What Should “Biodiversity” Be?

Abstract

This paper argues that biodiversity should be understood as a normative concept constrained by a set of adequacy conditions that reflect scientific explications of diversity. That there is a normative aspect to biodiversity has long been recognized by environmental philosophers though there is no consensus on the question of what, precisely, biodiversity is supposed to be. There is also disagreement amongst these philosophers as well as amongst conservationists about whether the operative norms should view biodiversity as a global heritage or as embodying local values. After critically analyzing and rejecting the first alternative, this paper gives precedence to local values in defining biodiversity but then notes many problems associated with this move. The adequacy conditions to constrain all natural features from being dubbed as biodiversity include a restriction to biotic elements, attention to variability, and to taxonomic spread, as well as measurability. The biotic elements could be taxa, community types, or even non-standard land cover units such as sacred groves. This approach to biodiversity is intended to explicate its use within the conservation sciences which is the context in which the concept (and term) was first introduced in the late 1980s. It differs from approaches that also attempt to capture the co-option of the term in other fields such as systematics. 18.1 Introduction Many commentators have noted that the term "biodiversity" is of very recent vintage even though biodiversity conservation has become one of the best-known components of both popular and technical discussions of environmental goals today (Takacs 1996; Sarkar 2005, 2017a). The term and associated concept(s) were only

Distinguishing regeneration from degradation in coral ecosystems: the role of value

“…There is also a large literature on value in ecology and conservation, including recognition of the essentially normative nature of conservation, such as its commitment to the value of biodiversity (Soulé 1985). Relatedly, there have been discussions about the role of concepts like biodiversity as meeting places for value and scientific judgment (Sarkar 2019). Values are also often noted as operating in areas such as health and wellbeing (Kingma 2007;Alexandrova 2018), 7 resulting in concepts and claims in these areas being considered 'thick' or 'mixed' (Putnam 2002;Alexandrova 2018).…”

“…The arguments here are that baselines (often tacitly) encode the value judgements underlying descriptions of changes to ecosystems [for a similar approach to biodiversity as encoding values, see Sarkar (2019)]. Value drives inclusion of different timescales, entities and characteristics into baselines.…”

“…Making the baselines explicit, and so teasing out the values underlying them, allows for opportunities for reconciliation to be spotted. Once the epistemological, ontological and value commitments of different stakeholders are made clearer, partial overlaps can be looked for, and even in places where there are no overlaps, different ontologies and value schemes can be combined in ways that produce fruitful 35 This is akin to accounts of biodiversity as a meeting place for scientific measurement and value judgements (Sarkar 2019). 36 As in cases such as implicit judgements about the value of non-native species skewing the results of ecological studies in under-appreciated ways (Vellend 2019).…”

Transdisciplinary science for improved conservation outcomes

“…Transdisciplinary problem-framing provides a starting point whereby science targets the existing strengths and capabilities within the system instead of imposing externally designed solutions (Brondizio 2017). For example, deciding what natural components that make up biodiversity merit conservation, and to what extent, reflects contextual cultural values (Boedhihartono et al 2007, Sarkar 2019.…”

Biological diversity: Introduction, values, threats and conservation measures

“…It refers to different forms of life (plants, animals, fungi and microbes) on planet Earth. The term 'biological diversity' was coined by Thomas Lovejoy in 1980 and the term 'biodiversity' was coined by Walter G. Rosen in 1986 at National Forum on Biodiversity held in Washington (Sarkar, 2019). Biodiversity or biological diversity can range from smallest known life forms Nanobes with diameter 20-150 nm, smallest known bacteria (Unwins, 1999) to blue whale having length up to 110 feet and from extreme cold to extreme hot.…”