Assigning a value to biological diversity:
ethics and aesthetics
Introduction
When you hear the word “value” used to justify conservation, it is often associated with
economic or financial value. As we have seen over the past couple of weeks, there are ways
in which using economics to place a value on biodiversity may be useful. We’ve also seen
that there are other ways in which using economics may not be useful.1 The difficulties
with an economic approach to valuation are often attributed to its focus on what’s of value
to humans. It’s important to understand, however, that the anthropocentric focus does
not mean that only humans are valuable. It means that only humans do the valuing. In
contrast, “deep ecology” and related approaches would argue that values exist independently
of humans and that those values deserve respect.2
Broadly speaking there are three reasons why we might place a value on biodiversity:
1. We might need it. — Values associated with use.
2. We like it. — Values associated with pleasure, appreciation, or aesthetics.
3. We think we ought to. — Values associated with ethics or morality.
We’ve talked repeatedly about the ways in which we derive benefit from biological diversity — food, feed, fiber, and pharmaceuticals. Ecosystem services is one of the most frequently mentioned “uses” of biodiversity these days. All of these are use values. What we
haven’t talked about, or haven’t talked about much are values that derive from aesthetics or
morality. We discussed methods of trying to quantify non-use values when we talked about
economic approaches to estimating “willingness to pay” or “willingness to accept”. Today
and Thursday I’m going to focus on a different approach to understanding what non-use
values are, i.e. we’re going to have a very short course in ethics, and I’ll describe a few of
1
A cynic might well conclude that the discussion we’ve just completed is evidence that it probably isn’t
worth it to try to conserve biodiversity. I’m not a cynic, or I wouldn’t be teaching this course.
2
This section draws heavily from Chapter 4 of [2]
c 2001–2015 Kent E. Holsinger
the major strains in ethics that emerge from the history of western philosophy. It may feel
a little uncomfortable introducing ethical ideas into a science course, but as van Houtan [5]
points out,
Conservation, even if conceived on scientific grounds, is a framework for a specific “right” outcome. Protecting species, designing nature preserves, restoring
degraded ecosystems, promoting sustainable use — these are thought of as “good”
undertakings....
“Right” and “good” are ethical concepts. An underlying theme throughout this course has
been that we have to determine what outcomes are desirable. Now I want to explore whether
we can argue that certain outcomes are “right” or “good”, not merely desirable.
Intrinsic vs. instrumental value
One of the concepts conservationists often try to use to indicate the limitations of economic
approaches to valuation is to distinguish between things that have intrinsic value and those
that have instrumental value.
• Something is said to have intrinsic value if it is good “in and of itself,” i.e., not merely
as a means for acquiring something else.
Happiness might be an example of an intrinsic value, because being happy is good
just because it’s good to be happy, not because being happy leads to anything else. If
happiness seems too trivial, “human well being” might be a better example.
• Something is said to have instrumental value if it is good because it provides the means
for acquiring something else of value.
Having a net worth of a million dollars is an instrumental value. Having those assets is
good only to the extent that you can use them to get something else — like happiness
or personal well-being.
Biodiversity, those who argue in this vein would claim, is intrinsically valuable. Attempts to
quantify this intrinsic value, seem wrongheaded. How can you put a price on the existence
of a species or an ecosystem if it is intrinsically valuable? It is literally priceless, just like a
human life.3
3
We won’t discuss this, but you should be aware that some economists have used an idea called the
“statistical value of a human life” when they evaluate regulations.
2
Perhaps if we all agreed about the source of intrinsic value in nature, arguing that biodiveristy is intrinsically valuable would be compelling.4 Things that are intrinsically valuable
seem to be of virtually infinite value, so it is worth almost any price to save them. Unfortunately, I doubt that we’ll ever agree on a source of intrinsic value in nature. To see why,
let’s take a brief tour through some different ethical theories.
Consequentialist vs.
ethics
non-consequentialist theories of
There are two broad categories of ethical theories concerning the rightness or wrongness of
actions: consquentialist and non-consequentialist.
• A consequentialist theory judges the rightness or wrongness of an action based on the
consequences that action has. The most familiar example would be utilitarianism —
“that action is best that produces the greatest good for the greatest number” (Jeremy
Bentham).
– Over what “ethical community” are the consequences to be measured? Does
damage to trees count as much as damage to human beings?
∗ John Stuart Mill — “Socrates dissatisfied should have more moral weight than
a pig satisfied.”
– The criterion might be satisfied by an action that causes great harm to a small
number of people while giving a small benefit to a great number.
– Biodiversity implication — Biodiversity has instrumental value, because it can
contribute to human welfare, but it has no intrinsic value. Or at least it has
less value than aspects of human welfare. As a result, human welfare will always
trump biodiversity if the two conflict.
• A non-consequentialist theory of value judges the rightness or wrongness of an action
based on properties intrinsic to the action, not on its consequences.
– Libertarianism — People should be free to do as they like as long as they respect
the freedom of others to do the same.
4
Although you do have to wonder whether we would genuinely believe that biodiversity is infinitely
valuable. Certainly I think we’d all agree that it is extremely valuable, but would any of us claim that it is
so valuable that preventing loss of biodiversity is more important than anything else?
3
∗ Biodiversity implication — Biodiversity has instrumental value, and only to
the extent that it can contribute to the expression of individual freedom.
It might be possible to develop a libertarian theory that included the rights
of non-human organisms to be “free”, but (a) I’m not aware that it’s been
done5 and (b) I think it would be very difficult to do.6
– Contractarianism — No policy that causes uncompensated harm to anyone is permitted (Pareto safety).
∗ Biodiversity implication — Depending on how broadly the term “anyone” is
defined7 biodiversity might or might not have intrinsic value. In a widely
influential version of contractarianism due to John Rawls, it is very difficult
to imagine how biodiversity could have intrinsic value.8
Here there have been philosophers, notably “deep ecologists” and those promoting animal rights who have attempted to extend ethical theories that fall
broadly within this realm to non-human organisms, or at least to animals.
More recently, Martha Nussbaum has developed a contractarian approach
to ethics that is broader than the one Rawls proposed.9 While Nussbaum
develops her ideas in ways that allow the contractual approach to be applied
to non-humans, that extension involves something like “rights” for individual
animals, not for species and certainly not for biodiversity.10
In any case it should be clear from this brief discussion that although appeals to intrinsic
value sound good and make us feel good, they are very difficult to justify philosophically.
5
Of course, I’m an amateur philosopher at best, so me being unaware of a philosophical theory is weak
evidence of its non-existence.
6
Feel free to ask me why, if you’re curious about my reasons.
7
Does it include only humans, for example?
8
Rawls’ approach is based on the idea that just outcomes are those to which any of the participants would
agree if they didn’t know their role in society. It is clearly focused on determining just outcomes within
human society and considers other parts of the world, if at all, only to the extent that those other parts
of the world influence outcomes that affect human beings. It’s not even clear that all human beings are
included in “anyone” in Rawls view. There may be some individuals who are not able to form “reasonable”
judgments, e.g., children or those with a mental disability.
9
See, for example: Nussbaum. M. C. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
10
I should mention that Nussbaum’s approach does, to some extent, involve something like the rights of
individual animals to be free, but it develops those rights in the context of a contractarian ethical system,
not a libertarian one.
4
Instrumental value versus use value
We’ve seen that using economic approaches to placing a value on biological diversity pose
great challenges, and we’ve seen that an important part of using those approaches must
be incorporating non-use values into the economic framework. We’ve just finished a very
brief review of philosophical approaches to ethics, and I’ve already suggested that under
both consequentialist and some non-consequentialist views biodiversity seems to have only
instrumental value. Now it’s vital to remember that instrumental value is not the same
thing as use value.
• Use values are those derived either from using a resource, e.g., the commercial value
of lumber extracted from a forest, or from the costs we incur from failing to protect a
resource, e.g., the cost of levees and dams used to control river flooding when floodplain
wetlands are converted to residential or industrial use.
• Non-use values include those associated with pleasure or appreciation, i.e., aesthetic
values, and those associated with obligation or duty, i.e., ethical values.
It is therefore not problematic for an adherent of any ethical system to incorporate nonuse values of biodiversity into decisions about what is right or just, so long as the nonuse values concerned are aesthetic values. But that seems a little unsatisfying, doesn’t it?
Isn’t there some sense in which we have a duty, i.e., an ethical or moral obligation, to
conserve biodiversity (or protect the biological integrity of a system or ensure the ecological
sustainability of our use of a system and its resources)?11
Problems for an environmental ethic
So the question becomes: Is there a reasonable basis on which to argue that we have an ethical
obligation to promote conservation of biodiversity? The question arises because values that
reflect ethical obligations are more likely to command adherence than those that reflect taste
or preference. In an effort to persuade others that conservation efforts are worthwhile, being
able to show them that those efforts are required to fulfill our ethical obligations will carry
a lot of weight.
There are, however, several problems facing the development of a conservation ethic: the
problem of holism, the problem of “natural”, and the problem of deciding.
11
I’m going to use the phrase “conserve biodiversity” throughout the rest of these notes. I don’t mean to
imply that conserving biodiversity is the only thing we might have an ethical obligation to do towards the
environment. I just don’t want to repeat myself constantly.
5
The problem of holism
Sober [4] points out one particularly important distinction to keep in mind: Often the
things we’d like an environmental ethic to place a value on are whole species, communities,
ecosystems, or landscapes not the individual organisms of which they are composed.12
• Consider the question of whether to control the size of deer populations in reserves
maintained by The Nature Conservancy. Many would agree that such management is
needed to conserve the species and communities within those reserves.
• Philosophers like Peter Singer [3] argue that we have an ethical obligation to prevent the
suffering of individual animals. On this view, management of deer populations would
be unethical if it involves any harm to individual deer, e.g., by allowing hunters to kill
some deer, even if this harm to individual deer was beneficial to other conservation
values associated with the preserve, and arguably even if it prevented the suffering of
other deer.
• Jane Goodall has been criticized by some conservationists for devoting too much attention to the welfare of individual chimpanzees and to little attention to the “broader”
issues of ensuring that chimpanzees have the habitat they need to survive in the wild.
Suggesting that we have a duty to a whole species, as opposed to its individual members, is
analogous to the way we often suggest that we have a duty to a group — our department, the
University, the profession, our country — that goes beyond our obligation to the individual
members of that group. Moreover, we often recognize a conflict between our duty to individuals and our duty to a group, e.g., the conflict between individual liberties and national
security.
So suggesting that we have a duty to protect biodiversity commits us to conserving
species, but not necessarily the individual organisms of which they are composed. Suggesting
that we have a duty to protect ecosystems might mean that we have a duty to prevent the
extinction of the species of which it is composed, or it might mean that we have a duty to
protect the processes that structure it. In neither case is the primary focus of concern on
the welfare of individual organisms.
The problem of “natural”
“Every ethical theory must provide principles that describe which objects matter for their
own sakes and which do not” [4, p. 188]. So how do we determine that species, to take one
12
In the case of landscapes we might even hope that we’d be able to place values on inanimate objects.
6
example, “matter for their own sake?” In particular, how do we determine that causing a
species to go extinct is “bad” and that preventing its extinction is “good,” especially when
we remember that the eventual fate of every species is extinction?13 Are we really sorry that
smallpox has been eradicated? Wouldn’t we be happy if the World Health Organization’s
efforts to eradicate polio were successful? Part of the response I gave in one of the first
lectures in this class was that the current rate of extinction is much higher than it has been
at any time in the recent geological past. But why is a high extinction rate bad?
One response might be that it isn’t a “natural” rate of extinction. It’s a “human-caused”
rate of extinction. We’ve seen repeatedly that distinguishing between “human-caused” and
“natural” states of a system is problematic because it’s very difficult, if not impossible to
identify an objective baseline for comparison. Think about our discussion of how past land
use history affects the current structure and composition of biological communities or about
how the structure and composition of the Pisgah forest in New Hampshire has changed over
the last three centuries. But there’s an even more fundamental issue associated with trying
to define a “good” or “desirable” state of a system with its “natural” state:
If we are part of nature, then everything we do is part of nature, and is natural in
the primary sense. When we domesticate organisms and bring them into a state
of dependence on us, this is simply an example of one species exerting a selection
pressure on another. If one calls this “unnatural,” one might just as well say the
same of parasitism or symbiosis (compare human domestication of animals and
plants and “slave-making” in the social insects).[4, p. 180]
Similarly, if humans are causing a higher rate of extinction and we are part of nature, how
can we say that human-caused extinctions are unnatural?
As Callicott et al. point out [1] whether we regard humans as part of the system or not
goes well beyond simply noting that we are evolutionarily related to all other living things
on this planet. The answer depends on whether we take a more compositionalist view of
ecosystems or a more functionalist view.
• Compositionalists view the biotic world as consisting of organisms that are aggregated
into populations, communities, and ecosystems.
• Functionalists view the biotic world as consisting of physical and chemical processes
associated with energy flow and nutrient cycling.
13
The reason everything isn’t extinct is that some species give rise to one or more new species before they
go extinct.
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• Compositionalists tend to think of human beings as separate from nature “because
culture uniquely enables Homo sapiens to adapt . . . orders of magnitude faster than
can other species . . . ” [1, p. 24].
• Functionalists tend to think of human beings as part of nature because “human dissipative structures do not stand out so sharply from others of comparable size and
distribution” [1, p. 24].
Callicott et al. suggest that terms like biological diversity, biological integrity, and ecological restoration are values typically associated with a compositionalist approach, while
terms like ecosystem health, ecological services, adaptive management, ecosystem management, sustainable development, ecological sustainability, and ecological rehabilitation are values typically associated with a functionalist approach. They argue that a synthetic approach
combining insights of both is needed.
The problem of deciding
There’s one final question that we’ve skirted throughout these discussions that I want to
mention, not answer: Who gets to make the decisions about conservation policy?
• If I am committed to democracy and individual rights, I must also be committed to
the right of others to choose differently from me, even when they make what I think
is the wrong choice.
• If I am also committed to conserving biological diversity, I must either be convinced
that I can persuade others of the rightness of my views so that the policies I favor will
be democratically adopted, be willing to accept a democratic decision allowing policies
that will harm conservation values I hold dear, or be willing to believe that my opinion
matters more than the opinion of those who don’t value biodiversity as highly as I do
and make policies for them that’s in their own best interest.
That’s the dilemma. I choose democracy. Which do you choose?
A solution?
That last problem also hints at a solution. Van Houtan [5] describes an approach to ethics
deriving from the work of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, an approach known as virtue
ethics. MacIntyre argues that it’s a mistake to argue abstractly about moral or ethical
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rules with the expectation that those rules can then be applied in particular contexts. He
would argue, for example, that it makes no sense to ask in the abstract whether reducing
the number of deer on a Nature Conservancy preserve by hunting is “right” or “justified.”
He would argue that it makes sense to ask that question only in the context of a particular
shared tradition.
Van Houtan argues that argues that the history of the civil rights movoement in the
United States illustrates that MacIntyre was right. Leaders of the movement drew explicitly
on the biblical tradition to argue for an end to racial discrimination.
Enthusiasm and solidarity did not come from a theoretical or academic “common
sense” but were legitimized through the language and practices of Christianity.
He argues that we should describe conservation as a virtue, like honesty or generosity.
To succeed as a social cause, conservation needs a hope that academic science
itself cannot provide. Conservation needs a cultural legitimacy that inspires
enthusiasm, allegiance, and personal sacrifice-in other words, actual changes in
human behavior. Such a vision does not provide a straight path to easy answers;
rather, it offers a description of ethics currently estranged from conservation
science.
What do you think? Is Van Houtan’s proposal an answer? Is an envinromental
or conservation ethic necessary?
Aldo Leopold’s “Land Ethic”
If you haven’t read Aldo Leopold’s, “A Sand County Almanac,” you should. It is an extraordinary and inspiring example of how scientists can communicate with the public. It
includes many wonderful essays, including “Thinking like a mountain.” I mention this now
because another of the essays in that volume, “The land ethic,” has been very influential in
thinking about an ethical approach to conservation. It may not persuade those who do not
already care about conservation that they ought to care, but for those of us who already
care, I think it provides a very useful framework for thinking about the choices we face. You
should read the whole thing and think about it carefully, but until you have time to do that,
here’s my summary of its main points.
The history of ethics is a history of expanding the community included in ethical considerations.
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When god-like Odysseus returned from the wars in Troy, he hanged all on one
rope a dozen slave-girls of his household whom he suspected of misbehavior during
his absence. This hanging involved no question of propriety. The girls were
property. The disposal of property was then, as now, a matter of expediency,
not of right and wrong. Concepts of right and wrong were not lacking from
Odysseus’. Greece: witness the fidelity of his wife through the long years before
at last his black galleys clove the wine-dark seas for home. The ethical structure
of that day covered wives, but had not yet been extended to human chattels.
During the three thousand years which have since elapsed, ethical criteria have
been extended to many fields of conduct, with corresponding shrinkages - in those
judged by expediency only.
A fundamental question underlying all of our discussion has been “Who deserves ethical
consideration?” Leopold argues that just as the ethical community has been broadened to
include people who used to be slaves so also it ought to be broadened to include the entire
land community. In Leopold’s view the land community consists of the soils, waters, plants,
and animals — in addition to humans.14
In his view we should think of a the land community or the land system as a pyramid.
He argues that the land pyramid conveys three basic ideas about land as an energy circuit:
1. Land is not merely soil.
2. The native plants and animals keep the energy circuit open. Others may or may not.
3. Man-made changes are of a different order than evolutionary changes. They have
effects more comprehensive than is intended or foreseen.
Man-made changes deserve our special attention because not only do they “have effects more
comprehensive than is intended or foreseen,” but they are also our choices. As I’ve said many
times, we cannot choose whether or not to have an impact, but we can choose what kind of
impact we will have.
The combined evidence of history and ecology seems to support one general
deduction: the less violent the man-made changes, the greater the probability of
successful readjustment in the pyramid.
14
He didn’t say so explicity, but I’m sure he meant to include microbes as well. My bet is that either
he simply forgot to mention them, because he was a wildlife biologist, or more likely, that he chose not to
mention them, because he was a gifted writer and to do so would have made his writing clumsy and awkward.
10
Leopold goes on to describe two different attitudes towards land sytstems that influence
the choices we make within conservation, what he calls the “A-B cleavage.”
• Group A regards the land as soil or substrate. Its function is entirely captured in its
role in commodity production.
• Group B regards the land as a biota. Its function includes commodity production, but
its value and function is much broader.
Leopold’s sympathies are clearly with Group B. He disdains “clean” farms with neat
fencerows and prefers those that are messy, even if they are less commercially productive,
because they provide habitat for wildlife and protect wildflowers. Here are a few of his key
points.
One basic weakness in a conservation system based wholly on economic motives
is that most members of the land community, have no economic value.
It is inconceivable to me that an ethical relation to land can exist without love,
respect, and admiration for land, and a high regard for its value. By value, I of
course men something far broader than mere economic value; I mean value in the
philosophical sense.
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.
That last pair of sentences has been especially influential. It echoes many of the ideas
we’ve encountered this semester, and it reinforces our, or at least my, intuitive notion that
there is something special and valuable about wild places that isn’t captured in use values.
In particular it includes a role for aesthetic values, values we place on things simply because
they are wonderful or beautiful.
• Integrity: Having all of the right components and functions.
• Stability: Persisting, resisting, rebounding, and adapting.
• Beauty:
Leopold’s land ethic also includes humans as a part of the land, but only a part. It
presents a compelling vision to those of us who already care about conservation, but it also
begs some important questions:
• What are “the right components?”
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• What are “the right functions?”
Maybe it’s a matter of sustainability and scale. Maybe the question isn’t “Do we replace
forests with parking lots and condominiums?” but “How many forests remain? How do we
live as part of this world in a way that sustains it for ourselves and for future generations?”
But even that doesn’t get us as far as we might like. It’s much broader than mere commodity
production, but it doesn’t get us much beyond “mere economic value” towards “value in the
philosophical sense” until we know how to recognize the right components and the right
functions.
The only clues toward “rightness” are a preference for native plants and animals and
for beauty. We’ve already seen that justifying a preference for native plants and animals
from their role in communities and ecosystems isn’t as easy as we might have hoped. To
some extent, I would argue, that preference is based on a particular conception of what is
beautiful. Don’t get me wrong. I find “The Land Ethic” incredibly appealing and inspiring,
but in the end I believe the values it espouses are more aesthetic than ethical.
That means our challenge may be even greater than we imagined. If I’m right, then to
convince people to care about conservation the way I do, I have to convince them to share
my tastes, and I don’t know how to do that except by sharing my love of nature and hoping
that my enthusiasm is infectious.
References
[1] J B Callicott, L B Crowder, and K Mumford. Current Normative Concepts in Conservation. Conservation Biology, 13:22–35, 1999.
[2] National Research Council. Perspectives on Biodiversity: Valuing its Role in an Everchanging World. National Acaemy Press, Washington, DC, 1999.
[3] P Singer. Animal Liberation. Random House, New York, NY, 1975.
[4] E Sober. Philosophical problems for environmentalism. In B G Norton, editor, The
Preservation of Species: The Value of Biological Diversity, pages 173–194. Princeton
University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1986.
[5] Kyle S Van Houtan. Conservation as Virtue: a Scientific and Social Process for Conservation Ethics. Conservation Biology, 20(5):1367–1372, 2006.
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