Peter Kareiva has no trouble understanding environmental values. This blog's readers will know Kareiva as the scientist who joined with some colleagues to declare that nature is a resource whose value is realized by "domesticating" it. New readers should refer to "'Domesticating Nature' — NYT Commentary" (http://environmentalvalues.blogspot.com/2007/08/domesticating-nature-nyt-commentary.html) and "'Domesticating Nature' — How vs. Why" (http://environmentalvalues.blogspot.com/2007/08/domesticating-nature-how-vs-why.html).
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| Gardening animals: Topiary (Priscilla Wilson) http://www.threadless.com/product/1159/Topiary |
The question that Kareiva is concerned to address is "How should we manage the earth domestication project?" How shall we customize the earth and all its ecosystems — in fact, all its systems — to best serve human interests? It is hard to find a more stunningly arrogant statement of nature's value. Or one more oblivious to our oft-demonstrated and probably unavoidable incompetence to realize the vision of man as "earth manager".
Kareiva is the chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy.
The Nature Conservancy avers that its mission is (http://www.nature.org/pressroom/links/art10292.html):
to preserve plants, animals and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. We are dedicated to preserving biological diversity, and, as described below, our values compel us to find ways to ensure that human activities can be conducted harmoniously with the preservation of natural diversity. We aspire to the vision articulated so wisely more than 50 years ago by Aldo Leopold in his book, A Sand County Almanac: conservation is a state of harmony between man and nature.How are we to understand this vision of harmony, solemnly offered with the imprimatur of Aldo Leopold? As read through the lens of Kareiva's sensibilities, it is the harmony that we achieve by subjecting every last bit of nature to human control for human pleasure and comfort.
This past month, we have a "Dispatch" (http://www.nature.org/tncscience/features/art22977.html) from Sanjayan — another Conservancy "lead" scientist. In it, Sanjayan describes a meeting in Missoula with Kareiva and the Conservancy program director there. There is no mention of domestication; no mention of widening our "global footprint" (as Kareiva would say) to ensure that every last corner of the planet bears it. That is refreshing, even encouraging, considering Sanjayan's company that night.
Instead, we find confusion. But that is appropriate! Understanding environmental values is an extraordinarily difficult enterprise. Sanjayan is struggling along with the rest of us.
Sanjayan asks:
When the goal is to protect a little bit of everything on the planet, can a conservation organization afford to protect places for non-scientific reasons?Evidently, "scientific reasons" can confer indisputable value. But other ways of conferring value are suspect -- as he implies by going on to ask:
[can a conservation organization afford to protect places] Simply because of human values? Aesthetics? Emotional ties that bind people to place?Some may wish to dismiss Sanjayan for committing a form of the "naturalistic fallacy". But that "fallacy" has little to do with either naturalists or fallacies. Instead, we should say that Sanjayan offers an enthymeme, well described by Aristotle (who else?) in his "Rhetoric" Book I.2 (http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.1.i.html) as a syllogism with suppressed premises. Sanjayan's enthymeme is:
- Premise 1: A landscape that has not lost any species in 200 years makes it (let us say) "200-year-species-intact".
- Premise 2: 200-year-species-intact landscapes are "unique".
- Premise 3: Only science can realiably identify 200-year-species-intact landscapes.
- Conclusion: Therefore, species-intact landscapes are worthy of preservation.
The value of a totally intact landscape versus a slightly impacted landscape is hard to quantify. Some lost species will be noticed; others, frankly, will not.So apparently, Sanjayan is willing to qualify his conclusion. But this is a quantitative qualification, not a qualitative one. His conclusion holds for a landscape that, insofar as we can notice, is "intact". If we overlook the disappearance of a species or find it hard to notice its absence — presumably using current ecological science, and within the range of conditions and time in which scientific observation has been possible — then we should not attempt to distinguish that landscape from one that is (by all measures of current ecological science) completely "intact". Perhaps the missing species is merely an arachnid whose ecosystem role cannot be identified and in any case, with which it is hard to be empathetic.
So what's the missing premise?
- Missing Premise: A landscape with a scientifically verifiable unique property is valuable.
Clearly, we can find properties in any landscape that are unique to it and that distinguish it from any others. The peculiarities of its peculiar biogeochemical composition would suffice for a unique thumbprint. What Sanjayan seeks are properties that confer conservation-demanding value on landscapes. Uniqueness alone doesn't do this.
Do certain unique properties such as 200-year-species-intact have a special status in the realm of environmental values? Perhaps they do. But this value does not result from the fact that the valued property is scientifically determined and understood — that it has, in Sanjayan's words, a "scientific reason". The various properties that typify or constitute a Superfund site may be scientifically determined, too. But that doesn't give such a site a value that demands its preservation. Quite the opposite.
Biodiversity, too, is scientifically characterizable — albeit in a number of different ways that give different answers to the question "how biodiverse is this landscape?". Taking one measure, we may determine that a landscape is biodiverse. So much for the science. We then have to decide whether this diversity (not the fact that it was scientifically determined) confers some kind of value on the landscape that commands our moral attention.
Sanjayan is justifiably nervous about saying that science somehow confers value. He may sense, though doesn't say, that science does, indeed must inform our best judgments of value. It helps us understand more fully the implications of our actions. To the extent that consequences count in moral evaluation and deliberation, science may help immensely. But it doesn't tell us which consequences count; or which ones merit moral consideration; or for those that do, to what degree they command our moral attentiveness.
Science, too, can help us find in landscapes properties — and potentially valuable properties — beyond those that satisfy our most near-sighted and narrowly construed interests. Science helps us see that not every plot of land has value merely as a place to build a condo, to lay down a highway, or to plant endless rows of ethanol-yielding corn. But science doesn't have the power to confer the value. Rather, it can only help us find the properties that we find valuable in our moral deliberations outside of (though informed by) scientific inquiry.
Sanjayan does hint at other ways to proceed with the project of finding environmental value. But he immediately despairs of making any headway with them:
Every place, it seems, is precious to those who live there; it’s difficult to argue that some are more precious than others.These are, as he says, merely "emotional ties that bind people to a place". How can we possibly sort this out? But really, this is an excellent place to start! We would urge Sanjayan to start from there — the value of places to people.
Sanjayan offers other hints, by way of being dismissive, of letting "human value" or "aesthetics" enter into consideration. These may also be areas of fruitful moral, though not scientific inquiry.
We would urge Sanjayan not to expect an easy formula or "scientific reason" that will identify properties that carry environmental values, let alone create a neatly ordered hierarchy of such values. The world of values, including (or perhaps especially) those attaching to nature and the environment, arise from many, varied, and dynamically changing interests that do not admit a neat order. We are likely to find many different kinds of values and no alchemy for converting one kind to another. There may not even be a common measure — as much as we yearn for this when the values conflict and demand tradeoffs.
This blog requested that Sanjayan record his comments on these thoughts. Sanjayan did not do that. Nor did he even respond to the request.
