SUBJECT: Biodiversity conservation: choice or chance?
AUTHOR: Martin Sharman
DATE: 1st April

KEYWORDS: Biodiversity values, biodiversity conservation, social choice.

SUMMARY: It may be dangerous to select certain elements of biodiversity to conserve. Human values, which are subject to fashion, are a poor guide to deciding what is needed to maintain life on Earth and what will allow evolution to continue.

I quite agree with Jari's opening statement that "The answer to the first question 'what biological resources do we need to consider' is 'biodiversity'".

Later in his contribution, however, we part company - if only briefly. He states that "biodiversity is vital for humans" and goes on to talk about the benefits of biodiversity for humans. Of course I agree with the statement, but I feel that the "goods and services" argument, however fashionable, is limited, distasteful and dangerous.

The opening words of the preamble to the Convention on Biological Diversity are: "Conscious of the intrinsic value of biological diversity." We should not lose to view this over-reaching moral reason to believe that biodiversity is something that humans should strive to conserve. This moral position - that we should try to protect biodiversity in all its aspects - would strongly reinforce Jari's principle: biodiversity should not be conceptually fragmented into "bits to conserve" and "bits to abandon".

Of course I understand the argument that nothing has "intrinsic" value, because unless humans are there to value it, nothing has value. This is a corollary of the strong anthropic principle, which states that because humans are here to observe the universe, the universe must have properties that make inevitable the existence of intelligent life. This philosophical position seems to me to be worthless in this argument; biodiversity existed, and creatures evolved because of that biodiversity, long before intelligent observers could argue whether anything can have intrinsic value. The intrinsic value of life seems to me to be self-evident, and if you accept that concept, then you are on morally weak ground if you try to partition biodiversity into bits that humans value (and should save) - and the rest.

Why do I think that Jari's "vital for humans" comment leads us into dangerous territory? Because by using it we can say that biodiversity only has value to humans, because only humans have value systems. Only humans can talk about the "ecological, genetic, social, economic, scientific, educational, cultural, recreational and aesthetic values of biological diversity and its components", as the CBD preamble continues. This removes the moral argument and says that we should save biodiversity because it is good for us.

But an opponent to conservation (or a proponent of development, with "sustainable" muttered through gritted teeth) can defeat each of these arguments piecemeal, or use them to select "bits to conserve".

Nobody really knows the ecological value of biodiversity - yes, some experiments show that some ecosystems function "better" (by some human value system) if they are relatively biodiverse. And of course highly impoverished ecosystems are prone to failure. But I don't think that we can defend wholesale the idea that there is a scientifically demonstrated ecological value of biodiversity.

As for things such as genetic value, well, this leads us into murky waters indeed. Should we accept that all genetic variation is intrinsically (!) good, because every stray allele might have some useful function of which we are not yet aware? Or must we argue gene by gene to show that the particular alleles we want to save have some value (to whom?). Analogous arguments apply to scientific, educational, and recreational values.

The economic argument seems to me to suffer from two other major problems.

If you think that it is a good thing to conserve life in this solar system, then the total value of biodiversity is infinite. But the marginal economic value of any particular bit of it is likely to be tiny, since there is always more biodiversity around the corner. Thus no specific bit is likely to be worth preserving for economic reasons. Conservation, in general, will never pay for itself.

If we look at the economic argument in another way, we could say that the only species worth saving are those of economic importance. But to conserve them we would have to conserve their whole trophic web, which includes a good deal of invisible biodiversity - either in the soil or the ocean, or wherever. Do we really know how to conserve specifically these species? I suspect not, in which case we have to admit that the economic argument leads us to conserving a lot of species whose economic value is unknown - and back to the view that we should aim to conserve as much as possible.

As for aesthetic values, of course we are attracted to pretty things, but don't ugly things have just as good a claim on rights to existence too?

To argue that biodiversity should be conserved for its cultural value has a good deal of merit, if you can persuade people that each species has as much (or a great deal more) complexity as the most wonderful city, and that in itself this complexity forms part of our cultural heritage. But I suspect that this is an argument that has limited appeal for many people on the planet, for whom a bug in a tree has nothing in common with their view of cultural heritage.

Finally, there is the social value of biodiversity. Here is the crux of the argument. Humans are the great agents of change, and our views of what we should do about that change depends entirely on our social perspective.
While biodiversity loss happens carelessly as collateral damage consequent on economic progress, conservation requires decisions and energy. If we destroy biodiversity mostly by inattention, we conserve it by choice. So even if the moral position is that we should try to conserve biodiversity in all its aspects, society still has to decide what it wants to conserve. In other words, society will have to decide to put energy into conservation; and that energy does not come free of cost. Cost, inevitably, implies trade-offs and compromises - something must be sacrificed. So what should society decide to conserve?

The CBD has the last word; in the end, the biodiversity that we must absolutely conserve are those aspects that are important "for evolution and for maintaining life sustaining systems of the biosphere". And what are they? We just don't know.

What scientific research is needed? I think that we need to:
· understand the ecology of extinction - in the great extinction spasms of the past, how did the triggering event cause the collapse of biodiversity and lead to the failure of ecological systems?
· understand the feedback between biodiversity simplification and climate change
· understand how European societies manage the conflicts that arise when efforts to conserve biodiversity restrict economic or other human activities.

A contribution by:

Martin Sharman
European Commission
Research DG DI-4 Biodiversity and Ecosystems
Rue Luxembourg 46
B-1049 Brussels, Belgium