Biodiversity,biological uncertainty,and setting conservation priorities

In a world of massive extinctions where not all taxa can be saved, how ought biologists to decide their preservation priorities? When biologists make recommendations regarding conservation, should their analyses be based on scientific criteria, on public or lay criteria, on economic or some other criteria? As a first step in answering this question, we examine the issue of whether biologists ought to try to save the endangered Florida panther, a well known “glamour” taxon. To evaluate the merits of panther preservation, we examine three important arguments of biologists who are skeptical about the desirability of panther preservation. These arguments are (1) that conservation dollars ought to be spent in more efficient ways than panther preservation; (2) that biologists and conservationists ought to work to preserve species before subspecies; and (3) that biologists and conservationists ought to work to save habitats before species or subspecies. We conclude that, although all three arguments are persuasive, none of them provides convincing grounds for foregoing panther preservation in favor of other, more scientifically significant conservation efforts. Our conclusion is based, in part, on the argument that biologists ought to employ ethical, as well as scientific, rationality in setting conservation priorities and that ethical rationality may provide persuasive grounds for preserving taxa that often are not viewed by biologists as of great importance.     

Vaccine mandates,value pluralism,and policy diversity

Political communities across the world have recently sought to tackle rising rates of vaccine hesitancy and refusal, by implementing coercive immunization programs, or by making existing immunization programs more coercive. Many academics and advocates of public health have applauded these policy developments, and they have invoked ethical reasons for implementing or strengthening vaccine mandates. Others have criticized these policies on ethical grounds, for undermining liberty, and as symptoms of broader government overreach. But such arguments often obscure or abstract away from the diverse values that are relevant to the ethical justifications of particular political communities’ vaccine‐mandate policies. We argue for an expansive conception of the normative issues relevant to deciding whether and how to establish or reform vaccine mandates, and we propose a schema by which to organize our thoughts about the ways in which different kinds of vaccine‐mandate policies implicate various values.     

Biodiversity hotspots: hot for what?

In complex areas of international policy, such as biodiversity conservation, there is a risk that well-promoted strategies will be received by decision makers as a cure-all. The U.S.-based Conservation International is promoting biodiversity hotspots as a 'silver bullet' strategy for conserving most species for least cost. We assess the degree to which this goal is compatible with four social values that characterize the conservation movement. We find that biodiversity hotspots provide only a partial response because conservation does not treat all species as equal. We argue that explicit recognition of such values is fundamental to a structured debate contributing to the development of a common strategy for biodiversity conservation.     

A Theoretical Foundation for Life-Cycle Assessment

The presence of value judgments in life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) has been a constant source of controversy. According to a common interpretation, the international standard on LCIA requires that the assessment methods used in published comparisons be "value free." Epistemologists argue that even natural science rests on "constitutive" and "contextual" value judgments. The example of the equivalency potential for climate change, the global warming potential (GWP), demonstrates that any impact assessment method inevitably contains not only constitutive and contextual values, but also preference values. Hence, neither life-cycle assessment (LCA) as a whole nor any of its steps can be "value free." As a result, we suggest a more comprehensive definition of objectivity in LCA that allows arguments about values and their relationship to facts. We distinguish three types of truth claims: factual claims, which are based on natural science; normative claims, which refer to preference values; and relational claims, which address the proper relation between factual knowledge and values. Every assessment method, even the GWP, requires each type of claim. Rational arguments can be made about each type of claim. Factual truth claims can be assessed using the scientific method. Normative claims can be based on ethical arguments. The values of individuals or groups can be elicited using various social science methods. Relational claims must follow the rules of logic. Relational claims are most important for the development of impact assessment methods. Because LCAs are conducted to satisfy the need of decision makers to consider environmental impacts, relational claims about impact assessment methods should refer to this goal. This article introduces conditions that affect environmental decision making and discusses how LCA—values and all—can be defended as a rational response to the challenge of moving uncertain scientific information into the policy arena.     

Three challenges for a real people-centred conservation

Many commentators attest to a paradigm shift in biodiversity conservation, away from exclusive protected areas towards more people‐centred or community‐based conservation. This has been referred to as ‘new conservation’. However, new conservation could be thought of as an attempt to re‐label and re‐package conservation and to ‘get people on board’ existing strategies. According to its critics even so‐called new conservation policy, practice and institutions remain expert‐driven, undemocratic and autocratic. I argue that for new conservation to become reality, then more fundamental changes in priority‐setting, decision‐making and organization are required. This paper presents three challenges for a real people‐centred conservation: a more pluralist approach to understanding knowledge and values of different actors, greater deliberation and inclusion in decision‐making, and a remodelling of institutions to support conservation.     

HUMAN DIGNITY IN INTERNATIONAL POLICY DOCUMENTS: A USEFUL CRITERION FOR PUBLIC POLICY?

Current developments in biomedicine are presenting us with difficult ethical decisions and raising complex policy questions about how to regulate these new developments. Particularly vexing for governments have been issues related to human embryo experimentation. Because some of the most promising biomedical developments, such as stem cell research and nuclear somatic transfer, involve such experimentation, several international bodies have drafted documents aimed to provide guidance to governments when developing biomedical science policy. Here I focus on two such documents: the Council of Europe's Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being and the Additional Protocol to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being. I argue that by using human dignity as a criterion to determine the permissibility of particular human embryo research practices, these documents cannot aid in identifying research that would be contrary to human dignity. Thus, they fail to guide public policy on embryo experimentation. Their use of human dignity as a criterion makes their task of offering guidance unfeasible because the concept as used in these documents is too vague and is applied in contradictory ways. I discuss the main goals of these documents and their claims in relation to human embryo research. I then discuss how they have influenced public policy in several countries. Finally, I show that although these Council of Europe treaties attempt to serve as public policy guides in the area of embryo research, they fail to do so.     

Conservation implications of the link between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning

The relationship between biodiversity and individual ecosystem processes is often asymptotic, saturating at relatively low levels, with some species contributing more strongly than others. This has cast doubt on arguments for conservation based on maintenance of the functioning of ecosystems. However, we argue that the link between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is an important additional argument for conservation for several reasons. (1) Although species differ in importance to ecosystem processes, we do not believe that this argues for preservation of just a few species for two reasons: first, it is nearly impossible to identify all species important to the numerous systems and processes on which humans depend; second, the important species themselves may depend on an unknown number of other species in their communities. (2) Arguments for conservation based on ecosystem functioning are complementary to other utilitarian, ethical and aesthetic justifications. No single reason will convince all people or protect all species, however the combination produces a strong case for conservation of biodiversity. (3) Even if the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is asymptotic at local spatial scales and in the short term, effects of biodiversity loss are likely to be important at larger temporal and spatial scales. (4) Initial arguments for the importance of biodiversity for ecosystem functioning were largely based on a precautionary approach (points 1-3). However, we are now moving to a scientific position based on accumulating experimental evidence. The future challenge is the integration of this scientific research with policy.     

Reckoning perverse outcomes of resource conservation policies using the Ecological Footprint

Spatially expanding economies threaten the status of basic natural resources. In particular, wildlife habitats rarely benefit. Apart from protected areas, political-economic decision-making is ill-prepared to accommodate wildlife habitats with standard valuation methods. In some cases habitat loss is an inadvertent outcome of resource conservation policies intended to lower resource consumption.We recognize the term resource conservation as multifaceted, with a range of meanings from protecting wildlife habitats to efficiently allocating and using materials and energy. Resource conservation policies that spur economic benefits may produce unwanted outcomes. This is partly because linkages between economic and conservation goals seem tangential. Moreover, relevant information is imperfect and predictive tools are limited. This is particularly true for land converting impacts, which are often addressed after the fact, not during policy formulation, and can lead to successive resource degradation.We argue for the need to calculate the positive and negative land converting impacts from resource conservation policies that may expand the economy. Using the Ecological Footprint (EF) approach, we tested for potentially perverse outcomes of an existing resource conservation policy. In doing so, we conceptually mapped linkages among economic sectors to their cumulative effects of converting land. We assume an inverse relationship between economic expansion and land conservation.A New York State energy efficiency incentive program was tested using recent data from all tracked economic sectors. The economic data were converted in a series of steps from dollar values to energy units, to carbon dioxide emissions, and ultimately expressed in hectares of net land conversion. A policy scenario was compared to a reference scenario (no resource conservation policy), and the results anticipate a net gain in conserving land (0.6% reduced conversion). We interpret this as a potentially proportional offset favoring wildlife habitat retention. Two sensitivity analyses demonstrated that the policy’s impact on conserving land depended on both the affected economy’s scale (tripling reduces the estimated benefit to 0.2%), and the level of economic expansion that followed (doubling leads to a net loss of wildlands).This novel use of the EF approach may serve as a model for a more general approach to assessing a broader class of policies. It may also hold promise toward developing tools that can better examine well-intentioned resource conservation policies with uncertain outcomes. Our hope is that work like this can lead to better sets of tools for examining critical ecological–economic linkages for improved policy design.     

The use of willingness-to-pay approaches in mammal conservation

With limited monetary resources available for nature conservation, policy‐makers need to be able to prioritize conservation objectives. This has traditionally been done using qualitative ecological criteria. However, since declines in species and habitats are largely the result of socio‐economic and political forces, human preferences and values should also be taken into account. An environmental economics technique, contingent valuation, provides one way of doing this by quantifying public willingness‐to‐pay towards specific conservation objectives. In this paper, the use of this approach for quantifying public preferences towards the UK Biodiversity Action Plans for four different British mammal species is considered. The species included are the Red Squirrel Sciurus vulgaris, the Brown Hare Lepus europaeus, the Otter Lutra lutra and the Water Vole Arvicola terrestris. Willingness‐to‐pay for conservation was increased by the inclusion of the Otter among the species, membership of an environmental organization and awareness of the general and species‐specific threats facing British mammals. It was reduced by the presence of the Brown Hare among the species being considered. These findings for British mammals are compared with other willingness‐to‐pay studies for mammal conservation worldwide. Willingness‐to‐pay tends to be greater for marine mammals than terrestrial ones, and recreational users of species (tourists or hunters) are generally more willing than residents to pay towards species conservation. The choice of technique for eliciting willingness‐to‐pay from respondents is also shown to be highly significant. Willingness‐to‐pay values for British mammals derived from contingent valuation are sensitive to the species included rather than merely symbolic. This indicates that, with care, such measures can be used as a reliable means of quantifying public preferences for conservation, and therefore contributing to the decision‐making process. However, irrespective of the internal consistency of contingent valuation, the validity of the approach, especially for use in nature conservation, is disputed. Willingness‐to‐pay is likely to reflect many interrelated factors such as ethical and moral values, knowledge and tradition, and monetary values may not be an adequate representation of these broader considerations. Willingness‐to‐pay approaches should therefore be used in addition to, rather than in place of, expert judgements and more deliberative approaches towards policy decision‐making for conservation.     

Environmental Values,Human Nature,and Economic Democracy

Recent social science indicates that the public at large behave more ethically, and favor environmental protection more strongly, than do the wealthiest minority. Yet the latter group exerts predominant control over the economy. This suggests that shifting power away from this minority and onto the majority would yield a better ecology. In this paper I spell out the implications of these considerations for “economic democracy” (ED), a well-developed alternative to capitalism that shifts power from wealthy shareholders onto ordinary citizens and workers. I contrast this rationale for ED with some thinkers’ defense of “sustainable capitalism”, and with others’ ecological arguments for ED based on economic stability and self-interest, rather than ethical behavior per se.     

Conservation strategies for coastal wetlands in the Gulf of California,Mexico

Wetlands worldwide, the fisheries they support, and the communities that depend on them are threatened by habitat modification. We describe strategies being used for wetland conservation in the Gulf of California, Mexico, their effectiveness, and challenges for implementation. We base our analysis on the authors’ experience working for local environmental non-governmental organizations and available literature. The strategies discussed include public and private policy instruments such as Environmental Impact Evaluations, environmental land easements, concessions and transfer agreements, Natural Protected Areas, and international agreements such as the Ramsar convention and the North American Wetlands Conservation Act. We present examples from the Gulf of California that highlight some of the challenges to wetland conservation. These challenges range from governmental failure to enforce existing environmental legislation, lack of verification of requirements for development projects, to low economic penalties for wetland modification or destruction. We found that in the Gulf of California successful conservation of coastal wetlands required a combination of policy instruments and relied on integrating science, management, and public participation through partnerships between non-governmental institutions, academic institutions, community stakeholders, and government agencies.     

我国生物多样性保护自然-社会科学交叉融合与发展

保护科学前沿研究重视克服单一学科的局限而向超越自然科学和社会科学跨学科交叉融合转型。基于世界自然保护联盟-世界保护区委员会(IUCN-WCPA)自然保护地管理有效性框架,从规划制定、执行和评估三个方面系统梳理了我国保护科学的研究进展,分析了保护自然科学和社会科学在研究内容、方法和视角等方面的差异,识别出潜在的跨学科综合研究领域。结果表明,我国保护自然科学与社会科学研究大多相互独立、缺乏融合协作,少有的跨学科研究在整体性、系统性、兼容性、深入性和规范性上有待提高。自然科学家在介入社会科学研究时缺乏对现实制度的科学理解,所提出的保护政策和行动建议偏向理想主义,阻碍保护科学跨学科知识生产;社会科学家则缺乏自然科学方法和数据的知识积累,所提出的政策和行动建议脱离事实和证据,偏向主观主义,不利于保护科学知识进步。为此,构建了基于自然保护地适应性管理逻辑下的保护科学跨学科整合框架,以推动保护科学共同话语的形成,实现社会与生态的耦合协调发展。     

Interpreting evidence: why values can matter as much as science

Despite increasing awareness of the ways in which non-epistemic values play roles in science, many scientists remain reluctant to acknowledge values at stake in their own work. Even when research clearly relates to risk assessment and establishing public policy, contexts in which the presence of values is less likely to be contentious, scientists tend to present such research as merely involving empirical questions about what the evidence is. As a result, debates over policy-related science tend to be framed as purely epistemic debates over the state of the evidence. We argue that this neglects the important ways that ethical and social values play legitimate roles in judgments about what we take to be evidence for a particular policy. Using the case of recent disputes about the relative safety of home birth, we argue that although the debate has been framed as a purely scientific one about the empirical evidence for home birth, it actually involves disagreements about underlying value assumptions. If our claims are correct, then in order to move the debate forward, scientists will need to engage in a critical discussion about the values at stake.     

The Ethics of Continued Life‐Sustaining Treatment for those Diagnosed as Brain‐dead

Given the long‐standing controversy about whether the brain‐dead should be considered alive in an irreversible coma or dead despite displaying apparent signs of life, the ethical and policy issues posed when family members insist on continued treatment are not as simple as commentators have claimed. In this article, we consider the kind of policy that should be adopted to manage a family's insistence that their brain‐dead loved one continues to receive supportive care. We argue that while it would be ethically inappropriate to continue to devote scarce acute care resources to such patients in a hospital setting, it may not be ethically inappropriate for patients to receive these resources in certain other settings. Thus, if a family insists on continuing to care for their brain‐dead loved at their home, we should not, from a policy perspective, interfere with the family's wishes. We also argue that healthcare professionals should make some effort to facilitate the transfer of brain‐dead patients to these other settings when families insist on continued treatment despite being informed about the lack of any potential for recovery of consciousness. Our arguments are strengthened by the fact that patients in a persistent vegetative state, who, when correctly diagnosed, also have no potential for recovery of consciousness, are routinely transferred from hospitals to nursing homes or long‐term care facilities where they continue to be ventilated, tube fed and to receive other supportive care. We also briefly explore the question of who should be responsible for the costs of such treatment at the long‐term care facility.     

Surveillance and control of asymptomatic carriers of drug‐resistant bacteria

Drug‐resistant bacterial infections constitute a major threat to global public health. Several key bacteria that are becoming increasingly resistant are among those that are ubiquitously carried by human beings and usually cause no symptoms (i.e. individuals are asymptomatic carriers) until and/or unless a precipitating event leads to symptomatic infection (and thus disease). Carriers of drug‐resistant bacteria can also transmit resistant pathogens to others, thus putting the latter at risk of resistant infections. Accumulating evidence suggests that such transmission occurs not only in hospital settings but also in the general community, although considerably more data are needed to assess the extent of this problem. Asymptomatic carriage of drug‐resistant bacteria raises important ethical questions regarding the appropriate public health response, including the degree to which it would be justified to impose burdens on asymptomatic carriers (and others) in order to prevent transmission. In this paper, we (i) summarize current evidence regarding the carriage of key drug‐resistant bacteria, noting important knowledge gaps; and (ii) explore the particular implications of existing public health ethics frameworks for policy‐making regarding asymptomatic carriers. Inter alia, we argue that the relative burdens imposed by public health measures on healthy carriers (as opposed to sick individuals) warrant careful consideration and should be proportionate to the expected public health benefits in terms of risks averted. We conclude that more surveillance and research regarding community transmission will be needed in order to clarify relevant risks and design proportionate policies, although extensive community surveillance itself would also require careful ethical consideration.     

A rewilding agenda for Europe: creating a network of experimental reserves

In the context of aging European conservation institutions rewilding has emerged as a popular and scientific expression of new directions in ecology and conservation management associated with the restoration of ecosystem function through reassembly of trophic levels involving the reintroduction of large mammals. It introduces a radical new natural archetype that evokes a positive environmentalism. The Oostvaardersplassen experiment in the Netherlands demonstrates the agency of rewilding for nature development and engaging diverse publics in debates on what is natural and the future of conservation policy. If conservation is to retain its cultural and policy visibility and influence in a 21st century multi‐cultural Europe, our conservation institutions and the natures we value must adapt. In this forum I frame rewilding as an asset for institutional adaptation that is being constrained by substantive institutional and societal resistance. I argue the need for strategic investment in a European network of experimental rewilding sites. These would bring rewilding into densely populated areas, develop the science and practice of ecosystem restoration, and promote public debate on nature conservation futures. The ‘Fitness check’ of European nature conservation legislation mandated in 2014 is a case of high politics. In this situation, compromise and negotiation is inevitable and the environmental lobby needs something to advocate as well as defend. A rewilding agenda could fulfil this need.     

Spill-over effect in media framing: Representations of wildlife conservation in Zimbabwean and international media, 1989–2010

Myths and metaphors that occur in media frames play an important role in influencing public perceptions of an issue in times of war, political conflict, crisis and disaster. This, in turn, influences policy makers and (inter)national assistance and aid programmes. We investigated whether a metaphoric spill-over of frames used in connection with political events could explain the misrepresentation in the framing of wildlife conservation. Zimbabwe experienced a severe political conflict and economic downturn in 2000 when land reforms took place. We analyzed newspaper articles on Zimbabwe's wildlife conservation published between 1989 and 2010 from newspapers in Zimbabwe, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. We selected three issues about wildlife conservation in Zimbabwe in the local and international media, namely, the ivory ban, rhino protection, and Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources to investigate the spill-over effect. Our results show that in the 1990s, the majority of newspaper articles highlighted that wildlife conservation in Zimbabwe was largely successful. However, two major changes occurred after 2000 following the land reforms in Zimbabwe. First, the international media showed little interest in wildlife conservation in Zimbabwe as evidenced by a sharp decline in published articles and second, the frames changed in the international media with the “political unrest and land reform” blame frame becoming more dominant. This transition in reporting, frames, and low frame parity shows that there was a spill-over effect of political frames into wildlife conservation following Zimbabwe's land reforms in 2000. Metaphoric spill-over effects may thus create myths in the readership, in turn influencing policy-derived actions in a sector that is not or poorly related to the actual disaster.     

Antibiotic resistance as a tragedy of the commons: An ethical argument for a tax on antibiotic use in humans

To the extent that antibiotic resistance (ABR) is accelerated by antibiotic consumption and that it represents a serious public health emergency, it is imperative to drastically reduce antibiotic consumption, particularly in high‐income countries. I present the problem of ABR as an instance of the collective action problem known as ‘tragedy of the commons’. I propose that there is a strong ethical justification for taxing certain uses of antibiotics, namely when antibiotics are required to treat minor and self‐limiting infections, such as respiratory tract infections, in otherwise healthy individuals. Taxation would allow a reduction in consumption (given certain behavioural economics assumptions) and/or ensure that individuals internalize or compensate for their contribution to the erosion of the common good of antibiotic effectiveness. I suggest that revenue from the tax could be used to fund conservation and innovation strategies. Taxation might be a coercive policy, especially for certain individuals, but the ethical case for coercive policies is very strong when the good to be preserved is important enough and when they force individuals to do something they have a moral obligation to do anyway. I argue that, in the case of mild and self‐limiting infections, individuals have a moral duty of easy rescue and a moral duty of fairness to make their contribution to the preservation of the common good of antibiotic effectiveness by foregoing antibiotics. I also suggest that taxing antibiotics in such cases is an all things considered ethically justified policy even if it would introduce inequalities in access to healthcare.     

Building strong relationships between conservation genetics and primary industry leads to mutually beneficial genomic advances

Several reviews in the past decade have heralded the benefits of embracing high‐throughput sequencing technologies to inform conservation policy and the management of threatened species, but few have offered practical advice on how to expedite the transition from conservation genetics to conservation genomics. Here, we argue that an effective and efficient way to navigate this transition is to capitalize on emerging synergies between conservation genetics and primary industry (e.g., agriculture, fisheries, forestry and horticulture). Here, we demonstrate how building strong relationships between conservation geneticists and primary industry scientists is leading to mutually‐beneficial outcomes for both disciplines. Based on our collective experience as collaborative New Zealand‐based scientists, we also provide insight for forging these cross‐sector relationships.     

Managing consequences of climate‐driven species redistribution requires integration of ecology,conservation and social science

Climate change is driving a pervasive global redistribution of the planet's species. Species redistribution poses new questions for the study of ecosystems, conservation science and human societies that require a coordinated and integrated approach. Here we review recent progress, key gaps and strategic directions in this nascent research area, emphasising emerging themes in species redistribution biology, the importance of understanding underlying drivers and the need to anticipate novel outcomes of changes in species ranges. We highlight that species redistribution has manifest implications across multiple temporal and spatial scales and from genes to ecosystems. Understanding range shifts from ecological, physiological, genetic and biogeographical perspectives is essential for informing changing paradigms in conservation science and for designing conservation strategies that incorporate changing population connectivity and advance adaptation to climate change. Species redistributions present challenges for human well‐being, environmental management and sustainable development. By synthesising recent approaches, theories and tools, our review establishes an interdisciplinary foundation for the development of future research on species redistribution. Specifically, we demonstrate how ecological, conservation and social research on species redistribution can best be achieved by working across disciplinary boundaries to develop and implement solutions to climate change challenges. Future studies should therefore integrate existing and complementary scientific frameworks while incorporating social science and human‐centred approaches. Finally, we emphasise that the best science will not be useful unless more scientists engage with managers, policy makers and the public to develop responsible and socially acceptable options for the global challenges arising from species redistributions.