The Impasse in Biodiversity Conservation Policy

Yrjö Haila, Koli 25 August, 2008

The crux of the issue:

THE PROOF OF BIODIVERSITY IS IN THE USING-- in other words: all conceptions that externalize biodiversity into something that has to be protected as separate from human livelihood, are misleading

Approach: genealogy as history of the present

How did we come to perceive nature as something that requires conservation?

This is not an endpoint of linear increase of reason, rather, we have to weave together several chains of events in what follows, I present four

WHY genealogy?

Our present understanding of the issue is shaped by the contingencies of the flow of events, which were shaped by the ways the issues were understood at the time.

Hence, the normative basis has come about through the same flow of events – in other words: (i) grounding: What for? – Why prioritize nature

conservation instead of something else? (ii) operationalizing: What criteria to use to assess

success vs. failure?

The fact of human-caused extinctions, 19th c. – Darwinian theory as a precondition

Extinctions (Adams 2004)

Emblematic: dodo, quagga, the passenger pigeon

Big game hunting; Africa etc.

ICPB (1922) and so on (International Council for Bird Preservation)

IUCN (1948)1. Conservation thinking(post-Enlightenment secularization)

Utilitarian conservation in New England, South Africa, New Zealand, and other European colonies (Grove 1995, Judd 1997)

The Romantic movement, wilderness thinking (N.Am.)

Changing popular sensitivity: ”Nature is Our Friend”

Conservation legislation in different countries: Sweden 1909, Finland 1923, …

Conservation becomes generally regarded as a governmental duty: administration – after WW2

Binding international treaties

- CITES 1973

- Ramsar Conv. (Wetlands) 1976

- EU: Birds D. 1979, Habitats D. 1992

2. Legislation, treaties

Specific legislation - juridical innovations, such as the Endangered Species Act 1973

Beginnings: assessments and classifications for legislative and administrative purposes

(Preparing the ground culturally!)

… increasingly comprehensive: Red Data Lists (1960s )

Generalization of the notion of extinction (*)

(*) Extinction risk becomes a statistical notion – as distinct from a target-specific notion

Extinction risk is present everywhere

BIODIVERSITY – as a new catch-all term

3. Conservation science

… increasingly systematic: e.g. SSSI Sites of Special Scientific Interest

The theory of Island Biogeography (MacArthur & Wilson 1963, 1967): area is a reliable predictor of extinction threat; also Preston (1962)

4. Biosphere (Vaclav Smil, 2002)

V.I. Vernadsky 1926 (in French, 1929)

Alfred Lotka 1924

”Ecosystem” -- Tansley 1935 (precursors: organismic metaphors since the 1880s, by and large)

Energetics: (Lotka!!) & G. Evelyn Hutchinson – Raymond Lindeman (1942) – the Odum brothers: The Fundamentals of Ecology (1954, 1st ed)

Symbiosis in evolution; the importance of micro-organisms in maintaining ecological functions on the biospheric level – Lynn Margulis (1970 --> )

Eduard Suess 1875 – the term

GAIAJames Lovelock 1972

A novelty has come about

The task of nature conservation is framed in a new way: a shift from target-specific to comprehensive conservation (biodiversity)

Nothing less is at stake than the life-support system of Earth (at the very least, the system supporting human life!)

as a result, the target is indefinite

Biodiversity is framed as a big issue, deliberately

E.O. Wilson (1997) on what biodiversity is: "So, what is it? Biologists are inclined to agree that it is, in one sense, everything."

Difficulties with a “doable” definition: if nothing can be excluded, no distinctions can be made; cf. omnis determinatio est negatio (Spinoza)

Difficulties with specifying a problem space: How do you preserve ”everything” – normative standards tend to collapse to a simplistic culture/nature dualism

Example of the culture/nature dualism:

Orians & Soulé (2001): Conservation Biology. Research Priorities for the Next Decade

”Conservationists must make two key decisions. First, they must decide which time in the past should serve as the reference period. Second, they must assess the probable ecological conditions that existed in the area at the time.”

But as human influence – past, present and future – is everywhere, this goal-setting is meaningless.

We need to be more specific about what biodiversity means, and why it is meaningful: A PROCESS PERSPECTIVE (Making the Biodiversity Crisis Tractable: A Process Perspective; Haila, 2004)

First of all: 'biodiversity' is a social construct (BioDiversity, 1986, 1988; Wilson 1992); but, as Hacking (1999) notes, the attribute "social" is redundant: processes taking place in society are social, by definition. Hacking: reserve the term "construct" to such concepts that are deliberately brought forth, mainly for critical purposes – this fits "biodiversity."

Constructing a problem: opening up a public space in which the problem gains urgency as compared with other public problems – i. e., PUBLICS and PUBLIC SPACES come in purals

Useful analytic concepts:

(A) Framing: Framing an issue means defining a stable context within which it can be adequately understood and addressed. The context allows specified questions to be asked as well as criteria to be given on what could count as an answer to those questions.

(B) Problem space: a problem space is analogous to a physical state space (Alan Garfinkel 1981) – the "movement" of problem definitions and perceptions within that space is influenced by critical variables, which bound the space.

(C) Closure: In the most elementary case, explanatory closure is constituted by two alternatives: refuting one lends support to the other (hypothesis testing).

Non-linearities:

Interactions between critical variables

- between variables

- between levels or organization, & as a consequence of size/ rate differences (biophysical scaling laws; ecological scales)

This means that the mutual ”matching” of framing, problem space & closure is very seldom, if ever, straightforward as regards issues pertaining to biodiversity

Framing takes place in two dimensions, as it were: the normative urgency of the problem has to be grounded, and the analytic features of the problem have to be specified. We could call the first dimension political framing, and the second conceptual framing; the latter dimension implies also an idea on how the problem can possibly be solved (which cannot be normatively neutral).PROBLEMS as regards BD:(a) the "bigness" of the biodiversity concern in normative terms: it is difficult to give qualifications; (b) stabilization: how do you stabilize research on "everything"?

Empirical stabiization: entities vs. processes?

In biology, all "entities" are temporary – they are maintained by particular reproductive cycles. The maintenance of such cycles is a dynamic question; & the fabric of life that constitutes the biosphere of Earth is maintained by the interactive reproductive dynamics of zillions of micro-organisms (the biospheric dependence!)

The genealogical heritage of ecology the science has built up a dichotomy: ecosystem ecology vs. population and community ecology

Biodiversity cuts through this dichotomy, in conceptual terms: entities make up the patterns of heterogeneity and variability that we observe and call biodiversity, but reproductive cycles are needed to maintain them. Two specific challenges:(1) Is biodiversity significant for ecosystem functions? (2) Does the dynamic nature of ecological systems matter for conservation? -- (1) yes, by and large – but precisely?? -- (2) yes

In process terms, biodiversity is a pervasive characteristic of life. However, life on Earth is not a single, all-encompassing, dynamically unified system but rather a complex of reproductive cycles.

In practice, the centrality of reproductive process means that if the conditions are right, biodiversity will take care of itself.

When are conditions right?The problem of dynamically relevant indicators and surrogates!!

Endangered species? – Remember the symbolic significance of extinction & extinction threat!!

- ”Umbrella species”??- ”Companion species” that pave the way for

dynamic conservation?? -- The Flying Squirrel, potentially.

Mapping with multivariate statistics the ”environmental space” on the regional scale (Mike Austin et al., 1984 etc.)

Dynamic conservation policy

Conservation is aimed at a moving target: whenever it succeeds, the situation changes

-- whatever the target (whether it is a species or habitat type)

A reasonable aim is to get human-induced environmental changes to match critical dynamics of the habitat requirements of the target species or environmental type

Surrogates that can be used are necessarily culture/nature hybrids – nature already modified by human actions

Knowledge practices – knowmedge communities -- companionship