a natural object, if only in the sense of ‘making it whole’ with respect to the most obvious factors. The costs of making a forest whole […] would include the costs of reseeding, repairing watersheds, restocking wildlife. (2010: 6) One shortcoming of current legislation is that no redress is directed to natural objects themselves but only as compensation for human impacts (Stone 2010: 7). The redress may be in the form of economic compensation, such as setting up trust funds administered by the entity’s guardian. This has benefits when it comes to restoration following damages, as it does not necessarily require restoring a river to its initial condition but rather enables other compensatory efforts. Stone proposes such compensatory measures; for example, if a corporation has damaged the habitat of a sea urchin, that corporation can compensate for that act by devoting funds to re-establish the sea urchin elsewhere (2010: 16). Overall, Stone relies quite heavily on economic measures of this sort. Curiously, he also writes that such a system could actually make natural objects liable because natural objects sometimes cause damage, as when rivers flood or forests burn, harming the surroundings. One could in such cases withdraw costs that the inanimate objects have caused from their trust fund (Stone 2010: 17). In summary, Stone provides a case for making plausible the initial proposition of this chapter: that natural objects are right-holders. He notes that it is not that difficult to assess damages or determine compensation and that a system of guardianship – familiar in other cases where representatives are needed – can be established. These provide a framework in which RoNs can be made reasonable and sound. However, some may remain unconvinced. What are the bases of rights? Is it merely up to legal authorities to identify right-holders, or does it require some other foundation? One may think that moral and legal rights ought to be equivalent or at the very least that legal rights should incorporate moral rights, or vice versa; that is, human rights, which are universal and moral rights, ought

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to be encoded in law. Or that animal moral rights, such as an animal’s being a subject-of-a-life, ought to be encoded in law and guide the treatment of animals. Stone rightfully observes a somewhat troublesome relation between moral and legal rights, as they are dissimilar and have different foundations. There are few characteristics that both warrant moral rights and apply to natural objects, as will be discussed in the next subsection. Consequently, it is difficult to argue that natural objects have moral rights, which implies that they would lose a strong foundation for legal rights. Stone also concedes that many of our fundamental rights ‘are often plausibly portrayed as the law’s instantiation of pre-constitutional rights’ (2010: 68ff.). Yet, Stone also acknowledges that ‘not all legal rights are constructed on top of moral rights’ (2010: 69). One can think of legal personhood, which also includes corporations. Even those who are certain that corporations are persons would not likely argue that they have moral rights. Biocentrist philosopher Paul W. Taylor briefly discusses legal and moral rights, stating that animals and plants have legal rights ‘in those societies whose legal systems contain laws that protect their good in various ways’ (2011: 223ff.). But Taylor explicitly rejects the view that animals or plants have moral rights (2011: 246), basing his conclusion on the following conditions for having moral rights, which animals and plants do not fulfil: (1) a right-holder is a moral agent; (2) there is a necessary connection between being a right-holder and self-respect, in the sense of regarding oneself as a person of inherent worth or of others doing so; (3) it must make sense to say that a being is able to choose to exercise its right; and (4) a bearer of moral rights has certain second-order entitlements, such as claims to restitution or justified grievance for the violation of rights, simply by virtue of being a right-holder (2011: 246ff.). Yet, there are other reasons to respect nature besides moral rights, and Taylor’s account shows the somewhat contentious relation between legal and moral rights. Legal rights appear to offer more flexibility when it comes to ascribing rights. Stone’s account appears to have two options: (1) that RoNs are justified through an appeal to moral rights, or (2) that there is enough flexibility in the concept of legal rights to justify the legal rights of natural objects. If (1) is not possible, then (2) may be an option. Yet, it is noteworthy that Stone, despite rejecting the relevance of moral rights, uses arguments that would justify moral rights – such as an entity being injured or harmed or the possibility of redress. Should it be the case that an injury occurs and that injury is considered a morally relevant harm, then at a minimum, moral principles such as the ‘no-harm’ principle would be relevant. This principle states that ‘the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others’ (Mill 1879) and justifies governmental regulations in cases where harm may result from actions. Should an action cause harm, then there are moral reasons to prevent that action, either through the law or by other measures. However, I concede that the relation between moral and legal rights is complex and cannot be fully explored here. Schools of legal philosophy vary – sometimes widely – about the relation between ethics and jurisprudence.

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One may ask what follows from Stone’s framework. Intuitively, it may have very implausible implications that work at cross-purposes to our intuitions of what a reasonable moral framework should permit. He notes that saying nature has rights ‘is not to say anything as silly as that no one should be allowed to cut down a tree’ (2010: 3), adding that while no rights are absolute, overriding the entitlements of a right-holder is only permitted when there is a process that reflects the importance of that right. Thus, one can override an agent’s right to life (in cases of capital punishment) only when that decision has passed through what Stone calls ‘procedural safeguards’: these ‘procedures are a measure of what we value in society’ (2010: 18).

Frail foundations, analogies, and troublesome implications In this section, I refute the foundations and premises that would make Stone’s argument successful and suggest the following: (1) The view of harm and benefit and injury and redress is not consistent with ecological science. (2) The analogies on which RoNs are based do not warrant confidence in the position that natural objects have rights. In this context it is important to recall the contentious relationship between moral philosophy and jurisprudence and legislative practices. It may be the case that there are other ways of making a successful claim that nature has legal rights, such as rights of nature being consistent with precedents in a legal system or that such legal rights are coherent with majority views of the proper relation to nature in a specific jurisdiction, with laws expected to reflect the will of the people. But in what follows I focus on the normative ethical dimensions. Several legal systems have accorded legal rights to nature, such as New Zealand, India, and Bolivia. But these laws are partly justified by contingent factors, such as the New Zealand legislation approximating the Whanganui Iwi worldview in law (O’Donnell & Talbot-Jones 2018). Should it be the case that the indigenous people of Whanganui Iwi were not present, as is the case in other nations, then it would be curious to include that worldview in legislation; therefore, it is a contingent factor for granting legal personhood to the Whanganui. That specific reason may justify granting legal rights to the Whanganui, but it does not entail reasons for accepting the legal rights of any river. Similarly, the Ganges was granted legal personhood by India in 2017, primarily because of its being sacred to large parts of the Indian population (O’Donnell & Talbot-Jones 2018). But this is also a contingent factor; if the Ganges did not have this status among a large part of the population, it would not necessarily have been granted legal personhood, which is the foundation for legal rights. Indeed, these foundations seem closer to the relational values discussed in Chapter 7. It has also been claimed that there is a connection between ‘nature’s

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contribution to people’ (NCP) and legal rights (James 2020). Diaz et al. (2018: 272) suggest that the NCP approach facilitates rights-based approaches to conservation (for criticism, see Braat 2018). In an attempt to tease out this argument, James (2020) has suggested that NCP may support rights-based approaches by recognizing the right to a cultural identity. As James concedes, such rights are not recognized by all political philosophers and, even when recognized, work as a kind of ‘soft law’ that ‘is not enshrined in any legallybinding instruments such as treaties’ (2020: 3). Assuming the existence of the right to a cultural identity, James spells out conditions for when NCP and legal rights are mutually supportive: 1. The people of culturally distinct group Y have a meaningful relationship with entity X. 2. Were that relationship to disappear, the cultural identity of those people would be destabilized. 3. The people of Y have a legal right to their cultural identity (James 2020: 3). One can compare this with the discussion of the prevalence of instrumental values in Chapter 3. If X is the sole vehicle for expressing something of great weight, such as meaning, then that provides reasons for preserving X. While there are very good reasons for accepting this claim and acknowledging group rights such as indigenous rights, it is substantially less controversial than accepting RoNs, despite the possible challenges regarding the right to a cultural identity and how to legally encode that right. The reason is that this is still primarily an anthropocentrically based right. Yet, some challenges remain that confront relational values in general, such as how to settle instances when two groups have a similar claim to an entity based on their cultural identity but reach conflicting solutions about what to do with it and what to do with those natural entities to which no one has any specific relation to which people are indifferent. An additional challenge is when established cultural practices work at cross-purposes with conservation aims. An example of that is spring-time bird hunting on the Åland. Roughly between Finland and Sweden, spring-time bird hunting on the island of Åland has been a cultural practice for decades, and people living in Åland represents a minority group in Finland, granting them certain rights by virtue of belonging to that group (Aaltola & Oksanen 2002). Spring-time hunting is not required for subsistence for the inhabitants but is rather an established cultural practice. Yet, the practice was under investigation for violating the EU directive on the protection of wild birds, and at one point the Finnish government and bird protection organizations appealed to that directive to stop the hunting of birds (Aaltola & Oksanen 2002). Though making balances between different practices and principles in a fair manner faces challenges, such as how to give precedence to any one view, such conflicts at the very least raise the importance of dialogue (Aaltola & Oksanen 2002). Although there is a substantial value of the right to maintain cultural practices, its expression should be coherent with other principles (Aaltola & Oksanen 2002).

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Regardless of the discussion above and how to solve potential conflicts between conservation and cultural practices, it should be noted that the argument does not necessarily provide support for RoNs. Instead, the view, relying on cultural relations, seems to reiterate and provide an argument in favour of legally encoding environmental human rights (Oksanen, Dodsworth, & O’Doherty 2018). We may have a right to a healthy environment because we are ecologically embedded beings, and an environment of a certain kind of quality or meaning is a prerequisite for our well-being, not merely in the sense of providing us with ecosystem services, if that concept is understood in a reductive sense, but also in the sense of providing us with meaning. That meaning may differ between groups and can in some instances provide a case for stronger conservation with appeal to group rights. If successful, relational values and environmental human rights are not limited to instrumentalist accounts of the services that nature provides. But cultural practices need not always be consistent with conservation aims, in which case dialogue must be established, together with a careful assessing of relevant principles, such as the reasons for conservation. But relational values depend on an ecosystem having a meaning or cultural relevance to a specific group and being part of their cultural identity, to which they have a right. Absent that meaning and relation to cultural identity, an environmental entity would not be protected by legal rights. By contrast, Stone’s argument, if successful, would justify the claim that any river (or ecosystem) should be granted rights. Stated differently, accepting Stone’s argument would mean that it would not be unreasonable for any legislation to accept that nature has rights. Consequently, a great deal is at stake. Although it must be noted that Stone’s arguments are situated in the US legal system and furthermore have a very practical aim of providing new tools for environmental protection (Kurki 2019), I take Stone’s suggestion to have a more general character and be relevant to legal systems in which guardians are uncontroversially appointed to protect the interests of others. Interests and harms of nature

A primary premise of Stone’s account is the notion of harms and benefits, or more broadly ‘interests’. Harms and benefits are central in the second and third, respectively, of the necessary conditions that Stone establishes to hold legal rights (2010: 4). He goes as far as stating that it can communicate its needs to us: ‘The lawn tells me that it wants water by a certain dryness of the blades and soil – immediately obvious to the touch – the appearance of bald spots, yellowing, and a lack of springiness after being walked on’ (2010: 11). Stone emphasizes that ‘the more encompassing the entity of concern, the less certain we can be in venturing judgments as to the “wants” of any particular substance, quality, or species within the universe’ (2010: 187 n72). There is something intuitively appealing about Stone’s view. We may be familiar with grass and know roughly how ‘healthy’ grass appears: green, a certain softness, no bald spots. But we may be less certain of what constitutes the ‘health’ of an entire ecosystem or a combination of ecosystems.

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The notion of interests provides the foundation for appointing guardians to protect those interests. To Stone, there is not necessarily anything unreasonable about such a system, as we make decision on behalf of, and in the purported interest of, others every day; those ‘others’ are often creatures whose wants are far less verifiable, and even far more metaphysical in conception, than the wants of rivers, trees, and land. (2010: 11) The key here is that the guardians are to consider and represent the injuries of the protected entity in its own right, without appeal to anyone or anything other than the prospect of harm, injury, and compensation to that entity. We may state that ecosystem health is deteriorating with appeal to losses of ecosystem functions that are benign to humans. But if so, we are supporting ecosystem health through an appeal to human interests. Rather, the guardian for, say, a river is to foresee the interests of that river as such, without appeals to human interests (Stone 2010: 13ff.). This could result in interest-based rights. Is it reasonable to establish a system in which the interests of ecosystems and species per se are taken into account? I believe such a proposition faces several challenging objections (Baard 2021). One is that the notion of interests may be difficult to apply to ecosystems and aggregations of non-sentient beings. As Harley Cahen suggests, ‘the literature of environmental ethics is full of appeals to the interest of ecosystems’ (2003: 115), either explicit, as in the case of Stone and thinkers like Aldo Leopold, or implicit. The issue of the entities to which interests can reasonably be ascribed is contentious and separates the individualistic and holistic perspectives discussed in Chapter 3. While it may be sensible to ascribe interests as a concept by which to assess possible harm and injury to sentient beings, or even to non-sentient beings by contrasting the current state to the good of its kind, it may be more counter-intuitive to ascribe it to entire ecosystems. Yet, to many holistic perspectives, it is troublesome to draw the line at sentient beings, as that would exclude regarding a ‘clear-cut forest, a strip-mined hillside, a defoliated jungle’ as being harmed (Cahen 2003: 115). Would it not be reasonable to regard such entities, as communities, as being harmed? Cahen challenges such a proposal. He supports this view as follows. It does not seem reasonable to ascribe interests, in the sense of harms or benefits, to aggregates of non-sentient entities – they are ‘mere things’. It may not be as troublesome to base moral consideration of non-sentient beings if they are, for instance, teleological centres of life (Taylor 2011). Like Stone, we may speak of such life centres as striving to be in a specific state that is a good of their species. It seems as if many such aggregates or systems tend to strive towards specific states of affairs, such as remaining in balance, and could consequently be called goal directed. If it is the case that ecosystems have goals and we consider teleological centres of life as being a necessary condition meriting respect, then

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it would be inconsistent of us to not respect ecosystems, since they also have goals, and respect is conducive of having a good of one’s kind towards which one strives. Ecosystems ‘bounce back’ after disturbances to reach a specific state of equilibrium (Cahen 2003: 119). If true, then that state of equilibrium may be the ‘goal’ towards which an ecosystem strives. By extension, that ‘goal’ may be the tell-tale sign of the ‘interest’ of the ecosystem. This view partly depends on different views of systems in ecological science. There is a significant difference between ‘equilibrium views’ on ecosystems and more recent views that allow for greater stochastic events (Woods 2017). For the former, equilibrium among entities of an ecosystem is a rule, whereas to the latter stability is the exception (Woods 2017). Nature is dynamic, species move about, and habitats are established and relocated. Stone also concedes these dynamics of the environment but suggests that both humanity and the environment should compromise for the betterment of both (Stone 2010: 17). Stability, Cahen suggests, is instead a by-product of the behaviour of the individual entities of an ecosystem, which looks deceptively like a goal; such behavioural by-products have no moral significance (Cahen 2003: 123). Consequently, even if the goal-directedness of individual non-sentient beings provides reasons for respecting them, the concept of goal-directedness of ecosystems neglects the central role of stochasticism and individual behaviour upon which ecosystem stability is based and of which equilibrium is a by-product. One way to rescue the argument would be to insist on the goal-directedness of ecosystems. Yet, this view seemingly has only modest support in ecological science (Cahen 2003: 123), as a ‘flux-of-nature paradigm has replaced an old balance-of-nature paradigm’ (Woods 2017: 160). To older views, an ecosystem is ‘nothing more than a coincidental assembly of individual plants sharing an area arbitrarily defined by an ecologist at a particular instant of time’ (Woods 2017: 162). If true, this poses a serious challenge to interest-based justifications of the legal rights of nature because the foundations required for moral relevance, such as interests or goaldirectedness, are lacking. Views of ecosystems as communities persist, but there are some who suggest that there has been a shift in ecological theory, where under the old paradigm, ecologists tended to see some form of balance or equilibrium as the norm and the disturbances that prevented balance or equilibrium as the exception; under the new paradigm the form is now seen as the exception, and the latter is seen as the norm. (Woods 2017: 166) Regardless how that may be, there are several challenges to identify the goals or objectives of ecosystems, and perhaps even to delineate them. Is an ecosystem like a corporation?

There are, however, ways of rescuing the appeal to interests that Stone makes. One is through an analogy with corporations. The domain of legal rights is not

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limited to humans, as nonhuman entities can also have legal rights. A ‘legal fiction’ can mean many things, but is here understood as a mechanism ‘to create legal personality for a range of nonhuman entities, including, most notably, for-profit corporations’ (O’Donnell & Talbot-Jones 2018). The analogy with corporations is also used by Stone in several places (2010: 1, 8, 166). Indeed, ‘we have become so accustomed to the idea of a corporation having “its” own rights, and being a “person” and “citizen” for so many statutory and constitutional purposes, that we forget how jarring the notion was to early jurists’ (Stone 2010: 2). The analogy to corporations provides a possible argument in favour of the legal rights of nature. Basically, if it is reasonable that corporations are right-holders and nature (or natural entities like ecosystems and rivers) are similar enough to corporations, then it would be inconsistent to not also regard nature as a right-holder. The rights of entities such as corporations differ from rights of humans. A corporation does not have an independent ‘interest’ or ‘will’. It is not an entity that even necessarily exists without the employees and actions undertaken in its name and the interests of its shareholders. Yet, we quite casually ascribe notions such as ‘legal personhood’ to corporations. Historically, the relation between personhood and corporations has been metaphorical, enabling giving the corporation the ability to sue, to face liability, and to own property (Gordon 2018: 63). To some, the environment has a more compelling claim to personhood as it is socially understood and is a more legitimate recipient of rights than corporations (Gordon 2018: 71ff.). The reasons that motivate such a view is that legal personhood has a specific political context in which legal rights are both established and play a function and the very notion of personhood as a stable non-contingent factor can be challenged. As far as ‘selves’ providing the foundation for personhood and legal rights, they are as contingent as nature, so nature could be granted rights on similar foundations (Gordon 2018). This would permit a departure from anthropocentrism, approximating ecocentrism, but still allow for an appeal to personhood. Notions of the self and the metaphysics of persons comprise an enormous philosophical topic, and there may be something to the objection to the unitary self. If our own persons are not unitary selves but rather contingent assemblages, then perhaps nature, being a contingent assemblage of different entities, can also be granted legal personhood. But it seems difficult, perhaps even impossible, to settle the issue of what a self is as a prerequisite for legislation. At the same time, to state that a legal person is anyone recognized as such in a legal system seems overly permissive (Kurki 2019; Baard 2021). Instead of navigating between these two positions – whether a person is a unitary self or the more pragmatic approach, neither of which can be settled here – I focus on the analogy to corporations. Legal philosopher Joel Feinberg (1974) concedes that while we speak of corporate entities as having rights, the analogy to nature (or rather, species, which is his primary focus) falters. In contrast to a species, a corporate entity has ‘a charter, or constitution, or bylaws, with rules defining offices

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and procedures, and it has human beings whose function it is to administer the rules and apply the procedures’ (Feinberg 1974: 56). The presence of the ‘numerous flesh and blood members’ of corporations differ from the case of species, as it is the presence of those members that give the corporation both liabilities and rights. The corporation as such does not exist beyond those members and the rules that they establish. To Feinberg, it is by virtue of the presence of these factors that it becomes sensible to use the concept of rights with corporations, because ‘we know that in the last analysis these are rights or duties of individual persons, acting in their “official capacities”’ (1974: 56). Now, we may concede this while still suggesting that there are possible guardians of environmental areas, but this would not necessitate that it is the environmental area per se that is granted rights. Rather, it may be more reasonable but also less revolutionary for jurisprudence to increase environmental protection due to the collective benefit or status of an environmental area to a group of people who act as a representative for the environmental area. In that case, the rights of a river are really the rights of a collective beneficiary (Kurki 2019). Absent such representatives, the river itself does not have rights. In that way, the analogy to corporations would then be that a collective makes a claim that a specific environmental entity, such as a river, has a special status for them and as such should be granted legal personhood. But this recognition is dependent on the presence of that group and is not based on the characteristics of the river itself. Unfortunately, it is the natural entity per se that many appeals to rights of nature seek to achieve, and those appeals face several challenges. A further contrast to corporations is that corporations have explicit representatives who are widely known, whereas a river may be relevant to two competing groups, each claiming guardianship. This is not likely to occur in a corporation. Situating biodiversity in a framework of rights

A final, very central problem to us, is how to situate biodiversity in a rights-based framework. It may be possible, although I remain doubtful, to find convincing arguments for RoNs and legally formalize the view that nature has rights. But even if that were the case, what status does biodiversity have? Biodiversity may be an instrumental prerequisite for a healthy ecosystem. This is akin to some problems with the rights- and duty-based theories that were discussed in Chapter 4. You may recall that they are primarily individualistic and while treating some goods, possibly including biodiversity, as having indirect moral significance due to being prerequisites for other entities like humans or animals, they fail to provide any moral significance to biodiversity per se. Interestingly, Stone was ambivalent about including biodiversity as part of what he termed ‘the Common Heritage of Humankind’. Such a common heritage would act as a trust fund for future generations and include global commons, which are defined as ‘those portions of the planet and its surrounding space that lie above and beyond the recognized territorial claims of any

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nation’, including ‘the atmosphere, outer space, and the high seas’ (Stone 2010: 126). He envisages a global commons trust fund that would finance a system of global guardianship. The fund would impose taxes on activities like fisheries and emissions, with the proceeds used to help protect our common natural heritage. Although this is an enticing thought that may have a role to play in matters such as climate change, it is more challenging to apply to biodiversity as such. Stone’s ambivalence is motivated by the fact that ‘most biological riches lie within the territories of nations’, and any proposal to share genetic information from forests, trees, and so on ‘may simply intrude too far into their sovereign space and prerogatives’ (2010: 136). Stone appears to focus on the sharing of information that is made available due to species richness rather than biodiversity conservation here. Admittedly, the relation between international law and the global commons on the one side, and national sovereignty on the other, is immensely complicated. Stone supports existing sovereignty, and his global commons framework is based on areas beyond national sovereignty. Irrespective of noteworthy discussions on the relationship between biodiversity conservation and national sovereignty (see Oksanen & Vuorisalo 2019), it seems unlikely that biodiversity as such would be a right-holder; it is at least unclear what that would mean. Judging from the supposedly instrumental value of biodiversity, it may be a right to conventional right-holders such as humans or, from biocentric perspectives other beings, the right to a functioning environment; that is, a right to biodiversity for instrumental reasons. But that is a right to nature, not a right of nature.

What if nature does not have rights? When relating the above discussion to the issue of ethical parsimony, it would seem as if RoNs provide a concept that is not only additional to existing concepts, but also requires the addition of more elements in order to be reasonable. One can contrast the cumbersome conditions that need to be fulfilled to accept RoNs with the consequences in cases where RoN-like positions have been legally recognized. In Ecuador and Bolivia, where RoN-like norms have been included in legislation, RoNs are sometimes trumped by other rights, especially when large mining and fossil fuel interests are involved (Gordon 2018: 85). Even if it seems reasonable to reject RoNs, except possibly as a right to a cultural identity, we are not at a total loss, as there are other reasons to uphold respect for nature and, possibly, biodiversity. Indeed, biocentrist philosopher Paul W. Taylor states the following: Everything which people hope to achieve by such an extension of the concept of rights can equally be accomplished by means of the ideas of respect for nature and the inherent worth of living things, along with the structure of thought that supports and makes intelligible a person’s taking

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the attitude of respect and regarding living things as possessing inherent worth. (2011: 226) A similar sentiment has been expressed by Richard Routley: An environmental ethics does not commit one to the view that natural objects such as trees have rights. […] For moral prohibitions forbidding certain actions with respect to an object do not award that object a correlative right. […] Thus, although any person may have a right by no means every living thing can (significantly) have rights, and arguably most sentient objects other than persons cannot have rights. (1973: 209) Despite the criticism raised in this chapter, it may still be reasonable for entities such as rivers or ecosystems to have legal rights, depending on contingent factors such as the conditions of specific legislations and the role that such entities play for groups in a community. But it may not be sensible to rely on appeals to moral rights to justify such legal rights of nature. However, it seems unlikely that legal rights of nature can be fully motivated without appeals to moral rights. In several cases where legal rights have been granted to nature, it has been in the form of a right bestowed on a group or where an environmental area has a special status to many in a jurisdiction, and legislation should reflect that status. There may be good reasons to strengthen conservation with such appeals. Even though such a view is limited to environmental areas that a specific group considers to have a substantial importance or value, it requires less contentious arguments to be accepted. A natural park, for instance, can be treated as a corporation with a trust and representatives, without requiring the recognition that the park as such has rights. But this should not be confused with a natural entity as such having a right, but is rather more in line with conventional accounts of rights, where right-holders are those that are already recognized as such. It is not the case that an entity that does not have rights has no entitlements or reasons for respect, and it is erroneous to equate the distinction between ‘rights’ and ‘no rights’ with the distinction ‘moral standing’ and ‘no moral standing’ or ‘valuable’ and ‘worthless’. There are reasons beyond rights for an entity to be preserved and its state being considered and given importance in our decisions and actions. There are good reasons why environmental philosophers primarily discuss the notion of value and have given such great weight to identifying the category of value it is sound to apply to nature and natural objects. There are also reasons to be cautious about accepting RoNs. They risk trivializing the entire concept of rights by making it unnecessarily broad and still unhelpful in solving conflicts between the entitlements of different right-holders (Baard 2021). Supporting RoNs would require an overly generous account of what is to be considered a right-holder, an account which substantially departs from conventional criteria for establishing rights, whether limited to interests or autonomy. Moreover, it would likely have very challenging consequences

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requiring the management of potential conflicts between conventional rightholders like humans or animals and the rights of a river. Given that one aim of the RoN concept is to increase environmental legal protections, there are better ways to achieve a similar objective without incurring such costs (see Baard 2021 for a more extensive discussion on RoNs). One possibility is to emphasize the instrumental value of biodiversity and its use to humans as a prerequisite of the enjoyment of human rights (UNHRC 2017) and to others of moral relevance. This is encapsulated by the United Nations Human Rights Council: The full enjoyment of human rights, including the rights to life, health, food and water, depends on the services provided by ecosystems. The provision of ecosystem services depends on the health and sustainability of ecosystems, which in turn depend on biodiversity. The full enjoyment of human rights thus depends on biodiversity, and the degradation and loss of biodiversity undermine the ability of human beings to enjoy their human rights. (UN Human Rights Council, 2017. Biodiversity and Human Rights, A/HRC/34/49) There are risks of basing the value of biodiversity and ecosystem services on their instrumental value. It may be too anthropocentrically narrow to include all that we value with nature, and it may allow substitutability under some conditions, and moreover it may rely to a great extent on to older views biodiversity, that is, species richness, and ecosystem services. But when moral standing is ascribed to other entities, and it is recognized what unique form of instrumental value the biosphere provides, that should call for good reasons to preserve it, which do not need the detour of defending the rights of nature as such.

Notes 1 www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2014/0051/latest/whole.html#DLM6183705 2 Stone does not offer a definition of ‘homocentrism’, and he seems to use it interchangeably with ‘anthropocentrism’ (2010: 24). I take it that he means that homocentrism is equivalent to anthropocentrism in the sense of restricting moral importance to the interests, well-being, or dignity of humans.

References Aaltola, E. & Oksanen, M., 2002. ‘Species conservation and minority rights: The case of springtime bird hunting in Åland’, Environmental Values, 11, pp. 443–460. Baard, P. 2021. ‘Fundamental challenges for rights of nature’ in Corrigan, D. & Oksanen, M. (eds.), Rights of Nature: A Re-examination. London: Routledge. Braat, J., 2018. ‘Five reasons why the science publication ‘assessing nature’s contributions to people’ (Diaz et al 2018) would not have been accepted in Ecosystem Services’, Ecosystem Services, 30 (Part A), pp. A1–A2. Cahen, H., 2003. ‘Against the moral considerability of ecosystems’ in Light, A. & Rolston, H., (eds.), Environmental Ethics: An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 114–128.

150 Recent developments Chapron, G., Epstein, Y., & López-Bao, J.V., 2019. ‘A rights revolution for nature’, Science, 363, pp. 1392–1393. Corrigan, D., 2021. ‘Human rights and rights of nature’ in Corrigan, D. & Oksanen, M., (eds.), Rights of Nature: A Re-examination. London: Routledge, pp. 101–120. Diaz, S., et al., 2018. ‘Assessing nature’s contributions to people’, Science, 359, pp. 270–272. Feinberg, J., 1974. ‘The rights of animals and unborn generations’ in Blackstone, W.T. (ed.), Philosophy & Environmental Crisis. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, pp. 43–68. Gordon, G.J., 2018. ‘Environmental personhood’, Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, 43, pp. 50–91. James, S.P., 2020. ‘Legal rights and nature’s contributions to people: Is there a connection?’, Biological Conservation, pp. 1–4. doi: 10.1016/j.biocon.2019.108325 Kramer, M.H., Simmonds, N.E., & Steiner, H., 2002. A Debate over Rights: Philosophical Enquiries. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kurki, V., 2019. A Theory of Legal Personhood. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mill, J.S., 1879 [1859]. On Liberty. New York: Henry Holt & Company. Available online: https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/mill-on-liberty-and-the-subjection-of -women-1879-ed O’Donnell, E.L. & Talbot-Jones, J., 2018. ‘Creating legal rights for rivers: Lessons from Australia, New Zealand, and India’, Ecology and Society, 23, pp. 1–10. doi: 10.5751/ ES-09854-230107 Oksanen, M., & Vuorisalo, T., 2019. ‘Conservation sovereignty and biodiversity’ in Casetta, E., et al. (eds.), From Assessing to Conserving Biodiversity, History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences 24, Cham: Springer Nature. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-10991-2_21 Oksanen, M., Dodsworth, A., & O’Doherty, S., (eds.) 2018. Environmental Human Rights: A Political Theory Perspective. London: Routledge. Regan, T., 2004 [1983]. The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press. Ross, W.D., 2002 [1930]. The Right and the Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Routley, R., 1973. ‘Is there a need for a new, an environmental, ethics?’ In: Proceedings of the XVth World Congress of Philosophy. Varna, Bulgaria: Sofia Press, pp. 205–210. Stone, C., 1972. ‘Should trees have standing? toward legal rights for natural objects’, Southern California Law Review, 45, pp. 450–501. Stone, C., 2010. Should Trees Have Standing: Law, Morality and the Environment. 3rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Taylor, P.W., 2011 [1986]. Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics. 25th anniversary edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. United Nations Human Rights Council, 2017. Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Issue of Human Rights Obligations Relating to the Enjoyment of a Safe, Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment. A/HRC/34/49. https://undocs.org/A/HRC/34/49 Williams, B., 1973. Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956–1972. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Woods, M., 2017. Rethinking Wilderness. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press.

9

Conservation biology, assessments, and the argument from inductive risk

A common and indeed ideal view of science is its value neutrality and lack of interest in anything but the pursuit of truth. I suggest that while the standard epistemic view, with a sharp distinction between facts and values, may hold as an ideal, it cannot be concluded that such a sharp delineation holds in conservation biology. The chapter proceeds as follows. First, I present the ‘standard view’, which entails a sharp distinction between facts and values. This view is motivated by both common-sense views of scientific research and by theorists in philosophy of science, as well as in moral philosophy. I do not wish to refute this view in general, but I do suggest that if practical guidance is a prime motivating reason for research, then norms and values become ingrained. Arguments in favour of such a conclusion rest on epistemic norms for science in general, but also how conservation biology is an applied science similar to technological science, and the role that risk plays in conservation.

Respecting the fact–value divide: Science as value-neutral There is continuously a pressing need for expertise in assessment and social decision-making. Societies are getting more complex, decisions have more far-reaching impacts, and we learn more about the impacts of our decisions on both social and ecological systems. Learning that the ozone was becoming depleted due to the release of substances such as chlorofluorocarbons would have been impossible without the expertise of several kinds. Learning about this also motivated the Montreal Protocol, which limited such substances. The protocol is ‘often touted as a model of successful science-based policy’ (Oppenheimer et al. 2019: 81). I think we all recognize what could be dubbed the ‘standard epistemic view’, which can be described in the following manner: In theory, the relationship between these domains is clear: scientists, acting as independent professional experts, self-assess their knowledge base and make this information available to those who may wish to use it (or not) to inform policy choices. […] Scientists, with their technical knowledge, DOI: 10.4324/9781003110712-9

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are experts about facts, but the value decisions implicit in policy choices involve considerations that extend beyond their expertise. (Oppenheimer et al. 2019: 171) We can formulate the standard epistemic view thusly: Science is limited to factual statements, supported by empirical evidence, plausible theoretical models, or other accepted methods. The distinction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ supports the standard epistemic view. While we have factual statements, on the one hand, normative statements are found on the other. While the latter are needed in order to make prescriptive conclusions, factual statements are in no need of normative statements or positions. Factual statements, so to speak, belong to a different domain. The firm distinction between facts and values has a long history in the philosophy of science. The standard view was strengthened by many moral philosophers during the twentieth century. For example, ‘expressivists’ would state that there is no way to assess the veracity of normative statements. Stating that ‘murder is wrong’ is merely to state that one disapproves of murder; there are no nonagent-relative foundations by which to assess whether such a statement holds. This is an extension of the distinction. ‘Naturalism’ is often rejected, stating that the ‘source of evidence for moral judgment is experience, observation, science, and descriptive knowledge’ (Norton 2005: 203). The legitimacy of such sources for ethical reasoning is refuted by Moore (2004[1903]). Instead, Moore’s argument suggests an autonomy of ethics in which central notions such as ‘goodness’ are separate from natural facts and not reducible to observable qualities (Baard & Ahteensuu 2019; Moore 2004[1903]; Norton 2005: 201). A central part of Moore’s position is called ‘the open question argument’. Say that we have a policy P for area A that will maintain levels of biodiversity. If we define biodiversity as ‘containing a multitude of species’, it follows analytically that P will result in a multitude of species in A. Stating a question such as ‘A is biologically diverse, but does it contain a multitude of species?’ is a closed question, since it follows analytically from the stipulated definition of biodiversity that it must contain a multitude of species. In contrast, a question such as ‘P increases biodiversity, but is P good?’ is an open question (see Baard & Ahteensuu 2019 for a discussion). The answer does not follow analytically from the definition of biodiversity. Similarly, the question ‘Many people consider biodiversity valuable, but is biodiversity good?’ is also an open question. From the mere fact that many people consider something valuable, it does not follow analytically that it is good (Baard & Ahteensuu 2019; Moore 2004[1903]: 66ff., 73). Many have objected to Moore’s clear-cut distinction between facts and values (Norton 2005) and the extent to which the ‘open question argument’ succeeds in establishing an autonomy of ethics (Williams 1993), but it coheres with the standard epistemic view in the following way: moral philosophy

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needs moral arguments and is separate from the facts that scientific research investigates. From the standard epistemic view, it follows that the responsibility of a scientist is limited to expanding human knowledge. In contrast, values and choices belong to other domains like politics or ethics. This view was portrayed quite vividly by Alvin W. Weinberg: Ordinarily the assumption is made that a particular issue on which scientific knowledge is drawn into the resolution of a political conflict – for example, whether or not to build a supersonic transport (SST) or whether or not to proceed with a trip to the moon – can be neatly divided into two clearly separate elements, one scientific, the other political. Thus the scientist is expected to say whether a trip to the moon is feasible or whether the SST will cause additional skin cancer. The politician, or some other representative of society, is then expected to say whether the society ought to proceed in one direction or another. The scientist and science provide the means; the politicians and politics decide the ends. (1972: 209) Weinberg goes on to state that this view is overly simplified. First, even in social issues where there is clear scientific knowledge, it is difficult to distinguish means from ends. One can imagine a decision to build an SST as a political goal; scientific research then assesses how that goal can be reached. Yet, those analyses of means will most likely also have non-scientific implications which must be assessed in moral and political terms (Weinberg 1972). It may be necessary to clear a lot of forest or infringe on private property to build the SST. Whether those prerequisites are permissible or not relative to the goal of constructing an SST are moral and political issues. The distinction between facts and values that the standard view expresses is quite common and is echoed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on two notable occasions: Natural, technical, and social sciences can provide essential information and evidence needed for decisions on what constitutes ‘dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.’ At the same time, such decisions are value judgments. (2001: 2) And again reformulated 2014: Two main issues confronting society (and the IPCC) are: what constitutes ‘dangerous interference’ with the climate system and how to deal with that interference. Determining what is dangerous is not a matter for natural science alone; it also involves value judgments – a subject matter of the

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theory of value, which is treated in several disciplines, including ethics, economics, and other social sciences. (2014: 211) There are different ways of interpreting these two quotes. On the one hand, it appears to include ethical issues in what is otherwise thought of as a firmly scientific issue – defining and assessing dangerous interference with the climate system. On the other, it may be interpreted as stating that while normative issues are relevant, there is still a distinction between facts and values as expressed in the standard view. It appears obvious that the first interpretation is the one that is more consistent with the quotes. When we discuss risks below, we also see that normative dimensions are an integral part of defining risks. But we may be too quick to establish the fact–value distinction. The quote above from Oppenheimer et al. (2019: 171) continues as follows: ‘However, in the practice of assessment, there are no absolute (or even consistent relative) standards for the relationship between facts and values, science and policy, and the technical and the political’. Thus, there is at the very least a complex relationship between facts and values that must be considered. This may especially be the case for assessments that are based on objective or pure research, in the sense of being disinterested or unaffected by vested interests, but which aspire to have practical relevance. Thus, a weaker version of the standard view is reinforced in which there are some, if highly restricted, scientific issues and concepts which are affected by normative perspectives: The weak version of standard epistemic view: There are some limited effects of normative premises and concepts on some research. I argue that the weak version of the standard epistemic view holds in the case of conservation science.

Challenging the value-neutral thesis I believe there are good reasons to uphold the distinction between facts and values. However, it is also important to explicate the normative premises that often form a framework for scientific research. It should be clear from the outset that what I have to say here is not applicable to all scientific research. However, values are often implicit, serving as foundations for both scientific conduct and for forms of research that aim to have practical relevance. Making normative premises explicit can be facilitated with appeal to ethics. It should be noted that in the following I limit myself to discussing the normative content of scientific research. Consequently, I do not discuss the naturalistic fallacy and the ways in which facts are relevant to ethics. While an interesting and important discussion (Norton 2005), it would require at least a chapter of its own and is outside the scope of this volume.

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Different forms of knowledge: Basic and applied science

There are epistemic norms and values that ought to be considered in research and that form a research ethical framework. The ‘standard epistemic view’ may intuitively be quite reasonable to scientific research that typically falls under the heading of ‘basic’ or ‘pure’ science, research that aims to investigate fundamental laws and improve scientific theories (Hansson 2007a). Consider a theoretical mathematician or physicist. Now there may be values involved in such research, such as epistemic or scientific norms that influence what is to be considered good evidence or what the obligations of a scientist are. While any definition is bound to miss important aspects, one can perhaps tentatively define scientific research as a fact-finding practice that aims at the continuous improvement of beliefs (Hansson 2018a). Moreover, science is an enterprise that seeks truth. The discussion of non-epistemic values in basic or pure science is vast and dates at the very least to Rudner’s 1953 article ‘The Scientist qua Scientist Makes Value Judgments’ (Hansson 2007a; Winsberg 2018). Rudner suggests that values come into play in science when the cost of erroneously rejecting or accepting a hypothesis differs. There is a difference between a hypothesis such as ‘a toxic ingredient of a drug is not present in lethal quantity’ and a hypothesis such as ‘a certain lot of machine-stamped belt buckles is not defective’ with respect to the possible consequences if one erroneously accepts or rejects those hypotheses and how strong the evidence needs to be before we accept a hypothesis (Winsberg 2018: 133; Rudner 1953). Yet, despite researchers having interests and values, it is generally a part of the academic ethos to design a culture that keeps such aspects under control to the greatest extent possible (Hansson 2007a; Ziman 1996). More closely related to normative issues in research as such, Pimple (2002) has made a noteworthy suggestion of six domains of research ethics that correspond to the three categories of truthfulness, fairness, and wisdom. Pimple states the three categories as questions: (a) ‘Is it true?’; (b) ‘Is it fair?’; and (c) ‘Is it wise?’ Category (a) contains such issues as the extent to which research results correspond to reality. Does the research report what is actually the case? Is it an accurate recounting of entities and dynamics of the physical world? In category (b) are relationships between researchers and other researchers and human and animal subjects. This includes such issues as the extent to which prior research has been referred to but also whether human and animal subjects have been treated according to research ethical guidelines. In category (c) are the relationships between the research and the wider society. Will the research results benefit human conditions, or will they worsen them? Issues of social responsibility are of importance here and are surely worth considering in some research. ‘Basic science’ is often contrasted to applied science, a form of science that often relies on the findings in basic science but uses them for practical purposes (Hansson 2007a). Instead of being motivated primarily by the larger objective of increasing the knowledge available to humankind, applied science is often

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very much oriented towards and motivated by solving practical problems. One example is technological science; according to Hansson (2007b), there are six characteristics of technological science that separate it from other sciences. In addition to having human-made rather than natural objects as their study object, technological sciences are characterized by defining their study objects in functional terms, evaluating those study objects with category-specific value statements, employing fewer far-reaching idealizations than the natural sciences, and not needing an exact mathematical solution when a sufficient approximation is available (Hansson 2007b). There are several ways in which values are part of applied sciences like the technological sciences. First, technological artefacts are commonly characterized by functional attributes that highlight their intended use. This indicates that such artefacts have a purpose and bridge ‘human intentions and the physical world’ (Hansson 2007b: 525). While concepts in natural science strive for value neutrality, consistent with the standard epistemic view, the technological sciences have many concepts that are clearly normative. These include concepts such as ‘user friendly’, ‘environmentally friendly’, or ‘risky’. This also goes for striving for improvements such as building ‘better’ bridges (Hansson 2007b: 525). The value statements often refer to functional concepts, such as something being a ‘good screwdriver’, which indicates that it serves its purpose well. The practical character of technological sciences has epistemic repercussions that further motivate ambitions of application. Whereas a theoretical physicist can perform experiments in a vacuum to correspond to theoretical models that exclude atmospheric pressure, a physicist involved in constructing a machine based on electromagnetic principles cannot simply discard the influence of gravity (Hansson 2007b: 526). Thus, technological sciences do not require as far-reaching idealizations as natural science. Demands for precision also differ between the two, as the precision that an engineer requires is often obtainable by sufficiently good approximations (Hansson 2007b: 526). In the natural sciences, an analytical solution will always be preferred for being more generalizable and based on natural laws that are universally valid. Furthermore, values are incorporated into the focus on design in the technological sciences; they not only study human-made artefacts but also construct such artefacts (Hansson 2007b: 524) based on how things ought to be (Houkes 2009). These design processes are often aimed at satisfying preestablished design goals that may have to be reconsidered in trade-offs that arise during the design process. There are also value-related issues to design. What is often called ‘value-sensitive design’ (VSD) ‘accounts for human values in a principled and comprehensive manner throughout the design process’ (Friedman, Kahn, & Borning 2002: 1). VSD originated in the area of information and communication technologies and often acknowledges values such as integrity and privacy in the design process of technologies in that area, such as web browsers (Friedman, Kahn, & Borning 2002). VSD seeks to be proactive and includes values even at the planning stage; throughout the design and

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construction processes, it aims to expand the set of relevant values beyond participation and offers ‘a principled approach to design that maintains that certain values (such as those that pertain to human welfare, rights and justice) have moral standing independent of whether a particular person or group upholds such values’ (Friedman, Kahn, & Borning 2002: 2). VSD includes a tripartite form of investigation: conceptual, empirical, and technological. Conceptual investigations are ‘philosophically informed analyses of the central constructs and issues under investigation’ (Friedman, Kahn, & Borning 2002: 2), whereas empirical investigations investigate the human context of technological artefacts: basically, what values are ascribed by stakeholders to an artefact and how those values are affected. Usability is a key notion in this regard, and empirical investigations also incorporate possible value conflicts. Lastly, technological investigations include how technological artefacts support or hinder human values, such as privacy in the case of information and communication technologies (Friedman, Kahn, & Borning 2002). Despite originally being closely associated with information and communication technologies, VSD is relevant to developing and constructing technology that will have environmental impacts. Consider the case of wind power. Wind turbines and wind parks are constructed with the functional purpose of providing energy in a manner that does not contribute to emitting fossil fuels. Thus, a latent motivating value is to reduce the risks of dangerous climate change for future generations. But constructing parks of wind turbines will also have impacts and may require trade-offs between aesthetic and ecological impacts (Oosterlaken 2015). It has been found that low wind turbines, spaced at regular intervals, minimize visual impact and thus cohere with aesthetic values, whereas high wind turbines have more drastic visual impacts on landscapes (Oosterlaken 2015: 368ff.). In addition, there may be noise disturbances that are an impact of wind turbines on human well-being. Noise levels depend partly on operating speed, and bigger wind turbines operate at a slower pace due to their larger rotors (Oosterlaken 2015: 370). However, low wind turbines have lesser nominal power than high wind turbines, and therefore wind parks require more low wind turbines to produce the same amount of energy as fewer high wind turbines. At the same time, there are ecological costs to low wind turbines as their height and number increase the risks of bird collisions (Oosterlaken 2015: 369ff.). The point here is not that VSD solves these issues but that it brings them to the foreground. One possibility for designing technological artefacts that incorporate ecological values is called ‘nature-inclusive design’ (Oosterlaken 2015: 368). Developed in the Netherlands, such design options for wind parks integrate natural development by seeking to benefit wildlife during design and construction (Huber & Horbarty 2013: 18). Some forms of renewable sources, such as hydropower, are controversial from the perspective of ecological impact. Despite generating vast amounts of energy without using fossil fuels or nuclear energy, hydroelectric plants have a questionable ecological impact. Again, the question is not one of ‘solving’ these issues here but of explicating the values

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involved. How one settles a trade-off between detrimental wildlife impact for the benefit of energy that depends on neither fossil fuels nor nuclear energy will to a large extent depend on one’s normative commitments. Conservation biology

Is conservation biology akin to technological science, rendering it applied and with values incorporated in different parts of the research? Conducting research is filled with choices that are based on judgments. Such choices are not always fully determined by data but can involve other considerations, such as ‘methodological value judgments’ (Shrader-Frechette & McCoy 1993: 88ff.). As is discussed in Chapter 2, conservation science has often been described as a value-laden discipline. In a similar sense as medicine, in which practical implementation partly regulates the knowledge sought out, ecological knowledge is also constrained in part by conservation goals. Shrader-Frechette and McCoy (1993) identify several methodological value judgments which ultimately challenge the view that research in ecological science is value-neutral. The following list deals specifically with island biogeography underlying the design and creation of nature reserves, but the value judgments identified have a much wider application (Shrader-Frechette & McCoy 1993): 88ff.): 1. Choices must be made whether individual species, ecosystems, or biodiversity ought to be preserved, if not all of them are possible. 2. Choices must be made between maximizing current or future biodiversity. 3. Ecologists must frequently evaluate the explanatory value of general theories relative to specific reserves when adequate empirical data are missing. 4. Subjective estimates are required when ecologists do not have access to robust knowledge of ‘minimum viable population’ sizes of areas. 5. Ecologists must often subjectively assess the value of different reserve shapes. 6. Theories have rarely been tested in all specific contexts, and ecologists who use a theory ‘must make a variety of methodological value judgments about its applicability’. 7. The explanatory value of a variety of factors must be assessed, as it is not always those factors that are dominant enough in island biogeography to allow for the prediction of species numbers. 8. Given the disanalogy between islands and nature reserves, a number of value judgments pertaining to representativeness and importance must be made when implementing a theory relevant for nature reserves to islands and vice versa. 9. Popular strategies may be questionable in other contexts, forcing evaluation of their effectiveness. 10. Island biogeography yields predictions that cannot always be tested due to imprecision, and those who use such theories must make evaluations of non-testable predictions.

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A general problem is the lack of a ‘general theory’ that could be implemented to guide conservation biology and policies, requiring ecologists to ‘fill in the gap’ and assess epistemically how well fitted a theory is to the case at hand. We may start by noting that there are several similarities between technological sciences and conservation biology. Sven Ove Hansson suggests that the notion of ‘functional’ is central to both technological and biological sciences (2007b: 525). Concepts such as ‘fin, eye, gland, stem, flower, and food are all defined according to the functions for the organism’ (Hansson 2007b: 525), similarly to how functional concepts play a central role in the technological sciences. This opens up the possibility of assessment, such as something being a ‘good eye’ in relation to its function of seeing, similarly to how a ‘good screwdriver’ is assessed relative to its function. Additionally, as is suggested by several points from Shrader-Frechette and McCoy (1993), conservation biology makes fewer far-reaching idealizations than ‘pure’ sciences. Ecological systems are complex and require assessing the interaction between a multitude of factors. Consequently, it may be difficult to transfer conclusions about one specific ecosystem to another. Yet, ecological science has strived for mathematical modelling to allow predictability based on regularities. One example is the Lotka-Volterra equation between predator and prey, which ideally allows for predictions of respective population sizes (Woods 2017: 158). Models have also been devised to predict population sizes based on theories of island biogeography (Woods 2017: 159). A common tendency of such models is that they assume that populations reach some form of balance or equilibrium (Woods 2017: 159). Another type of model regards ecosystems as flows of predictable energy processes, leaving ecologists to explain how they work in a regular, mechanistic fashion (Woods 2017: 159). But what is often described as a shift to a new nonequilibrium paradigm replacing an old equilibrium paradigm (Woods 2017: 160) means questioning the ability of ecologists to make successful predictions about determinate events that are stochastic and unpredictable and occur in contexts where mathematical models cannot gain empirical verification (Woods 2017: 164). Chance seems to play too large a role in ecosystems for the possibility of establishing mechanistic and linear models based on equilibrium. However, models that regard ecological systems as self-regulating systems of organism populations and species persist. Instead of equilibrium, some models base ecological systems on avoiding disturbances. Thus, in the old paradigm, disturbances were the exception to equilibrium, whereas stochastic events and unpredictability are now regarded as the norm in ecosystems (Woods 2017: 166). However, it may also be the case that ecosystems are not characterized by inherent randomness, meaning that they are irreducible to being deterministic; rather, they may appear random due to incomplete information (Regan, Colyvan, & Burgman 2002: 620). Regardless, what this long detour serves to illustrate is how conservation science, like technological science, makes less use of universally valid idealizations and has a more context-focused approximal base, as several of Shrader-Frechette and McCoy’s points make clear.

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One significant difference between conservation biology and technological science is the object of study. For technological science, human-made artefacts are primarily, if not exclusively, the objects of study (Hansson 2007b; Houkes 2009). In contrast, conservation biology’s object of study is the environment. We have also observed the central role played by the notion of natural values, primarily defined through exempting the influence of human intention and design, in conservation biology. Yet it is not unconditionally true that conservation biology is limited to non-artefacts. The examples offered by ShraderFrechette and McCoy (1993) concern the design and establishment of nature reserves. Similarly, in restoration ecology, conservation biology plays a central part in restoring a damaged ecosystem. If this is true, then using artefacts as objects of study is a commonality between technological sciences and conservation biology.

Risks, values, and the precautionary principle To prepare for or reduce the negative environmental and social impacts of decisions requires assessments of risk, an area where the epistemic and normative dimensions coincide. This section provides an overview of certain central issues where risk management and adjacent concepts like the precautionary principle and inductive risks can be related to conservation biology. Risk assessment entails that normative premises are directly involved when assessing decisions and policies, and where the commitments to which one’s normative beliefs bind oneself will make a difference. You may recall from Chapter 2 that Soulé describes conservation biology as a crisis discipline (1985: 727). By this he means that conservation biologists are often asked to offer assessments on a wide range of things (Soulé 1985: 727). As Chapter 6 shows, the view of conservation biology as a crisis discipline is reiterated by Kareiva and Marvier, even if they suggest expanding the motivation for conservation science to include ecosystem services (2012: 964). In their updating of the postulates of conservation biology, they retain the position that conservation biology is a crisis discipline but insist that it is based on evidence, similarly to how medicine ‘has undergone a revolution whereby its practitioners increasingly rely on systematically accumulated evidence and meta-analyses of collection of studies rather than on personal experience and word of mouth’ (Kareiva & Marvier 2012: 962). This implies that the epistemic base becomes stronger and more robust as experience accumulates and meta-studies are conducted. Besides being asked to assess the impacts of prospective decisions, conservation biology, for Soulé, is a crisis discipline in another aspect: it requires decisions to be taken and analyses to be done under conditions of uncertainty. Indeed, Soulé states that ‘tolerating uncertainty is often necessary’ in conservation biology (1985: 727). This is an aspect that is missing to some extent in Kareiva and Marvier (2012), who do not mention the word ‘uncertainty’. This may give the perception that ecological science is exempt from

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uncertainty but – despite developments in ecological science and applied ecology and other disciplines relevant for conservation biology – uncertainty is a common notion, and it is wise to recognize and include degrees of uncertainty in measures because most conservation interventions (along with inaction) are unlikely to be made from an epistemic position in which all possible consequences and their probabilities are known. Similarly, concerns have been raised about restoration – the intentional restoration of an ecosystem to an earlier version following damage or degradation – is largely impossible due to the failure to reliably predict how a habitat would change following management conditions, in addition to uncertainty regarding prior states of habitats, both of which drive a reliance on approximations (Higgs 2003; Sarkar 2011: 346). One can distinguish between several forms of uncertainty. Regan, Colyvan and Burgman (2002) differentiate epistemic from linguistic uncertainties, although both are relevant to conservation biology. Epistemic uncertainty concerns knowledge about a system and ‘includes uncertainty due to limitations of measurement devices, insufficient data, extrapolations and interpolations, and variability over time or space’ (Regan, Colyvan, & Burgman 2002: 618). Linguistic uncertainty is related to linguistic practices and vagueness of language, which is ‘underspecific, ambiguous, vague, context dependent, or exhibits theoretical indeterminacies’ (Regan, Colyvan, & Burgman 2002: 618). Regan, Colyvan, and Burgman contend that scientific vocabulary, including concepts such as biodiversity, is not exempt from such linguistic uncertainties. Regarding the concept ‘biodiversity’ specifically, Regan, Colyvan, and Burgman state that even if the very meaning of such a concept is in dispute (which seems true), one solution is ‘to fix the meaning [of biodiversity] in ways that are fruitful and in keeping with the intuitive themes the words initially evoke’ (2002: 624). Before such meanings are fixed, ‘the terms are more like placeholders for theoretical terms to which meanings will later be attributed’ (Regan, Colyvan, & Burgman 2002: 624). However, as is suggested in Chapter 2, using vague concepts requires that one stipulate how they are used and what they refer to in specific contexts. In addition to linguistic uncertainty, Milner-Gulland and Shea (2017) distinguish four different uncertainties: process, observation, model, and structural uncertainty. Process uncertainty refers to the inherent variation in systems, whereas observation uncertainty reflects the fact that ecological systems are only partially observable and that observation and measurement devices may fail to obtain a true value. This also goes for model and structural uncertainty, which includes limitations in our representational models of the real world from which we attempt to infer true values. Illustratively, Regan, Colyvan, and Burgman (2002) distinguish six categories each of epistemic and linguistic uncertainty (see Table 9.1). Epistemic uncertainty is relevant to the issues of ‘risk’ and ‘uncertainty’, two central concepts to decision-making. The most straightforward definition of ‘risk’ refers to the probability conjunct with a harm or loss. In technical

162 Recent developments Table 9.1 Specifications of sources and types of uncertainty (Regan, Colyvan, & Burgman 2002) Uncertainty Type of uncertainty Description Epistemic

Linguistic

Measurement error Systematic error

Imperfections in measuring equipment and observational techniques Bias in the measuring equipment or sampling procedure, in addition to systematic bias resulting from the theory-ladenness of observation Natural variation Natural variation in systems that are difficult to predict Inherent Inherently non-deterministic systems where dynamics randomness cannot be predicted Model Uncertainty that arises due to our representations of uncertainty systems, either due to models being reduced only to variables believed relevant and prominent for the purpose at hand, or in the way constructs are used to represent processes, which may not be reducible to those variables Subjective Interpretation of data involves elements of subjective judgment judgments Vagueness Language use allows borderline cases, where difficulties arise regarding the extension of concepts such as ‘endangered’ Context Failure to specify the context in which a proposition is to dependence be understood Ambiguity Words and concepts can have more than one plausible meaning Indeterminacy Future usage of theoretical terms is not fixed by past usage Underspecificity When a statement does not provide the desired degree of specificity

contexts, risk often denotes a choice with possible, but not certain, adverse outcomes. Often, one of the following definitions is intended (Hansson 2018b): An unwanted event which may or may not occur. The cause of an unwanted event which may or may not occur. The probability of an unwanted event which may or may not occur. The statistical expectation value of an unwanted event which may or may not occur. 5. The fact that a decision is made under conditions of known probabilities (‘decision under risk’ as opposed to ‘decision under uncertainty’). 1. 2. 3. 4.

The definitions differ to various degrees but have in common extending over future states of affairs that may or may not come to pass. The conjunction

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of possibility and loss or harm provides the foundation for risk analysis. In a choice between different actions with possible outcomes, ‘each such possible outcome is assigned a quantitative value that is equal to the probabilityweighted value of the outcome, should it materialize’ (Hansson 2007c: 650). These choices’ expectation values can be compared with outcomes. This is a standard approach to assessing risks (Hansson 2007c), but a few items are worth noting. First, the possible benefits of choices must be included when ranking choices. Second, negative outcomes may be of many different kinds that are not always measurable or susceptible to monetary expression (Hansson 2007c). Definition 5 is quite common in technical contexts and separates decisionmaking under risk from decision-making under uncertainty. A distinction between the two is formulated as follows: In a problem of decision under risk, the outcome of some possible course of action is not known in advance, but the range of possible outcomes of each available course of action is known, and the probabilities of all the outcomes in each range are also known. A decision is taken under uncertainty when even less knowledge is available than in a case of decision under risk. In particular, even where the possible outcomes are known in advance, the probabilities of each of these are not. (Altham 1983: 15) The distinction between risk and uncertainty is significant. It may often be very difficult to establish what exact probability one should ascribe to different outcomes in any meaningful manner.1 The lack of such probabilities will make it impossible to rank different choices based on expectation values, since probabilities are not present. However, ‘probability’ is itself a somewhat vague term and is often used to denote either the frequency with which something may happen or credence in a statement being true. The first form refers to the chances that an event will occur, whereas the latter refers to the degree of belief and is sometimes called ‘subjective probability’ (Hansson 2018b). In practice, it is often the case that probabilities, in the sense of chance that an event will occur, are not available, that there are wide probability intervals, or that probabilities are treated as being known through idealizing the outcomes of choices. An epistemological challenge to practical decision-making is how to deal with the limitations of our knowledge of complex structures like ecosystems (Hansson 2018b). In systems characterized by what Regan, Colyvan, and Burgman call ‘inherent randomness’ (2002: 620), there are by definition no ways of assessing probabilities due to the fundamental indeterminacy of such systems. Yet, as those authors concede, it is likely that biological systems ‘appear random because of incomplete information’ (2002: 620). From an epistemic perspective, this results in decisions being made under uncertainty. However, this does not mean that reasonably reliable statements about such systems cannot be made as there are regularities, despite the complexity involved.

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Conservation biologists have developed methods for managing uncertainty (Milner-Gulland & Shea 2017; Regan, Colyvan, & Burgman 2002). One such method is ‘ecological risk assessment’, which is a ‘process of evaluating the likelihood of an undesirable ecological outcome, like the loss of a population, habitat, or ecosystem, occurring as a result of some action such as a new policy, a new construction project, etc.’ (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017: 114). We may note how little guidance this definition provides regarding instances when probabilities are lacking, as it explicitly concerns evaluating likelihood. However, environmental risk assessment includes ‘uncertainty factors’, which are methods ‘to account for places where uncertainty creeps into the calculation of risk’ (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017: 116). Newman, Varner, and Linquist (2017) discuss environmental risk assessment and the transparency of uncertainties to rebuke the precautionary principle, which is a common decision-making principle that is relevant when certain conditions of uncertainty are fulfilled, primarily when it is not known whether a choice can result in harmful effects (see Sandin 2004 for a thorough discussion). It is a well-known principle that is often used in environmental and social choices to avoid risk exposure. It is also a part of the Convention on Biological Diversity: ‘Where there is a threat of significant reduction or loss of biological diversity, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to avoid or minimize such a threat’.2 The IPBES states that the principle pertains to risk management and states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is not harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking an action. The principle is used to justify discretionary decisions when the possibility of harm from making a certain decision (e.g., taking a particular course of action) is not, or has not been, established through extensive scientific knowledge. The principle implies that there is a social responsibility to protect the public from exposure to harm, when scientific investigation has found a plausible risk or if a potential plausible risk has been identified.3 Conventionally, the principle states that if there are potentially negative consequences of a particular action, one should avoid that action; more precisely, the one who suggests an action has the burden of proving that it does not lead to harm. Most importantly from an epistemic perspective, the absence of scientific consensus that a choice will lead to harmful impacts cannot be used to justify that action. Indeed, quite the opposite is true, and the principle thus suggests support for environmentalist agendas and treading with caution regarding decisions that may have unwanted consequences. The ‘rivet argument’ uses a similar form of reasoning as the precautionary principle (see Box 9.1). Newman, Varner, and Linquist reject the precautionary principle partly on the grounds that it is incoherent and leads to a logical contradiction, that it

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fails to account for possible benefits, that precaution has its costs, and that it lacks conceptual clarity. I will not rebut their objections in detail, but I think some response is in order. Regarding clarity, they write that it is not clear what ‘harm’ refers to (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017: 129; Turner & Hartzell 2004) by focusing on the version of the precautionary principle that emerged from the Wingspread Conference (1998), which reads as follows: ‘When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause-and-effect relationships are not fully established scientifically’ (Wingspread Convention 1998). Admittedly, the notion of ‘harm’ is somewhat vague, but it seems to me that this is a component of the precautionary principle that can benefit to some extent from the ethics of risk (Hansson 2007d). Recall that definitions of risks generally refer to the possibility of something unwanted occurring. Whether something is regarded as harm could be considered to depend to a large extent on what is morally permissible and prohibited. Consequently, utilitarianism would equate harm with a reduction in aggregated utility levels, whereas deontological perspectives would regard infringements on the rights of others as prohibited and thus constituting harm. One central problem, however, is that neither moral theory is intrinsically equipped to deal with possible but not certain harm (Hansson 2007d; Altham 1983). An additional problem with utilitarian accounts of harm is the aggregative character; that is, that it treats one person’s harm as justified if it results in a similar (or greater) gain to another person (Hansson 2007d). Furthermore, the many different values stemming from natural variety may not be commensurable in the sense of being possible to express and compare on a common scale (Norton 1987). A difficulty with rights-based perspectives is that if it would be impermissible to inflict the possibility of rights infringements on others, then most social life would be stifled (Hansson 2007d). One possibility would be to identify prima facie rights, those that can be overridden provided certain conditions are retained. Everyone has a right to not be exposed to the risk of harm, for example, but many socially acceptable activities, such as driving cars, entail exposure to risk. Thus we have agreed that this right is overridden for the benefits of driving. Put differently, we can ‘regard exposure of a person to a risk as acceptable if it is part of a social system of risk-taking that works to her advantage’ (Hansson 2007d: 31). This may exclude people who cannot enjoy those benefits since if they did it would lead to unacceptable risk exposures. Robert Nozick discusses such issues and settles on compensatory measures being in place in such instances (2013: 78ff.). Interestingly, Nozick applies the principle of the responsibility of those who benefit from an activity to the case of pollution (Nozick 2013: 79ff.). While it would exclude too much to forbid all polluting activities, a society should, Nozick suggests, permit those polluting activities whose benefits are greater than their costs, including the costs of polluting effects. A test for this is to assess whether those who benefit from pollution would be ‘willing to pay enough to cover the costs of compensating those ill affected by it’ (Nozick 2013: 79). However, this evokes the problem

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of compensability that Hansson raises against utilitarian perspectives, but one could assume from Nozick’s strongly rights-based approach that those exposed would also agree to it, given the benefits. Newman, Varner, and Linquist use a curious example to prove their point when they concede that no one would seriously dispute that large-scale agricultural application of pesticides can harm the environment (Turner & Hartzell 2004) but ask, ‘What about minor use to control weeds in a home vegetable garden? Does that use harm the environment?’4 (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017: 129). This seems a somewhat odd question to use for rhetorical purposes. They do not expand on it, which is problematic since there are noteworthy differences, the most prominent of which is that the home garden can be weeded by hand, which is not an alternative in large-scale agricultural production. I concede that it would be difficult for any of the moral theories that have been discussed thus far to offer an affirmative answer to the question of pesticides in the home vegetable garden. But that is not a knock-down argument against the notion of harm per se. One central aspect of the precautionary approach concerns the notion of possible threat.5 Newman, Varner, and Linquist observe that it is difficult to imagine an activity that does not carry the threat of harm, if one is basing threat on ‘the slightest indication that some activity could have a harmful effect, given the most liberal conception of what a harm is’ (2017: 129). This may be true, but moral theories, as we have seen above, usually have difficulty coping with possible harms. There are interpersonal and contractual bases for most risk exposures that are agreed to because of the benefits involved. Turner and Hartzell propose the following specification of threat of harm in order to object to it: for there to be a genuine threat of harm at all, there must be (a) some preliminary evidence that activity A will produce harmful effect E; and (b) some reason to think that the possible effect E would be quite harmful if it occurred. (2004: 456) This definition leads to what Turner and Hartzell call the ‘threshold problem’; namely, a threshold must be established for how much evidence is necessary before one can conclude that A will actually result in E and thus before we can judge that A poses a threat of harm. That threshold will not be clear-cut. I am not sure about the extent to which this is an objection to the epistemic aspect of the precautionary principle. In what is commonly called ‘the argument from inductive risk’ (see Box 9.1; Odenbaugh 2021), the threshold of evidence for a hypothesis should reflect the importance of the consequences of being wrong. The statement ‘activity A leads to threat of harm’ could be considered a hypothesis. The decision to accept or reject that hypothesis depends on whether the evidence is sufficiently strong, where sufficiently strong is ‘a function of the importance, in a typically ethical sense, of making a mistake

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in accepting or rejecting the hypothesis’ (Winsberg 2018: 133; Rudner 1953). Suppose we have a hypothesis that a particular glacial lake dam will burst in the next 50 years due to increases in emissions which will lead to regional climate changes. Accepting this hypothesis will commit us to construct a concrete dam, and whether we will build the dam will depend not only on our degree of evidence for the hypothesis but also on how we would measure the severity of the consequences of building the dam, and having the glacier not melt, vs. not building the dam, and having the glacier melt. (Winsberg 2018: 133) The fact that thresholds of evidence are difficult to set and depend in part on the severity of outcomes does not necessitate the conclusion that the precautionary principle is wrong. Yet, the precautionary principle is by no means clear, and a lot more can be said about it (Sandin 2004). It may be true that it is more of a slogan than a robust decision-making principle (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017). Proponents of the precautionary principle ought to be clear on what it includes. One possibility is that there is no ‘core’ precautionary principle, but that it is a mid-level principle between fundamental principles and ethical issues, in the sense of being non-rigid (Sandin & Peterson 2019), that is, it needs to be balanced against other principles.

BOX 9.1 INDUCTIVE RISK AND THE RIVET ANALOGY In its most succinct definition,‘inductive risk’ establishes that the threshold of evidence for a hypothesis must match the severity of consequences if one is wrong (Odenbaugh 2021). There is a difference between a hypothesis regarding how many blades of grass one passes on the way to work and a hypothesis that concerns the probability of a medicine not containing a toxic ingredient in a lethal quantity (Rudner 1953). As has been suggested, this has generally been taken to establish that there are in fact value-related issues in science, which is otherwise thought of as value-neutral.The threshold of evidence should reflect the importance of the consequences should one erroneously accept or reject a hypothesis. Regardless of what one thinks of the problem of inductive risk, there are some epistemic issues that require moral consideration.While inductive risk implies that we are aware of possible consequences should something go amiss in a decision or action we make based on evidence, this is not always the case. We may not know or may only vaguely apprehend what consequences will follow from a particular decision.

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This can be taken to justify precautionary measures. The biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich (1981) make the oft-cited rivet analogy.They suggest that all species are like individual rivets on an airplane wing. The wing will hold up if only one of the rivets becomes loose. However, at some specific number of rivets, the wing of the aircraft cannot hold up anymore, and the plane will crash. Each rivet is valuable to upholding the instrumental value of nature. Similar contentions are expressed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, in which the irreplaceable role that species have in vital natural systems provides the grounds for their protection. While being rhetorically convincing, the rivet analogy is flawed (Sarkar 2005). First, it is an analogy, and any analogy is only as convincing as its strength (Sarkar 2005: 14). Moreover, the mechanistic relation between species richness and ecosystem functioning is very difficult to establish (Newman,Varner, & Linquist 2017: 55).The analogy would also call for preservation of all extant species, perhaps only permitting ‘natural’ extinction, something that would be practically utopian. Even keystone species – those that are central to the equilibrium of delineated ecosystems – could disappear, but the ecosystem would persist, though perhaps in an altered form. However, the rivet analogy states that there is some number of species whose local disappearance or global extinction would result in the ecosystem malfunctioning. Consequently, it follows from the above that we do not know exactly how the relation between species richness and ecosystem functioning is mechanistically upheld, and even keystone species are not as central as once thought. It should be noted that this evokes uncertainty, as we do not always know how critical a specific species is to maintaining an ecosystem (Sarkar 2005: 15).At the very least, this calls for more empirically informed decisions to avoid the negative consequences of biodiversity loss and species extinction.An additional difference between the components in the river analogy is that a plane crash concerns ‘all or nothing’, whereas ecosystem malfunctioning comes in degrees. Some have suggested that permitting species extinction may result in a downward spiral of even more species extinction (Norton 1987).Yet, the difference in degrees of malfunction could call for a precautionary approach, since we do not necessarily know which effects would come from losing a species.

In addition to its clarity issues, the precautionary principle is rendered ‘useless’ because it leads to a logical contradiction (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017: 195). That an action-guiding principle recommends two opposing actions would indeed seem worrisome. Discussing the case of genetically modified (GM) crops, they note that ‘if we can identify the effect as catastrophic and

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there is a mere possibility that the activity can cause that effect, then we should impose the remedy regardless of the likelihood that the activity indeed causes the effect’, and the problem is that ‘we don’t know that the proposed remedy itself won’t have catastrophic consequences’ (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017: 125). Two critical clarifying notes are in order. First, it is notoriously difficult to include actions with extremely low probabilities (should they be known) but extremely high impacts in decision-making. An extremely low probability that all of humanity would go extinct by a series of actions would always be given priority relative to other demands, given the severity of this outcome. Second, it seems overly generous to include ‘mere possibilities’ to justify precaution. What have been called ‘mere possibility arguments’ have been included in assessments of unpredictable effects of future technologies, such as GM crops, in which conclusions are ‘drawn from the mere possibility that a course of action may lead to certain consequences’ (Hansson 2011: 140). Such arguments run the risk of resulting in unmanageably large sets of possible consequences, and furthermore to include quite speculative consequences. It is important in such regards to strike a balance ‘such that mere possibility arguments are neither rejected offhand nor allowed to block all other considerations’ (Hansson 2011: 140). The logical contradiction that Newman, Varner, and Linquist identify suggests that the precautionary principle could recommend two opposing actions. Suppose that catastrophic climate change will cause massive disruptions to agricultural production. In such cases, people would turn to converting even more wild land for agricultural purposes, which would likely lead to further loss of biodiversity (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017: 125). We may need GM crops to maintain agricultural production despite changing climate conditions, which would prevent the loss of even more biodiversity. Yet, some oppose the development of GM crops if they cannot be proven safe beyond doubt. Both the option to develop GM crops and the decision to not develop GM crops appear to be supported by the precautionary principle (Newman, Varner, & Linquist 2017: 125). This is the contradiction that, for them, merits the term ‘useless’. What we appear to have here is a moral dilemma. One possible way out is to reject the position that a lack of total knowledge regarding GM crops is a reason for prohibiting them. Another possibility is to reject the application of the precautionary principle to the development of GM crops since there is some available knowledge, and it would be overly epistemically curious to include any possibility. But let us assume that precaution is required. We then have conflicting recommendations: to develop GM crops to maintain agricultural production and prevent biodiversity deterioration in the case of catastrophic climate change on the one hand; and not to develop GM crops, due to mere possibilities of harm and detrimental environmental effects, on the other. Our question thus becomes: Is the fact that a logical contradiction is the outcome of practical reasoning, a sign that something has gone amiss or that the principle or principles used are wrong or ill-suited for practical guidance?

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I believe it is a mistake to draw the conclusion that a principle is of no use solely on the grounds that it results in recommending an action while simultaneously recommending against that action. This is a common issue in discussing moral conflicts. While it is desirable that a belief system does not allow contradictions in the sense of allowing a belief that a proposition both is true and false (‘I believe that today is Tuesday, and I believe that today is not Tuesday’), it is not certain that the same holds for value systems (Williams 1973: 206).6 In this sense, value systems may be more like desires than beliefs. One may have conflicting desires, and the mere fact that they conflict does not weaken them (Williams 1973: 169). In a forward-looking sense, conflicting moral rules are a contradiction to the extent that they evoke situations in which both ‘ought A’ and ‘ought not A’ hold. An example is instances when there are two demands, A and B, but both cannot be fulfilled. That is, each of ‘I ought to do A’ and ‘I ought to do B’ holds, but one must be chosen at the expense of the other. If A is chosen, B is no longer available and vice versa. The demand not acted upon may result in a residual obligation, signalling that it does not exit the stage despite not being fulfilled (Williams 1973). Consider a scenario in which you have promised to meet a friend for lunch. On your way there, you witness an accident and should help. But if you do so, you will fail to honour the institution of promises, since you will not be able to meet your friend for lunch. This may call for an explanation or a compensatory lunch at a later date. Most accounts of value pluralism, meaning that there are several different values and norms that regulate behaviour, will result in moral dilemmas and conflicts. This is quite difficult to avoid. One possible way out is moral monism, according to which there is only one value (such as utility) which provides a reasonable normative foundation for practical reasoning, even if there may still be different beliefs regarding facts. But to me at least, value pluralism and moral dilemmas and conflicts seem best supported by how practical life occurs. If moral monism is false or unlikely, there is another way to avoid moral conflicts – to avoid social commitments, which is a high price to pay for avoiding dilemmas (Hansson 1998). What the scenario illustrates is also the prima facie character of moral demands. A demand may be prima facie in the sense that it can be overridden by another demand. What is important here is what happens to the prima facie demand when it is overridden. While this is a rich topic in moral philosophy that includes principles like ought-implying-can and the status of moral principles, the relevance to Newman, Varner, and Linquist’s discussion of the precautionary principle is that the mere fact that a principle leads to a contradiction does not necessarily provide a reason to discard it. Moral conflicts and dilemmas are an unavoidable part of moral life and require closer assessment in practical reasoning. To apply the principles of non-contradiction, which is characteristic of belief systems, to moral demands is problematic at best. It would require close consideration of the stakes and normative commitments but does not necessitate ridding us of the precautionary principle, but we must assess the form of principle it is and consider it along with other principles.

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To summarize, I have argued in this chapter that conservation science consists of values. This does not mean that the striving of conservation science towards objectivity is overshadowed by normative perspectives. However, I have suggested first that there are epistemic norms in conservation science. Furthermore, I made an analogy between technological sciences and conservation science by drawing on the similarities between them, including functional explanations, category-specific value judgments, the limited use of far-reaching idealizations, and the absence of a requirement for precise mathematical solutions when sufficient approximations are available (Hansson 2007b). Values are closely related to such functional explanations, as they rely on something performing its function well. Moreover, conservation science has been described as a crisis discipline (Soulé 1985). To that extent, it operates under epistemic uncertainty, without all the relevant facts. In addition, though, conservation science is often constrained by practical relevance, and that is where values become relevant.

Notes 1 There is also decision-making ‘under great uncertainty’ and ‘under ignorance’ (Hansson 1996, 2018b). For the purposes of this discussion, the distinction between risk and uncertainty will suffice. 2 www.cbd.int/marine/precautionary.shtml (22 December 2020). This formulation is quite similar to the ‘precautionary approach’ listed in the Rio Declaration of 1992, which states: ‘In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities.Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.’ 3 https://ipbes.net/glossary/precautionary-principle (21 December 2020). 4 It is interesting that Newman,Varner, and Linquist ask whether the use of pesticides to control weeds in a home vegetable garden would harm the environment. Since it is a vegetable garden, a more reasonable precautionary concern would arguably be whether the use of pesticides would harm the humans (or animals) who eat the vegetables from that garden. After all, few of the ecocentric environmental ethical frameworks are relevant to intuitions about home gardens, which have virtually no natural nor wilderness value by most definitions. 5 A complicating factor is trying to establish a credible possible threat. If credibility cannot be established, then any perceived notion of a threat, however heavily based on misunderstanding science, may give rise to the precautionary principle. 6 To avoid contradictions in epistemic beliefs is at least ideally preferable. Yet, what is called dialethism embraces contradictions such as ‘Statement S is both true and not true’ (Williamson 2018: 93ff.).

References Altham, J.E.J., 1983. ‘Ethics of risk’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society New Series, 84, pp. 15–29. Baard, P. & Ahteensuu, M., 2019. ‘Ethics in conservation’, Journal for Nature Conservation, 52, pp. 1–6. doi: 10.1016/j.jnc.2019.125737 Ehrlich, P. & Ehrlich, A., 1981. Extinction: The Causes and Consequences of the Disappearance of Species. New York: Random House.

172 Recent developments Friedman, B., Kahn, Jr., P.H., & Borning, A., 2002. ‘Value sensitive design: Theory and methods’, UW CSE Technical Report 02-12-01. Hansson, S.O., 1996. ‘Decision making under great uncertainty’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 26, pp. 369–386. Hansson, S.O., 1998. ‘Should we avoid moral dilemmas?’, The Journal of Value Inquiry, 32, pp. 407–416. Hansson, S.O., 2007a. ‘Values in pure and applied science’, Foundations of Science, 12, pp. 257–268. Hansson, S.O., 2007b. ‘What is technological science?’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 38, pp. 523–527. Hansson, S.O., 2007c. ‘Social decisions about risk and risk-taking’, Social Choice & Welfare, 29, pp. 649–663. Hansson, S.O., 2007d. ‘Risk and ethics: Three approaches’ in Lewens, T. (ed.), Risk: Philosophical Perspectives. New York: Routledge, pp. 21–35. Hansson, S.O., 2011. ‘Coping with the unpredictable effects of future technologies’, Philosophy of Technology, 24, pp. 137–149. Hansson, S.O. 2018a. ‘How to reconcile the multiculturalist and universalist approaches to science education’, Cultural Studies of Science Education, 13, pp. 517–523. Hansson, S.O., 2018b. ‘Risk’ in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Fall 2018 Edition. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/risk/ Higgs, E., 2003. Nature by Design: People, Natural Processes, and Ecological Restoration. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Houkes, W., 2009. ‘The nature of technological knowledge’ in Meijers, A. (ed.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Science, Vol 9: Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Sciences. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Huber, S. & Horbaty, R., 2013. Recommended Practices on Social Acceptance of Wind Energy Projects. Liestal, Switzerland: International Energy Agency. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 2001. Synthesis Report. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. IPCC, 2014. Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kareiva, P. & Marvier, M., 2012. ‘What is conservation science?’, BioScience, 62, pp. 962– 969. doi:10.1525/bio.2012.62.11.5 Milner-Gulland, E.J. & Shea, K., 2017. ‘Embracing uncertainty in applied ecology’, Journal of Applied Ecology, 54, pp. 2063–2068. Moore, G.E., 2004 [1903]. Principia Ethica. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc. Newman, J., Varner, G., & Linquist, S., 2017. Defending Biodiversity: Environmental Science and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Norton, B., 1987. Why Preserve Natural Variety? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Norton, B., 2005. Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Nozick, R., 2013 [1974]. Anarchy, State, Utopia. New York: Basic Books. Odenbaugh, J., 2021. ‘Conservation Biology’ in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Spring 2021 Edition. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2 021/entries/conservation-biology/ Oosterlaken, I., 2015. ‘Applying value sensitive design (VSD) to wind turbines and wind parks: An exploration’, Science & Engineering Ethics, 21, pp. 359–379.

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Oppenheimer, M., Oreskes, N., Jamieson, D., Brysse, K., O’Reilly, J., Shindell, M., and Wazeck, M., 2019. Discerning Experts: The Practices of Scientific Assessment for Environmental Policy. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Pimple, K.D., 2002. ‘Six domains of research ethics: A heuristic framework for the responsible conduct of research’, Science and Engineering Ethics, 8, pp. 191–205. Regan, H.M., Colyvan, M., and Burgman, M.A., 2002. ‘A taxonomy and treatment of uncertainty for ecology and conservation biology’, Ecological Applications, 12, pp. 618–628. Rudner, R., 1953. ‘The scientist qua scientist makes value judgments’, Philosophy of Science, 20, pp. 1–6. Sandin, P., 2004. ‘The precautionary principle and the concept of precaution’, Environmental Values, 13, pp. 461–475. Sandin, P. & Peterson, M., 2019. ‘Is the precautionary principle a midlevel principle?’, Ethics, Policy & Environment, 22, pp. 34–48. Sarkar, S., 2005. Biodiversity and Environmental Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sarkar, S., 2011. ‘Habitat reconstruction: Moving beyond historical fidelity’ in deLaplante, K., Brown, B., & Peacock, A. (eds.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Science, vol 11: Philosophy of Ecology. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 327–361. Shrader-Frechette, K.S. & McCoy, E.D., 1993. Method in Ecology: Strategies for Conservation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Soulé, M., 1985. ‘What is conservation biology’, BioScience, 35, pp. 727–734. Turner, D., & Hartzell, L., 2004. ‘The lack of clarity in the precautionary principle’, Environmental Values, 13, pp. 449–460. Weinberg, A., 1972. ‘Science and trans-science’, Minerva, 10, pp. 209–222. Williams, B., 1973. Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956–1972. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, B., 1993. Morality: An Introduction to Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williamsson, T., 2018. Doing Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ‘Wingspread statement on the precautionary principle’, 1998, in Raffensperger, C., & Tickner, J.A. (eds.), Protecting Public Health and the Environment: Implementing the Precautionary Principle. Washington, DC: Island Press, pp. 353–355. Winsberg, E., 2018. Philosophy and Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Woods, M., 2017. Rethinking Wilderness. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press. Ziman, J., 1996. ‘“Postacademic science”: Constructing knowledge with networks and norms’, Science Studies, 9, pp. 67–80.

10 Concluding thoughts

This book has covered a lot of ground in its effort to situate practical reasoning in biodiversity conservation. Reaching the aims of this volume has required making choices, and while I believe that those choices have been well motivated a lot more can be said on these matters. I have strived to make fair descriptions of different positions while at the same time appealing to both researchers and conservation practitioners interested in ethics, and applied philosophers interested in biodiversity. Here, I will limit myself to a summary conclusion and offer some further thoughts relating to biodiversity conservation.

Part I: Intrinsic value of biodiversity, and assessing what type of concept it is Part I provided a background, starting from positions of Michael Soulé and CBD. The intrinsic value of biodiversity per se is reiterated by both Soulé and CBD but finds little support in environmental ethics, as it has questionable foundations, and troublesome implications. Would a quality such as ‘species richness’ or ‘variation’ be given intrinsic value, it would imply policies that permit adding species to ecosystems – at least up to just before breaking points. This would work at cross-purposes with other notions, such as natural value. But more importantly, it is questionable how to justify such a position. There are many things in nature that we value intrinsically, such as the uniqueness of an ecosystem or its natural value, or that it contains interesting species and interactions, but is variation per se, or the number of species, or the evenness of the distribution of species, included in such properties? Part I also covered what type of concept biodiversity is and whether vagueness is a problem. The discussion was motivated by how biodiversity is a multifaceted concept that lacks a universal definition. It was suggested that there are good prospects for making context-dependent definitions. That being said, vagueness remains, and while I do not want to concede to the position that the concept of biodiversity ought to be eliminated on the grounds that it serves merely as a descriptive and normative proxy, the concept is likely to hang around. Part I concluded with a discussion on how components of biodiversity, in this case limited to species richness, can be considered a value-adding component in DOI: 10.4324/9781003110712-10

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choices on finite resources. Yet qualities relating to variation, such as rarity, evenness, and similar, cannot settle the score of what priorities should be made. Rather, they are more likely an input with intuitive credibility that may in some cases guide priorities, while in others may fail to do so.

Part II: Biocentrist possibilities and nuances of instrumental values Part II discussed applied and environmental ethics and attempted to situate biodiversity in existing discussions and theories. That is, to gaze at biodiversity and conservation through the lens of environmental ethics. The devices at hand for this task were drawn from environmental ethics and, more generally, applied ethics. Chapter 3 gave you a sense of how environmental ethics operate, starting with a thought experiment intending to prove that there is nonanthropocentric, intrinsic, value of nature. That is, value that is not dependent on human preferences or well-being. This set the stage for the distinction between anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism, and discussed to what extent biodiversity, understood as the quality variation and richness, can be reasoned about ethically by utilizing these concepts. It was also argued in Chapter 3 that environmental ethical biocentrist theories, meaning that it is individual entities that have moral standing, can be used to reason about biodiversity by utilizing fewer concepts than ecocentric and holistic theories. Reasoning about biodiversity from biocentrism can take at least two forms. First, it is individual entities that have moral standing, and were we to show proper respect to those individual specimens, then biodiversity would not be reduced. Biodiversity loss does not occur without doing harm to a great many of the individual entities of a population. Second, if biodiversity is a prerequisite for the lives and well-being of those individual entities, and in that regard, we have an indirect reason to preserve biodiversity. Investigating the prospect of biocentrism to reason about biodiversity may prove counter-intuitive. After all, biodiversity is a property of ecosystems or species, and holistic perspectives are intuitively more apt for reasoning about them. I suggest that ecocentrism requires taking detours and adding concepts in order to provide similar conclusions as biocentrist accounts, and for reasons of parsimony biocentrism ought to be favoured. Chapter 4 proposed a more nuanced view on instrumental values than is normally the case. Given the prerequisite that biodiversity is to much of life, it was said to carry substantial instrumental value, to the point of reflecting or expressing intrinsic value. It is likely difficult to establish the exact number of species – that is, the exact level of species richness – that have instrumental value, but that we, and indeed other morally relevant beings such as animals and other entities, are mutually dependent on each other in our unique biosphere is likely. We cannot recreate that biosphere, and even if it is said to be instrumental to life, that instrumental value is substantial. It is a prerequisite, and to that extent something to cherish. Chapter 5 concluded with assessing

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how three common ethical theories can be utilized to reason about why biodiversity ought to be preserved. While ending somewhat inconclusively, consequentialism, duty ethics, and virtue ethics all have their strengths, but also weaknesses when it comes to biodiversity per se. One central reason is that neither of them regards biodiversity as anything else than providing indirect reasons, and this requires assessing the role that biodiversity has to beings that have moral standing generating direct reasons. Yet, with the discussion of a more nuanced account of instrumental values, I believe that it is possible to establish such indirect reasons without going into too much detail on how much benefits to beings of moral standing a specific species number or variation generates.

Part III: Ethical parsimony, postulates, relational values, rights of nature, and conservation science In Part III the view initially was reverse relative to Part II, as it started with a view on environmental ethics through the lens of conservation biology. Part III engaged with recent discussions in biodiversity conservation to try to assess to what extent discussions and concepts from moral philosophy are indifferent to conservation efforts. Considering the substantial number of species that are at risk of extinction for anthropogenic reasons, it would be difficult to not reach the conclusion that something morally deplorable is occurring. Perhaps such a conclusion does not need an additional argument. Consequently, as suggested in Chapter 6, for reasons of parsimony we should omit such discussions, given that the conclusions are made reasonable without appeal to ethical arguments. Yet, omitting such arguments does little to convince sceptics of the dire need of significantly reducing levels of anthropogenic biodiversity loss, and does not provide guidance to those in favour of stronger nature conservation when priorities must be made. Lacking such arguments leaves the decision-making playing field open to decisions that are based on contingent factors, rather than on practical reasoning based on transparent principles that we are somewhat confident holds. All chapters in Part III try to throw light on what work moral philosophy can do that is relevant to conservation biology. Chapters 6 and 7 are somewhat alike to the extent that they discuss inclusive conservation and recognition of different relations to nature. I suggest that much can be said in favour of such positions. Nature provides us with a sense of community, longevity, meaning, feelings of awe, and many other beneficial things in addition to ecosystem services. They are a prerequisite for our lives and our activities. But merely to state that conservation must be inclusive or relational does not make it reasonable to adopt such a viewpoint. Consequently, in Chapter 7 I investigated reasons for departing from ‘property-based’ accounts of moral standing, focusing instead on relational values. The position has merits – after all, we are relational beings and relations matter morally. The IPBES notes that ‘goals for conserving and sustainably using nature and achieving sustainability cannot be met by current trajectories,

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and goals for 2030 and beyond may only be achieved through transformative changes across economic, social, political and technological factors’ (IPBES 2019: 14). The way we relate to nature may be one of those changes required, and IPBES discuss ‘nature’s contribution to people’ (NCP), being here interpreted as being founded on relational values. Yet, some central challenges were identified, requiring ethical concepts and theories. The challenges were how to solve conflicting relations to nature – who then has the final say, and why? In addition, not all people may have any specific relation to nature, but if so, what relation ought they to have – and why? NCP and relational values provide more nuances to people’s relations to nature and the meaning of those relations. However, that empirical tool, while important, should not be conflated with providing reasons for why biodiversity ought to be preserved, although it provides a central piece of such a puzzle. The basis for relational values is primarily found in a criticism of property-based views on values, and in the meaning that nature has. While there are some merits to the first-mentioned, the conclusion that there are problems to property-based accounts does not necessarily merit the conclusion that another alternative is more reasonable. And while there are indeed differing meanings emanating from relations to nature, these come in degrees. To some, it is an integral part of culture, whereas others feel strongly that the relation to nature is one of substitutability and ‘mere’ instrumental value. Giving equal validity to both may be unsound, but how should one distinguish them in an ethically robust and justifiable manner without appeal to ethical concepts, principles, or arguments? Chapter 8 investigated recent suggestions that nature, and entities such as rivers, forests, and ecosystems, be given legal rights. Such legal rights are often defended with reference to moral rights. I find in Chapter 8 that this defence is likely unsuccessful. Forests and rivers are too far removed from the properties that are usually appealed to for making reasonable ascriptions of moral rights and personhood. It is unsuccessful to suggest that forests and rivers have interests, for instance. A different defence for the position that nature has rights may state that one can appoint guardians to protect the well-being or health of an environmental area. But that raises several issues: How to appoint the rightful guardian, and what if there are two competing guardians making conflicting claims on what is healthy for the same ecosystem? Furthermore, the issue of ‘interests’, but often translated as ‘goal-directedness’ or ‘ecosystem health’, loom in the background. Transforming the concept does not, in this case, provide a more lucid account of what is meant and how to establish how an ecosystem should be. Another line of defence for the position has drawn analogies with other entities that have legal personhood, and states that nature may be a better, or at least as good as, candidate for legal personhood as they. But many such entities, such as corporations, fulfil other criteria that are not found in nature. Chapter 8 was limited to investigating the ethical aspects of rights of nature, suggesting that there are many challenges that need to be accounted for. There may be other options to argue for rights of nature, such as working solely in different legal systems, showing that such a proposal would be

178 Recent developments

consistent with precedents or constitutions. Another, more conventional, view would be to appeal to group rights and the central cultural meanings nature, and all its variety, has or in a more general sense, that a healthy environment is an environmental human right. Chapter 9 discussed conservation biology. Being a science, the relevance of normative discussions may be scarce. The reason is that science is most often regarded, rightfully, to be value-neutral. While I have not made any argument that is generally applicable to all sciences, in Chapter 9 I challenged the view that value-neutrality is the case in conservation biology. First, there are norms in science, both epistemic and non-epistemic. All science requires acknowledging research ethics, for instance. Second, conservation biology is often an applied science. By drawing parallels to technological science, it was revealed how values permeate research. Third, risk assessment and uncertainty are often integral to conservation biology. The concept of risk includes normative issues conjunct with probabilities, whereas uncertainty often requires implementing the precautionary principle. While Part III may seem overly critical towards recent suggestions, that has not been my point. Rather, my point has been to try to situate the concepts and arguments from applied ethics and to see whether recent suggestions evade referring to such concepts and arguments, but also how they hold up against criticism. Following Parts I and II, I believe there are good normative reasons for strengthening biodiversity protection, based on the possible value-adding character of biodiversity, but also, and stronger, due to the nuances of instrumental values and the very specific type of instrumental value that biodiversity carries for beings that have moral standing. But I also think that there are good reasons to challenge suggestions and see whether they hold up. As suggested by De-Shalit, ‘to persuade one must be aware of the arguments raised against one’s position’, and ‘the philosopher and the public in general all search for the widest possible range of intuitions, arguments, and theories’ (2000: 32). Normative viewpoints lead to policy proposals and will face challenges. To overcome such challenges to show that it is reasonable to adopt policies that increase biodiversity conservation requires ethical analysis. Moreover, in Part III I tried to show how ethical reasoning is indeed a central part of recent suggestions in conservation having normative implications. Thus, I have tried to situate ethical reasoning in relational values, in legal rights, and in conservation biology. So why ought biodiversity to be preserved, then? It may be the case that we make the discussion on biodiversity conservation unnecessarily complicated. Maybe the insistence on the weighing of arguments is too much – normative positions and viewpoints are rarely as crystal clear as many ethical theories presuppose, and principles that we have found worked well in different contexts for a respectful interaction with our surroundings are often likely intermingled with different sentiments and relations. But I think there are good reasons for shedding light on our arguments and views. We may find that many of our values commit us to normative standpoints that are at cross-purposes with biodiversity conservation. In the necessary ‘transformative changes’ the IPBES

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include ‘a fundamental, system-wide reorganization across technological, economic and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values’. Ethics enables a closer scrutiny of values and underlying reasons. Philosopher Henry Bugbee once stated that ethical reasoning is bound up with the possibility of becoming critics of our own lives, and without pretense. It involves a kind of withdrawal, a genuine kind of detachment, but not the withdrawal of increasing abstraction. It should be, at least, a discovery of ourselves anew, at a level of commitment on which a man can stand. (Bugbee 1999[1958]: 69ff.) The opportunity for such critical scrutiny and reflection may serve us well. Admittedly, the issue of how to halt biodiversity loss is complex and requires consideration of our institutions, and how we can live in a more fair and respectful interaction with our surroundings, including the natural world. But at the very least, scrutinizing our normative commitments is one key element in this. Such scrutiny ought not only to be restricted to our personal normative judgments, but also include elucidating how policies and risk assessments have normative components. Perhaps species richness and biodiversity has been given too little room for far too long in practical decision-making. Much stricter and more robust goals ought to be set. Finding strong justifications for such goals, including the means for fulfilling them, are central reasons for ethics in conservation.

References Bugbee, H., 1999 [1958]. The Inward Morning: A Philosophical Exploration in Journal Form. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press. De-Shalit, A., 2000. The Environment Between Theory and Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. IPBES, 2019. ‘Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services’, Available online: https://ipbes.net/sites/default/files/inline/ files/ipbes_global_assessment_report_summary_for_policymakers.pdf

Index

Aichi targets 4, 24 anthropocentrism 46, 48–56, 175 Attfield, P. 47, 71–72, 79, 81 Bentham, J. 80 biocentric consequentialism 81–84 biocentric egalitarianism 86 biocentric outlook 86–88 biocentrism 12, 36, 49–56, 71, 139, 175 biodiversity (definition) 26–35 biophilia 23, 38 Callicott, J. B. 38, 50, 117, 121, 128 categorical imperative 84–86 consequentialism 79–84 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) 3, 19, 24–26, 174 convergence hypothesis 120–123 definitions (vagueness) 32 deflationism 30–31 derivative value 63 De-Shalit, A. 58, 116, 178 duties 47 duty ethics 84–88 ecocentrism 23, 49–56, 175 ecological risk assessment 164 eliminativism 30 environmental human rights 142 environmental pragmatism 120–123 extensionism 53 extrinsic value 31 fact-value see ‘is-ought’ Feinberg, J. 145–146 flourishing 89 future generations 93–94

Hansson, S. O. 32, 155–156, 159, 162–163, 165, 169 inclusive conservation 108–110 indicative list 27 inductive risk 155, 167–168 instrumental value 12, 25, 62–72, 81, 85, 136, 175 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) 4, 9–10, 19, 101, 118, 176 intrinsic value 3, 8, 11, 25, 47, 62–72, 174 intuitions 56–60 is-ought 22, 31, 38, 110, 119, 151–152 Kant, I. 84 Kareiva, P. 104–108 last man on earth-argument 46, 58 Leopold, A. 49–50, 117, 128 linguistic uncertainty 33 linquist, S. 22, 53, 65, 72, 82, 123, 164 Lubchenco, J. 108–110 Marvier, M. 104–108 Midgley, M. 47 Mill, J. S. 80, 139 Moore, G. E. 38, 64, 110, 123, 152 moral conflict 170 Næss, A 22 natural value 29, 67–68, 123, 160, 174 naturalistic fallacy 110; see also ‘is-ought’ nature’s contribution to people (NCP) 10, 114, 118, 140–141, 176 Newman, J. A. 22, 53, 65, 72, 82, 123, 164

182 Index non-anthropocentrism 49–56, 137 non-derivative value 63 normativism 31–32 Norton, B. G. 25, 28, 36, 54, 66, 71, 120–121, 152, 165 Nozick, R. 83 option value 65 parsimony (ethical) 12, 52, 101–104, 147, 176 postulates of conservation biology 20–21, 101–104, 106 precautionary principle 164–171 probability 163 Rawls, J. 58–59 reasons 72–76, 126, 136 reflective equilibrium 56–60, 116 Regan, T. 50, 56–57, 103, 133 relational values 113–130, 140–141, 176 rights 9–10, 47, 135 rights (legal and moral) 138–139 rights of nature 133–149, 176 risk 160–171 rivet analogy 167–168 Rolston, H. 38, 51, 82, 115, 117 Routley, R. 46–48, 148

Sandler, R. 48, 55, 62, 64, 67, 73, 89 Sarkar, S. 8, 29–31, 168 science (basic and applied) 155–158 science (technological) 156, 159 scientism 29–30 sentientism 49–56, 80 Soulé, M. 3, 20–24, 101, 103, 160, 174 species richness 26, 33 Stone, C. 135–147 systemic value 115 Tallis, H. 108–110 Taylor, P. W. 49, 53, 86, 139, 143, 147 Te Urewera Act 2014 133–134 teleological center of life 53, 87 uncertainty 24, 160–171 utilitarianism 79–84 value-adding properties 36, 88, 174 value-sensitive design 156–157 Varner, G. 22, 53–54, 65, 72, 82, 123, 164 virtue ethics 88–93 weak anthropocentrism 120 Whanganui river 134 Williams, B. 32, 68, 74, 80, 82, 88, 125, 128, 170 Wilson, E. O. 4, 23, 28