I recently finished an article on science, ethics and conservation. Entitled ‘Between Science and Ethics’ the chapter will appear in a forthcoming book, Gaining Ground: In Pursuit of Ecological Sustainability, edited by David Lavigne. David is a renowned expert on seals, and the Senior Science Advisor for IFAW, the International Fund for Animal Welfare. My chapter examines how ethics is an indispensable counterpart to science in forming public policies around animal protection, wildlife conservation and ecological sustainability. Part of the manuscript analyzes what I call the ‘diversity crisis’. I thought some readers might find this interesting, so I have exerpted it here (without references).

cheers, Bill

Update, 01 Dec 2006. Gaining Ground was published in late 2006. If you are interested in reading the rest of the article, the citation is Lynn, William S. 2006. Between Science and Ethics: What Science and the Scientific Method Can and Cannot Contribute to Conservation and Sustainability, in Lavigne, David, Gaining Ground: In Pursuit of Ecological Sustainability, Limerick, IRL: University of Limerick, 191-205.
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The Diversity Crisis

As Gary Snyder notes, our world is a vast system of flowing energy and cyclic matter, in his poetic vision, a ‘breathing planet’ nested in ‘sparkling whorls of living light’. One of the signature elements of our world is its diversity. Our planet is alive with diverse forms of life and ways of living, human and non-human alike. This diversity is multiform — people, animals, plants, individuals, packs, tribes, populations, societies, ecosystems and cultures (to name but a few). And this diversity is found in a wide variety of places — in the sea, on land, deep underground, and in the air — each interacting with the other at varied scales, from the micro to the macro, from local to regional to global.

Tragically, we also live in a world facing a biodiversity crisis of global proportions. Modern human activity is accelerating the loss of species and ecosystems at a rate and scale unparalleled in natural or human history. With species already disappearing at many times the rate of natural extinction, up to a quarter of the world’s land animals and plants may be extinct or endangered by 2050. Conservation scientists have generated a substantial stock of knowledge regarding the factors diminishing biodiversity. The causes of this crisis include habitat degradation, landscape fragmentation, urban sprawl, human population growth, increasing consumption and pollution, and over-exploitation of resources. All of these causes are further complicated by the shifting context of global climate change.

Less understood are the normative values at stake — how humanity should value biodiversity, and how such values should inform our response to the crisis of extinction. Together, these constitute the non-instrumental and normative dimension of biodiversity. Some of these values are about nature itself. One hotly contested issue is whether non-human life is simply a resource for human use, or has a significant value of its own. Another issue is whether our concern for biodiversity should encompass more than wild flora and fauna, and include domestic plants and animals. Other values are about culture and the human interaction with nature. For instance, the cultural diversity of humanity makes cross-cultural norms for ethical decision-making difficult to formulate. Moreover, we have pressing needs to alleviate poverty, advance social justice and defend human rights. These and other particularly human values raise difficult issues about the different range of responsibilities of the world’s peoples for protecting biodiversity. Altogether, questions about these broader natural and cultural values go to the heart of ‘how we ought to live’ with non-human life, and how both human communities and the natural world can and ought to flourish together.

What this means is that we are in the midst of a diversity crisis. The diversity crisis is really two interrelated crises — a crisis of nature and a crisis of culture. The crisis of nature is driven by humanity’s ‘geographic agency’, our power to do good or ill to the living systems of the planet. The effects of this agency are the proximate cause of nature’s decline. Using the theories and methods of science, we can hope to measure and model these impacts, gain a measure of prediction and control over them, and thereby alleviate or reverse some of their most deleterious effects. It is for this reason we place a legitimate measure of hope and faith in scientific-technical approaches to wildlife conservation and ecological sustainability.

Unfortunately, our cultural crisis is a bit harder to comprehend. At its heart is a clash of ethics-laden worldviews. These worldviews describe visions of the good life, definitions of moral community, norms of conduct, and attributions of culpability. How we understand and respond to the natural world, not the physical consequences of our actions, is the focus of analysis here. This distinction is crucial. It is our worldviews and ethical sensibilities that not only inform human agency, but characterize the ultimate causes of the diversity crisis. And because the cultural crisis is so morally and socially complex, it spawns ramifications that complicate its resolution. Examples abound. The diversity crisis:

* threatens the cultural survival of the worlds Totemic Peoples whose modes of thought and livelihoods are rooted in the indigenous animals and resources of a region,

*creates a demographic trap whose cycle of spiraling population growth, increasing poverty and degrading habitats besets the so-called developing world, and

*exacerbates the kind of globalization that facilitates irresponsible consumption, the centralization of political-economic power, and the shifting of environmental burdens from areas of wealth to areas of poverty.

Whether humans are a part of the natural world, while at the same time, distinct enough as a species to take moral responsibility for their actions, is the pivotal problem on whose resolution rests any possibility for sustainability. And this has occasioned a global debate over the ecological, social and ethical values that ought to inform our thoughts and practices regarding animal welfare, wildlife conservation and ecological sustainability.

[From Lynn, William S. (2005) Between Science and Ethics: What Science and the Scientific Method Can and Cannot Contribute to Conservation and Sustainability, in Lavigne, David (ed) Gaining Ground: In Pursuit of Ecological Sustainability, Limerick, IRL: International Fund for Animal Welfare and the University of Limerick. Forthcoming.]